2000-10-23
Edgar Allan Poe, posted at 23:27:24
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com I had a wonderful day in school today.We started Edgar Allan Poe with my general tenth graders. Have I ever told you about my focus class? They're the lowest level of tenth-graders, a very mixed class (mixed in terms of ability, learning disorders, race). While it's sort of cliched to say they're the kind of kids that folks have given up on, it's not entirely untrue.
They're wonderful kids. Today, I brought in candles and a glowing skull and had the lights dimmed when they came in the room. As soon as they came in, I briefly told them about Poe, but rather than bog them down with biographical details that it seems every author does, I decided to dive right into the story. I passed out "The Tell-tale Heart" and started playing the Iggy Pop recording of it (included on the double-CD set "Closed on Account of Rabies", featuring Jeff Buckley, Diamanda Galas, Christopher Walken, etc). The kids were entranced. They hung on every word. Afterwards, I ahd my first really good class discussion. It was a lot of fun. We talked about why the story was written in first person, about the unreliable narrator, etc. Then, I had them re-write the story from another character's perspective - either the old man who was killed, the police officer assigned to the case, or a lawyer assigned to defend the narrator in court today. I got some of them back by the end of the hour and they were a lot of fun. One kid, Corey (who wants to either be an opera singer or a football player when he grows up, and who I always "catch" writing song lyrics during free time), was so excited about it. He's a wonderful writer. He's begging me to read it to the class tomorrow.
Teaching makes me happy.
Tomorrow, we're watching the A&E Biography of Poe, then it's on to Anabel Lee (my favorite poem of all time!) and The Raven (including the simpsons' version of it).
Life is good.