2002-07-02
French guy - summer school - buying, posted at 9:50 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com My summer is continuing to go swimmingly.Summer school is both low-pressure and sort of fun. My Senior English class has really nice, smart kids in it - they all failed senior english during the school year because they were lazy or didn't come, and they seem motivated to do better now. There are only 7 of them. My Junior English class has only 2 kids. One is from my high school, and the other one is from another fairly prestigious public high school in the city (where Tupac Shakur and Jada Pinkett went).
In the senior class, I'm still formulating curriculum a bit, but I'm going to have a good time with it. I'm thinking of doing a little American Dream unit with Death of a Salesman, Raisin in the Sun, Hoop Dreams, and American Beauty.
In the latter, I decided to let them choose a novel from the book room to work with first, and the two of them chose Animal Farm. I hadn't read it since I was a sophomore in high school, and devoured it in one sitting over the weekend. What a good book. We'll work with that for a week or so (such a quick read), and then I think I'm going to have them read The Catcher in the Rye and The White Boy Shuffle and do a compare/contrast thing with it. If you haven't heard of The White Boy Shuffle, I highly recommend it. It's by this young African-American writer named Paul Beatty who used to be on my Favorites list (I like to rotate them every now and then), and he may well be the next great novelist in our country. So far, I still like his poetry better than his novels - but that's just because his poetry is amazing. The novel is currently being produced by Will Smith and Paul Beatty into a film, and it's been described as a "Black Catcher in the Rye". I didn't really think of that when I read it a couple of years ago, but I can kind of see it now. I'm looking forward to getting into it again.
I'm thinking about running out to Barnes and Noble after school today and picking up a couple copies of both Catcher and Shuffle for these kids. They're both smart, so it'll be fun to discuss them with them and then have them write an essay. I think the kids will like both of them.
In other news, things continue to be nice and slow. I came home from work yesterday and took a nap, then dallied my way to do some shopping and eventually end up at the gym for my every-other-day 6-mile run (I made it there at 9pm, though, and ended up cutting my run to 3 miles). I made out good shopping, purchasing some things off my list of things to get this summer. I got a DVD player for $53 (I bought a nice Pioneer one for $150 last year, and it broke, so I'll never buy an expensive one again), I got a CD walkman for $29, and a window fan (so my cat doesn't jump out the window again - I've got a broken screen) also for $29. For each of the last two, I found out both were $10 on sale once the cashier scanned it. It was my lucky day.
I still want to buy a few more things this summer: a CD-burner, a domain name for "holdenslair.com" (and figure out that whole hosting thing... I don't want to spend $60/year on it and think my msu webspace runs out soon), and another bookcase. I'm doing pretty well on my list so far.
My other interesting news is that I think I found a roommate for the summer - a French student, 21 years old, who would be living with me from mid-July until mid-September. He got a hold of me through my long-defunct City Paper ad (not sure how he got it this late in the game), and I think it could work out nicely. My house is getting too quiet, and the quickest Roy would move in is August. With two spots to fill, this French guy could be a good buffer in between a more permanent roommate. Plus, it will probably be a good cultural experience for me - his e-mails reveal broken English, he's never been to America, and he's doing it basically for the experience. He's looking for a job waiting tables.
Hopefully it'll work out. It should provide some interesting diary entries either way.