The student-work on my wall reflects the units that the students have covered the past two months. First, parents will notice several posters depicting social issues, such as bullying, abortion, and drug addictions.
The students created ad campaigns in order to persuade their audiences on the negative effects of a social issue of their choice.
Furthermore, the students' goal was to inform the audience on the impact of each topic and what the audience can do to help fight the issue. The posters are persuasive in nature--full of statistics, rhetorical devices, and powerful images.
Secondly, the students have been going through a novel unit in which they are learning about the Holocaust. As you know, this is a very emotional and powerful topic. The students recently created "Found Poetry" based on Elie Weisel's Holocaust memoir. A found poem is a poem that is entirely made up of lines and words from the text they are reading. The challenge of found poetry is taking sections of the text and creating a cohesive, thematic, and powerful poem.
The students were amazed at the different interpretations of the text that were expressed in each found poem.
All in all, I am completely proud of my students. They are engaging in high school level material on a daily basis. In fact, the memoir that the students are reading is a book I read in eleventh grade!
The students have been working relentlessly to go above and beyond expectations; they have set high standards for themselves and try, everyday, to achieve even greater goals than they set for themselves. It is a privilege to teach these students. The work on my wall is much less a reflection of my teaching than it is a reflection of the excellence and academic abilities of the students.
The picture below depicts one of the coolest features about my classroom: the reading lab is a cool place that is joined to my class. Here, the students can allow fantasy and fiction to collide into one powerful journey. The lab allows the students to grab a favorite book, select their ideal reading spot, and let their imaginations do the rest. I must admit, the couches are QUITE a comfortable alternative to the traditional desks! :)
I love food. I love all kinds of food. I have never been one to discriminate. American, Asian, Mexican, Greek--I love all types of delicious cuisines. But there is one cuisine that I like above the others: Italian. I can't get enough of the breads, sauces, pastas, and spices. For this reason, my wife and I have been quite frequent patrons at Olive Garden. And why not? Olive Garden is very affordable and over all, quite good.
We usually get the all-you-can-eat soup, salad, and breadsticks meal (under $10). Besides walking away satisfiably stuffed from my meal, I used to think I was walking away from a pretty healthy meal as well. Boy was I wrong!
According to a recent article on Yahoo! Health, the bottomless portions of salad and breadsticks are ranked among the worst "free" foods that restaurant chains give out. In fact, after eating just one serving of salad and two breadsticks, you will have consumed almost half of your daily caloric intake...and that's before you even tasting the soup! Ouch! And I thought I was doing my body good by selecting Olive Garden over a local burger joint.
(Picture created by The New York Post)
Next, I drove to Florida with Kiera, Macy, and Maverick to spend the Christmas season with family. While there, I ate a TON of great food, went bike riding, started bonfires, played Disc Golf, and saw a couple of movies: Tron and The Little Fockers.
The picture below is everyone in the room looking at the ultrasound on the screen. If you look hard enough, you can see the tear marks on my mom's cheeks. We shared this awesome moment with Kiera's mom, her sister, and our brother-in-law.
