I regularly teach Flannery O’Connor, and assign a whole book of her short stories when I taught an American Lit 1915-Present course. Now that I’m teaching “American Lit 1776-Present” I keep her stories in rotation, but I have more material to cover, so I have to be more selective. O’Connor’s fiction contains many themes and…
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It’s distressing and shocking to realize that some people are more willing to spread conspiracy theory shit than it they are to check their sources. Isn’t it the bad guys who are supposed to be spreading lies? I like reading news stories for myself, rather than spreading disinformation on social media. How hard is it…
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Several times in the past few days I’ve come across this claim in my social media feed. I didn’t share it or try to fact-check it; I just kept scrolling. Here’s the verdict, from USA Today: “Based on our research, this claim is FALSE. While the education secretary has advocated for schools reopening in the…
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Front page of the Miami Herald newspaper, with two headlines circled: “Florida schools ordered to reopen in August” and “Miami-Dade restaurants, gyms closing to fight COVID surge” Similar:5 of the Fiercest One-Liners in HistoryYes, the Spartans’ one-word response to …CultureBreaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic booksA good article analyzes the strong cultu…BooksWander (1974)…
Students who put a lot of effort into learning the editing guidelines in the AP Stylebook might benefit from the occasional reminder that good news writing requires the creative use of language, a good idea for detail and the ability to make connections between your readers and the news. The sources we interview are real…
AP Style follows the standard English practice of capitalizing proper nouns. They stayed with Uncle John at Gracious Living Inn on the shore of Grenada Lake while on vacation in the South. Capitalize the names of particular people, places or things. (Proper nouns.) In the above example, “shore” and “vacation” are common nouns. They stayed with my uncle at a hotel on the south end of a peaceful lake.…
In my discipline, teaching small seminars typically depends on students sharing their weaknesses and vulnerabilities in pairs and small groups, gradually building trust while the teacher moves through the room, listening and joining in and backing away as appropriate. Masked students who are 6 feet away from each other will have to shout their failures…
Marked 832 AP English essays in a week of online work. Rating is based on how accurately I marked the pre-graded training examples scattered in amongst the flood. A really good professional development tool, that helps me to align my assessment with what my peers feel is high school writing skill that deserves college credit.…
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Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. Data builds an android derived from his own positronic neural pathways, and intends to raise it as his child — a prospect that invokes Picard’s iconic facepalm. Picard (to admiral conjured up by writers who needed an antagonist): “There are times, sir, when men of good conscience cannot blindly…
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In May, 2000, I was blogging about The “I Love You” IRC virus A college that shifted to online applications only A poem about Pez that has lodged this couplet forever in my brain: What art thou, Pez, that must needs be dispensed? T’ be merely wrapped would leave thee so incensed? Hacking the URL…
The English program is not going anywhere, but Seton Hill is graduating its last “New Media Journalism” major this year. Likewise, students who graduate under the current catalog won’t get diplomas that say “Literature” or “Creative Writing.” This was a step that the English faculty took on our own initiative, in the context of a…
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The number of weekly COVID-19 deaths in America has recently surpassed the 2018 average weekly death rates for heart disease (now the second most common cause of death) and cancer (now in third place). As a kid in school, I expected scientists to be able to provide the one and only correct answer, because that’s…
For years, I’ve been teaching a fake graph. In pretty much every course I teach, on some day when students seem discouraged or distracted, I’ll draw an X axis labeled “Experience” and a Y-axis labeled “Confidence,” and sketch out the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” curve, as preparation for an informal pep talk. (Update, 27 Nov 2021: My…
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