Agenda for week of 9.28.09

9.28.09: No class, no school--Yom Kippur.

9.29.09: Poetry in translation workshop, Day 3. Everyone should have her packets in on Tuesday. We will distribute at the beginning of class so that we can take notes on the packets the night before the presenters go. We will be looking at translations from Kellie, Olivia, & Sam J.

9.30.09: Poetry in translation workshop, Day 4. We will be looking at translations from Sandy, Jess, Gaelle, & Jen.

10.1.09: Poetry in translation workshop, Day 5. We will be looking at translations from Steph J, Hillary, Jackie.

10.2.09: Long Block. Part 2 "Gatsby" of Reading Lolita in Tehran is due (pages 79 - 153), with 5 notebook entries and post-its ready to go for a graded Student Run Discussion (SRD).

Upcoming Events:

• Umass Lowell, AP Day on Sat. Oct 3rd. Make sure to give your permission slips to Ms. Clapp asap.
• Your final translation assignment will be due on Monday, Oct 5th.
• We will begin college essay discussions on Monday, Oct 5th.
• We will be reading Ibsen's A Doll's House the week of Oct 5th.
• I totally owe you all a mass email through snapgrades; I have done quite a bit of grading lately and am pretty caught up--so I will email you your password / log in info and pass stuff back to you on soon.

Above image of Joan Mitchell, one of my favorite painters, was taken from the archives of LIFE magazine, which first appeared on May 13, 1957.

Important info regarding Full-scholarship opportunity:

The following is from Mrs. Lipinski:

Hi all,


I just to make you aware that I will be hosting a Colby Sawyer College Progressive Scholars Information meeting next Thursday, Sept. 24th at 2:30 in the library. This will be an informational, informal meeting. If you have specific people you envision as potential candidates (outgoing, wants to be involved in their college campus, and has at least a 3.0 (unless there is some reasonable explanation as to why they don't), please send me their names so that I can reach out to them personally, as well as through the informational meeting.

The scheduled dates with CSC are:

October 8th- CSC visit MHS for their own private information session with the more serious candidates.

October 27- CSC visit MHS for official interviews at 12:00. (I will need to give CSC team a list of students a week ahead of time).

November 5- MHS visits CSC campus, along with Cambridge students.

More dates to come for the New Year.

Thanks for your support.

Victoria Lipinski, Holland House Guidance Counselor

Agenda for week of 9.21.09

9.21.09: Your final Conrad Poem Project is due (as you walk into class.)  I would also like you to have a copy of a poem (around ten lines--use your judgment on this one) that you would like to translate. In class, I will demonstrate how the process of translating will go & begin discussion on 'college essay' memoir writing stuff.

9.22.09: SLD on Part I "Lolita" (pps 3 -77) in Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran.  You should have 5 Reader's Notebook entries.  When in doubt on what to say or write, let's make sure we are going back to moments in the text and focusing on the choices a writer makes to affect meaning in her work, rather than straying too far into the realm of theory & sweeping generalizations.

9.23.09, 9.24.09, & 9.29.09:  We will be going over your translations as a class.  On the day that you are scheduled to present, you should bring 13 copies to class.

Image is: "Ma ba ham esterahat mikonim" "We'll rest next to one another" by Samira Eskandarfar

Agenda for week of 9.14.09

photo: "Gertrude Stein & Picasso's Portrait" by Man Ray in 1922. Click here to learn more about the connection Stein to Picasso.


9.14.09:  Homework due: 1,000 word letter.  In class, I will hand out & explain the Conrad Poem assignment.

9.15.09:  Homework due: print out, read, & mark up the following poems for discussion in class:

• Gertrude Stein's “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso”, Text  & if you would like to listen to her read her poem, the audio.
• T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men", Text & if you would like to hear him read the poem, there is a cool youtube video here

9.16.09:  No class.

9.17.09:  Homework due: Bring in three copies of the first draft of your Conrad poem for workshop in class.

9.18.09:  No homework due.  We will be going over the poetry translation project assignment & any loose ends.

For a preview of next week:  (Because the assignments due next week are time intensive, you should be working on them all of this week...)

9.21.09: Your final Conrad poem project, with meta will be due.  You will also need a copy of the poem you are going to translate by class time.  We will be discussing the college essay in class...(I think.)

9.22.09: Long Block. Part 1 of Reading Lolita in Tehran is due (pages 1 - 78), with 5 notebook entries and post-its ready to go for a graded Student Led Discussion (SLD).

Picasso's Potrait (1906)

Homework Assignment for 9.14.09

due by class time on Monday 9.14.09.

First, either create a new blog or go into your settings and change your display name to what you are called in class. Maybe for you all that share a name, you can add your last initial. Your display name is different from your username, which is probably your email. If you need some help with this, make sure you see me after school on Friday & I will help you set up your blog. Remember, this is a public (as in everyone in the world who has internet access can read it) space, so please do not share any personal information.

In the comment box of this post, I would like you to write a letter to the class (me included) as an introduction to yourself. Share anything you want (remember this is public), but I am most interested in learning about your life as a reader and a writer thus far. Self assess & share. This is a homework assignment and will be given a completion grade.

Please put an extra space in between your paragraphs before you paste into the comment box.

Length: 1,000 words

Image is by Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1986

Agenda for week of 9.8.09

For Friday's class, read and post-it note the following two essays in your new Norton Critical Edition of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness:

• Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" pgs 336 - 348 & Lissa Schneider's "Iconography and the Feminine Ideal" pgs 474 - 483.

We have long block, so will spend about 40 minutes on each essay in a Student Led Discussion (SLD) format. This means you need to come to class prepared to say quite a bit. Achebe, as I'm sure you caught on, is the author of Things Fall Apart, which is also free to be discussed in context of these essays. The image I posted is Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? by Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903). He briefly is mentioned in the Achebe essay. The painting is also up for discussion.

Welcome to AP English, Class of 2010...

Gallagher AP Syllabus 2009 - 2010