fun in threes, sometimes fours
general
The Boy is often playing catchup with his school work. I've often brought it up here. We're both tired of it -- K, too. Recently, we made a deal with the Boy. Well, not so much a deal as a threat. A hostage situation. No electronics of any kind until he is all caught up. No TV in the morning with breakfast. No YouTube on the weekends. No Minecraft. Nothing. And so he has really buckled down and began doing the work.
Most of it -- on his Chromebook...
We began today by going over the latest article of the week, looking at a complete of connections that I wanted students to make within the text.
Afterward, we returned to the work of tracking down some of the ways that Shakespeare has characters start echoing each other. For example, we covered this unique echo:
| Excerpt 1 | Parallel from Play |
| Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night, Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. O, I have bought the mansion of a love, But not possess’d it, and, though I am sold, Not yet enjoy’d: so tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them. |
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. |
They’re both comparing the other in terms of brightness so intense that it would overpower the night and turn it into daytime. There are a few differences, though:
I’m tempted to give a little spoiler tomorrow as we finish act 3 and Romeo climbs out of the house in a sort of bookend balcony scene: “This is the last time they will see each other alive.” Tempting…
As we move toward the end of the play, I want students to start picking up on how characters echo each other. I want them to see that Juliet in act three echoes Romeo's words in the balcony scene in act two:
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them.
I want them to see that Juliet expresses her anger in act three the same way Romeo does in the first scene of the play, with a litany of oxymorons:
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!
Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,
A damned saint, an honourable villain!
O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell,
When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
In moral paradise of such sweet flesh?
Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace!
I want them to see that Juliet echoes Friar Lawrence when they learn that Romeo has killed Tybalt. She says about the situation:
Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?
But, wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?
That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband:
Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring;
Your tributary drops belong to woe,
Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.
My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain;
And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband:
All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then?
He says:
What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive,
For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead;
There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee,
But thou slew'st Tybalt; there are thou happy too:
The law that threaten'd death becomes thy friend
And turns it to exile; there art thou happy:
A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back;
Happiness courts thee in her best array;
But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love:
Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
Echoes.
To do this, I've developed what's called a gallery walk: each passage is printed out and put on a large piece of butcher paper. Kids circulate in groups with Post-It notes, making comments about vocabulary, motifs, inversions, elliptical constructions, and, most importantly, other portions of the play about which given passages remind them.
As they circulate, the passages become covered with comments, and students learn from each others' observations. With each rotation, it becomes increasingly difficult to say something original. They have to dig a little deeper, think a little more critically.
And sometimes, a bit of humor appears. While one group was reading this passage
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them.
I overheard an outspoken girl -- one of my favorite students this year, though I'm not supposed to have those, right? -- summarize it succinctly to her group: "Juliet just wants to get laid."
At their age and ability level, the Girl and her teammates can go from one extreme to another. For example, they can lose the first set 25-16 and then turn around and win the next set 25-16.
They can make a brilliant play and follow it up by letting the ball flop slowly and gently in between three players as they all look at it, each on expecting someone else to get it, each one making a move for it and then backing off, each one remaining perfectly silent.
The Girl can hit serves that float over the net gently and then power rockets over the net. Then she can miss her timing and the serve doesn't even make it to the net.
Today, they got third place in the silver division. That means, roughly, they finished seventh place overall, I think.
Not horrible but not what they wanted. Still, they were all in a good mood at the end of the tournament, which is what counts.
We polished the nails/axels, cut and weighted the car so that the center of gravity is in the optimal location, rough-sanded, and talked about goals for the derby next week.
"I'd like to get at least third place," the Boy said.
It's a good goal: realistic, modest. We'll see.
It’s funny how much meaning a few notes scribbled on the board can have for a group of fourteen-year-olds and yet be completely incomprehensible to others — to other students, to other teachers, to other adults in general.
Below are the notes from today’s class. The scribbles don’t look like much, but to the kids with whom I’ve been working now for several months, they represent the last little bit (though critical bit) of guidance for a major writing assignment. These few words and abbreviations include notes about organization, notes about planning, notes about content, guidance for self-correction, potential problems and their solutions
We’ve developed our own shorthand, or own codes, or own abbreviations, as I do with every class every year. And it all moves the students toward writing that they would have found impressive a few months ago and now is their new-normal, their new standard.
It’s an honor to be a part of that growth, to play a small part in it.
I’ve sometimes wondered what would be the reaction in the Christian community if somehow some irrefutable proof surfaced that Jesus would never be coming back, that the second coming was all a pipe dream. Now, I know that no such proof is possible, and the events of recent weeks demonstrate all too clearly that irrefutable evidence can be refuted simply by a movement in the will, a forcible rejection of what is clearly and demonstrably true. We see that in the election; we see that in denial of climate change and evolution; we see that everywhere. But let’s just run this thought experiment: there’s somehow evidence that Jesus’s second coming will never happen, that the Christians, who have been predicting for 2,000 years now that Jesus is coming back “any day now,” were completely wrong. What might that look like?
I think we’re seeing it in real time now as Qanon conspiracy theorists grapple with the reality that none of Q’s theories have come true and that, with Biden now sworn in, they won’t come true.
One account on Reuters:
On Wednesday, they grappled with a harsh reality check: Trump had left office with no mass arrests or other victories against the supposed cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophile cannibal elites, especially Democrats, he was ostensibly fighting.
Instead, Democratic President Joseph Biden was calmly sworn into office, leaving legions of QAnon faithful struggling to make sense of what had transpired.
In one Telegram channel with more than 18,400 members, QAnon believers were split between those still urging others to ‘trust the plan’ and those saying they felt betrayed. “It’s obvious now we’ve been had. No plan, no Q, nothing,” wrote one user.
Some messages referenced theories that a coup was going to take place before the end of Inauguration Day. Others moved the goalposts again, speculating that Trump would be sworn into office on Mar. 4.
“Does anybody have any idea what we should be waiting for next or what the next move could be?” asked another user, who said they wanted to have a ‘big win’ and arrests made. (Source)
Two movements here: one, a return to reality; the other, a doubling-down, squirming deeper into the hole.
The BBC includes this:
Many reacted with shock and despair as Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th US president.
“I just want to throw up,” said one in a popular chat on the Telegram messaging app. “I’m so sick of all the disinformation and false hope.”
Others insisted “the plan” had not failed, finding new theories to latch on to.
For weeks, QAnon followers had been promoting 20 January as a day of reckoning, when prominent Democrats and other elite “Satanic paedophiles” would be arrested and executed on the orders of President Trump.
The 65 days that led to chaos at the Capitol
What is QAnon?But, as Mr Biden took his oath and no arrests were made, some in the QAnon community had an uncomfortable meeting with reality.
“It’s done and we were played,” wrote another. (Source)
Those who are doubling down are coming up with increasingly bizarre explanations of what’s going on:
Some of them just don’t even make any sense at all:
Some of them are waking up, though. One TikTok video, now viral, is supposedly from a Qanon woman who has come to her senses:
So, who else is feeling just a little silly? […] I went too far down the rabbit hole, now I’m back out again — and it nothing happens on the 20th, how many of you are going to feel stupid as hell? And who the f*** is Q? Who is it? Who is this person? Because none of it has come true, and I was just thinking — what if this person knows that none of this stuff is true and they’re just messing with people, like getting inside their heads.
The video is here:
So what does this tell us about Qanon and conspiracy theories? I feel like these reactions would mirror what would happen in our hypothetical proof of the non-return of Jesus. There would be some who would accept it — probably more liberal believers. For that matter, there are Christians liberal enough already to say that Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, didn’t really ascend into heaven, won’t really return, but insist that that doesn’t really matter. “It’s all about the teachings!” they say, and then they paint this picture of Jesus who seems in some ways at odds with the Jesus in the Bible. (He certainly seemed to think he was coming back, so there’s that…)
Most believers would stick by their guns. Nothing — absolutely nothing — could convince them otherwise.
This leads to the thought that has plagued me for a few years now, a thought that ultimately pushed me back away from Christianity: If a belief is not falsifiable, if nothing counts against it, to what degree can we call it a rational idea?
This, in turn, leads to another thought I’ve had rattling around in my head for some time now: there are a lot of similarities between conspiracy theorists and religious believers. And in fact, I think an argument can be made that religion in general and Christianity, in particular, are, at heart, a gigantic, cosmic conspiracy theories.
One of the things I’m most looking forward to in the Biden administration is being able to go for days on end without giving a single thought to the president and what he’s doing. That’s how it’s always been, even with presidents I didn’t particularly like or agree with. I’ve always just assumed, “Well, he’s an adult. He’s a reasonable human being. How much do I possibly have to worry about something over which I have no control?”
Act 3 scene 1 -- everything changes. The challenging becomes almost impossible. Romeo effectively erases any hope of any future with Juliet.
"Things are going to speed up from here on out," I tell the kiddos.