December 16, 2009
-
GREECE IS THE WORD.
The Daily News
1 So...Oral Roberts walks into a bar...
2 Who?
3 Religious guy. Gratuitous.
4 Someone else thinks he was everything on the Earth and the stars.
5 Might be, I imagine.
6 With a name like "Oral", he had to be a fighter.
7 So it goes.
8 I'll take the high road here.
9 Moving on: Ever enjoy a trifecta?
10 That's this new century buzz word that has something to do with gambling, which I personally have little use for, and something regarding things that happen in threes, like the Stooges.
11 The extraordinarily hip and cool know exactly what a "trifecta" is.
12 I just see it as a ho-hum buzz word.
13 AnywayZ...
14 Haha, as me old mate Thornton Wilder once put it, everywhere you find human beings, you'll find layers and layers of nonsense.
15 I paraphrase deliberately, because so did Wilder.
16 Segue, Part the First: I once saw the playwright Edward Albee at San Jose State, and he related a story about Wilder that was exquisite.
17 He was a lad in some small New England town, and thought he was quite the poet.
18 He wrote a bunch of poems to have Wilder look over. They took a day to wander down to a pond, and Wilder brought a bottle of whiskey with them.
19 He said, "When this whiskey is gone, I'll have read all of what you have written, and I shall tell you my opinion."
20 Taken aback, Albee sat and drank with the amazing playwright and thinker.
21 As the bottle drained, Wilder kept reading Albee's poems, crumbling up each one, and tossing it into the pond.
22 When the bottle was finally drained, Wilder turned to Albee and said, "You are a dreadful poet. You might try some other genre, such as drama perhaps, but really, you work as a poet stops here."
23 All right, I don't know that those were the exact words, but I'm quite sure that neither did Albee.
24 The point is that this particular day, so many days before this day, turned Albee into one of the greatest playwright's in history.
25 Fun story.Okay, maybe not exquisite, but it kept you reading. ; ) <-----cool sideways winky guy.
26 Moving on, Part the Second: Not sure if this is the place for it, but the entire concept of the trifecta is that I actually had AWESOME days three days in a row! I don't know that I even need to go into details here, but in hockey terms, this would be a "hat trick".
27 I truly think that if you bring happiness and optimism to each day, that you could go through the day owning it, rather than reacting to it.
28 Here's an example: Yesterday, instead of having my students enter the room normally, I got on the computer and made three posters, all written in a sort of Greek column font. One said, "OPA!" The second said, "Greece is the word", and the third said, "Are you a Hero?" I angled them happily on the door leading into the room.
29 As the students entered my room, I had Greek music blasting at them, stuff from anitquity. When they walked in, they all yelled, "OPA!" Laughter prevailed, and the mood boosted and already fun week to a much higher, more gleeful level.
30 All ears and braces, I tellya! Smile everywhere.
31 I got them settled, and put into groups, each of which had its own name: The Justice League, The Watermelons, The Buzz Buzz, Big M.C.K. among others. I had them come up with qualities of heroes, as well as things that would stop heroes from becoming heroes on T-Charts.
32 I timed it at exactly ten minutes, to the second. In fact, I always have ten-second countdowns when a group is finishing up. On this unit, when they reach one, the whole class must yell, "OPA!", which is Greek for, "Oh HELLLLLLYEAH!!!" Or something like that lol!
33 I have been playing Ancient Greek Music all week, any time they would group up.
34 So yesterday when they grouped, I routinely asked if they would like to hear some more music from Greece.
35 They routinely responded, "Ah, yeah, go ahead..."
36 I lit up You Tube, and responded with the opening song, as well as title song from Grease.
37 I said nothing, but had a poster centered above my whiteboard that said in column-style fonts, "Greece is the word." I never said a word and just sat there grading papers. The slow discovery of both things was quite fun to watch.
38 They LOVED it, and it made for an amazing go-round, as well as rousing hollas of "OPA!"
39 We did a lesson about how while we all have heroic qualities such as strength, determination, moral stature, etc. that we also have things that hinder us from being our own heroes, things such as jealousy, temptation, greed, and all the rest, things that always seem to pull us down as day by day heroes, as well as being heroes for ourselves. GREAT lesson, really.
40 They learned and learned and learned.
41 At the end of the period, after an exhilarating lesson, I asked if they would like to hear some more music from Greece.
42 To a person, they all said, "OPA!"
43 The exit music then became "We Go Together".
44 Haha!
45 Whatta day! As they danced out of the room, a few kids were singing, "We'll always, be together; we'll always, be together!" SO fun, and others kept shouting, "OPA!" One guy yelled, "OPA Winfrey!" Haha, cute.
46 Can't wait for today.
47 Hope this made y'all smile, and enjoy what good teaching is all about!
48 Had a ball, and so did they!
49 You go out there and rock the world today, willya? Whoop someone into a happy mood! Press on, friends!
50 Peace!
~H~
Recent Comments