A Chain of Reactions

Rosen here. That's how my dad answered his phone at work and it became the phrase he was most well known for. Certainly I'd prefer my catchphrase, established by long years of frequent use to be something along the lines of "why yes, I'd love another lottery jackpot" but the odds are against that.

I just spent a few minutes reviewing the initial blog posts of my AP section. Aside from one blog which doesn't seem to exist, one that was unlisted and 3 which have yet to be made (add to list of things to do...figure out what's up with these missing blogs) the reactions were lots of fun to read. I smiled, I empathized and I derived a whole lot of pride. Sure, some of you are about a half a step away from organizing a lynch mob, but you have that lynching in mind because you feel that afterwards, you will have a splendid topic to write about! Awesome!

There was the concern over what a blog is or is supposed to be, complaint about the concept of a long-term assignment, or a sizable paper, qualms about the volume of work required in any year, let alone the senior year. There was a whole lot of uncertainty and hand wringing.

There was also a whole mess of understanding -- not just realization that we, as teachers didn't design this assignment in order to crush anyone, but a revelation about the value of a project, paper and blog and a student driven and unique unit of study.  Fact is, we aren't wholly evil and we thought through this assignment and developed standards because we want our students to do something which gets lost in the mix sometimes: think. Were and are there other ways through which we could have reached this goal? Maybe. But maybe we, like the sharks that we all pretend not to be, must keep moving forward in order to survive.

Yes, some of you are still mired in the sense of dismay and frustration and haven't yet seen that reading other blogs doesn't mean being interested in other people's topics, or that a blog post as a weekly writing assignment is significantly LESS intensive in the traditional sense than a graded in-class essay each week. Some of you are so floored by the idea of a large paper or a project, or anything not simply due next week that you haven't let yourselves get swept up in it yet. I hope you let it happen. because that's when the magic starts.

Rosen, out.

Project Ideas

Some students have jumped right into topics they've clearly been waiting to explore, while others are circling the water, poking their toes in and seeing how a particular topic feels to them. Still others are having a hard time getting started at all. Below is a list of some of the topics your classmates are considering. Maybe one of them will spark you to think about an issue or subject you've always wanted  to research more deeply:

Food and food cultures: Family and cultural histories of food, with a cookbook as a final project, are the topic for one pair of students, one from an Ashkenazi background and one from a Sephardi one.

The genre of the horror story: One student wants to read a collection of famous horror stories and then write in the style of each type of macabre tale. You'll be able to track his progress in this project on his blog.

Shark week: Get ready to be terrified by one student's
exploration of sharks and their habits, one of which includes feasting on humans.

Mythology: One student wants to set Torah values against pagan mythological ones, while another wants to explore the diversity of myth by comparing Norse, Egyptian, Greek and/or other myth systems.

Fashion: How did Paris get to be the fashion center of the world? A biography of Coco Chanel becomes the jumping off point into this student's exploration of the fashion industry and its epicenter, the capital of France.