Rainy Day Blues

Have you ever noticed that radio stations always play the same songs when it's raining outside? I mean, at some point on your ride home today you probably heard at least one, if not all of the following: CCR's "Who Will Stop the Rain?" or GnR's "November Rain" or or the Eurythmics' "Here Comes the Rain Again" or CCR's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" or Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." For me, my favorite rainy day song is "Riders on the Storm" by The Doors and so it's my video for my blog post today. Enjoy!

Even though I am going to talk a little bit more about the demos from today in a bit, my biggest revelation for today is that I LOVE MY WRITING GROUP!!! I have to thank Lacy and Steve for picking out a group of some awesome partners-in-crime AND really good colleagues as well. I’ve really had a lot of fun getting to know everyone and I have learned so much from them. So Grouping Gods, you did a great job!

I know you can't read this, but our Skype conversations are hilarious.
Even as I am typing this at home, we are still talking to each other on Skype.

As far as the demos, I really enjoyed Kim’s demo this morning on what is a hero and I think that it would be a great way for me to introduce the concept of inquiry in my own class. I think the demo did a fantastic job of showing how to take a big idea question (which most inquiry questions begin as), locate the conversation, respond to the conversation, and find a place to stand among it. I also really enjoyed Ben’s demo even though he made me do creative writing, which I am TERRIBLE at! (If you want proof, my best/most creative work from today is the caption underneath the picture).

"Nice to meet you too. You can call me, Ishmael."
(Terrible, I know!)

I think that I will use something very similar to his demo along with the one that I did on good writing to complicate this notion or narrative of what writing is at the beginning of the semester. I think that I may change their first thought piece to be what their definition of writing is based on what they learned from our discussions/activities and then also what they find out from other people’s definitions. It could be a little mini-inquiry on the nature of writing and I think it would be really cool. Maybe have them record people’s ideas, incorporate quotes, etc. SORRY!!! I was just writing through my ideas here. 

Back to Ben’s demo: I LOVED the part where we intentionally made our writing bad, but when we shared it around the circle, we starting valuing it more. It’s funny how the worst ultimately became the best, which gives credence to the notion that all of these definitions of what is “good writing” or “bad writing” are completely arbitrary. If any of you are interested in writing badly, there is a contest I talked about in one of my earlier posts. It’s the one that inspired Snoopy’s “It was a dark and stormy night” and you can find the information here or check out the photo below:

Overall, I think that today went extremely well because it was over before I knew it. I can’t wait to see what’s to come tomorrow J

FOR MY GROUP: Secret Skype Emoticons