Class memento

I'm so excited.  I have a lot of new reading material.  Dr. Nash took our Literary Journalism projects and photocopied all six of them for each of us to keep.  So now we all have a 150-page memento of experiential, immersion, and reportage-based literary journalism.  When we got our copies, we passed them around the table, getting everyone to sign their own piece, which I think is really cool.  Now I can't wait until my last exam is over, the hype of graduation weekend dies down, and I'm on the road home.  Then I'll be able to finally settle down and read my humongous document.  It's going to be great!  My only regret is that we didn't get Mr. Lale to do the same thing for us in Creative Writing and Adv. Creative Writing.  That would have been really nice, too.  I love reading really great writing from people I know - my peers and classmates!

Completion

I'm done.  I did my final speech.  I finished my 20-page Literary Journalism project on literacy in the Chattanooga area and handed it in.  And, other than exams and finishing an article for the Southern Communicator, I'm done.  It feels great.  I hope I'll never have to stay up all night to finish another assignment.  I think it's time I take a short snooze.

Need more time

I have to figure out how I can make my Literary Journalism project reach 20 pages.  If ONLY I could go observe a reading intervention session at one of the area public elementary schools.  But alas, they've been on Spring Break and then they were getting ready for some major standardized tests and this coming week they're actually taking those tests, so the reading intervention sessions are on hold until next week.  That isn't very convenient since my project is due on Wednesday.  I need more time.  Why can't the project be due during finals week?  I officially hate standardized tests, which is strange cause I always enjoyed doing them when I was in school (they took away from regular class time which, for the most part, was extremely uninteresting).  Anyway, I think I'll stop stressing about it and just go back to my notes and include more dialogue and description from the adult reading class I was able to observe.  Wish me luck.  And the ability to stretch short scenarios into long ones.  Oh wait.  I already have that ability.  I guess this is one time where it might come in useful.

John Glenn

*Warning: Unless you're in Literary Journalism class or have read "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe, you probably won't get this post.  I'm just writing it so I won't forget the scenario since it was such a funny class period.  Just know there's a lot of inside jokes in our class from that book about the Mercury seven (first men in space).

At the start of Literary Journalism class today Audrey came in to interview us and Dr. Nash about the class for an article she's writing for the Communicator (the SJ&C's newsletter).  Before she could ask any questions, Dr. Nash showed us his new iPad he just bought on Monday night.  He passed it around the class, or tried to.  He gave it to Emily and she had it for most of the time Audrey was interviewing us.  The most amusing part of watching her try out the iPad was when she played some marble game (I don't know the actual name) and had to use her whole upper body to keep the marble moving right.  "Wow, this is a lot harder to play on here than on an iPod," she remarked.

Audrey's questions were pretty easy to answer and we took turns giving her quotes.  Rainey answered one question and did so very eloquently.  She's got a great way with words, both written and spoken (which is a real skill, in my opinion).  When she was done her answer, Chris smirked at her, "Thanks John Glenn."  Every person in the room burst out in laughter, except for Audrey who smiled while looking a bit confused.  "Chris, stop it," Rainey said sheepishly.  Chris grinned down at Rainey while raising both his hands in the air (like elementary students do when they REALLY want the teacher to pick them) and then made his hands into "thumbs up."  Then suddenly Dr. Nash said, "Oh, John Glenn!  Oh, that's funny!" and really started laughing, which made us all laugh even harder.  It's always amusing when people laugh before they actually realize the joke.  Emily joined in, while still keeping her eyes glued to the iPad screen, "We should get a picture of Rainey with her hands up like that."  "Ya," Dr. Nash added.  "Just a picture of Rainey beside the story."  "Wait," I said, "There's seven of us and there were seven of them.  We could all pretend to be one of the Mercury seven at the press conference."  Dr. Nash turned to Chris, who had started the whole thing.  "Who would you be? Al Shepard?"  "No," Rainey countered.  "Emily would be Shepard since she's always been ahead of the rest of us in getting her drafts done."  "I think Chris would be Yaeger even though he wasn't one of the seven," Angela said.  Aimee added, "OK, we really need to get this picture taken before the school year ends."

Poor Audrey must have felt left out.  "Well, my next question was going to be, Because this class is so small, are the dynamics different?, but I think you've already answered that one," she said.  The six of us students looked around the table and realized what an awesome class we were in.  "I think so," Angela pipped up.  "I feel like we're a family in here.  We all help each other out about our articles.  I mean, Rainey and Alison have fixed me up with dates for my project.  We've talked together about each person's topic and I think we have a special bond."  I agreed with Angela and I think the other four students and Dr. Nash did too.

I love having small classes where everyone knows everyone else and gets along and helps each other.  Emily and I had that last year in our six-person, all-girls Adv. Reporting class with Ms. Chamberlain and now we have it again with Dr. Nash in Literary Journalism.  LJ (Angela's acronym for our class) class today just made me realize again how much I'll miss the SJ&C once I graduate and leave.

PS - After Emily had got to level 4 of her marble game, she passed the iPad to me and Angela who worked on a Mad Lib game.  We got all the way to the last word and just needed to put in an adverb when Dr. Nash needed his iPad to read us an e-mail he'd gotten.  So we never got to see how our Mad Lib turned out, but it was going to be good.  Like Angela said, "We used the word gobbleygook.  How could it not be good?"

Voice recorder

I'm kicking myself. Well okay, not literally, but I should be. Today I went down to Goodwill Chattanooga to sit in and observe on an adult reading class for my Literary Journalism project. (Some background: My project is on illiteracy and adults who can't read or don't read very well.) There was an intensely amusing moment when I first walked into the classroom. I don't want to go in detail about it on here since it's perfect for my project and I want to save it for that, but I'll give you an overview:

I walk into the room exactly two minutes late for the class. Only the teacher and one student sit at the table. As soon as he sees me walk in the student jerks his head up and proclaims, "It's Alison!!!" (Yes, he said my name with at least three exclamation points, maybe even a few more.) I stop just inside the door, blinking in surprise. He was a totally stranger to me. He jumps up and lumbers over to me, squeezing me in a hug before I have time to react. He then informs me that I had visited Hosanna Community and told me his name. It all started coming back to me. Last January (the 2009 one), Danielle and I had gone to Hosanna Community, a community in Hixson which fosters independence for adults with disabilities, to help clean up the grounds and the buildings for Community Service Day. This guy lived there and remembered me coming to help out. More incredibly, he remembers my name from that one-day visit 14 months ago. Needless to say, I was astonished.

So that was the most random part of my visit. The rest of the first class went by in rather ordinary fashion. The second class did as well and I was getting a little discouraged that I wouldn't have any material to show for my two-hours of time downtown. While the volunteers helped the students in the more advanced class, I interviewed the teacher, getting lots of good information about her, but not too much that would actually help me for my project. Near the end of the class she let me talk to the students, just like she had in the beginners class. I wasn't too optimistic about getting good info. The first class hadn't given me much, but I went ahead and interviewed them anyway. I asked one guy some questions and he gave me short, brief answers. One of the volunteers tried to help by explaining my questions further, but his responses were the same. Nothing I could use for my projects. Just "yes" "no" "yeah kinda" "I don't know" etc. I'm not sure how he managed to give those answers for my open-ended questions, but trust me, he did. I ran out of questions before he gave me anything good. I turned my attention to the second student. Before I even asked him a question he was off. He gave me the most beautifully eloquent motivational speech I had ever heard. My pen was going at top speed trying to get all the stories and top-notch quotes documented correctly. Just as he was winding down, I realized that I had my voice recorder with me. I was so mad at myself for not getting it out of my backpack before the second student started talking. I'm pretty sure I got most of his speech down on paper, since he talked slow and deliberately, but I wish I'd recorded it anyway. It was really touching and almost made the volunteers cry. I'd give anything to go back to yesterday at 2:50 p.m. and do that interview over again.

Final Web site

My brain is finished with Web design class, but before I can truly be done the class I have to finish my final project. It's a Web site for my dad's cabinet company (here's his current site if you're curious) and I was really excited to work on it when we first started our final projects, but now I just want to be done. I've learned a ton of stuff in Web design class, most of it very useful. My head is filled with html and css, not to mention all the intricacies of designing in Photoshop and turning that design into slices to import into tables in Dreamweaver and code to look like an actual Web site. When I look at my project, I like the Home page and I really like the Contact page (I've found I'm a sucker for forms. Any page with a good form on it will probably be my favourite page of a Web site.), but I'm rather disappointed with my About and Products pages. I just don't know how to make them any different than my home page, but still look good. So as of right now my About page looks remarkably similar to my Home page and my Products page is still relatively blank. The last page, the Design Consultants one, is coming along nicely. Now if I can just get the rest of the info for that page from the salespeople at my dad's company it'll turn out good. Anyway, that's about where I'm at with my project as of right now. I have no more will power to stay at the lab any longer tonight so I'm leaving now, an hour before the lab actually closes. I'll come back in tomorrow night when the lab opens at 6 after all the exams for the day are finished to try to get everything sorted out and in order. After the four hours I'll probably spend there tomorrow, I'll have two hours to put the finishing touches on my site on Tuesday afternoon from 12-2 so whatever I can't get done tomorrow night will have to be done then or else not at all. I can't wait until after 7 p.m. Tuesday night when I'll be done with this project and with Web design class.

Dr. Seuss

Today was author study presentation day for our Children's Lit. class. A few weeks ago we paired up and chose our favourite (or one of our favourite) children's author. Then we did an author study on him/her and made a presentation board. And today we got to go to Spalding Elementary to show our presentations and tell the kids about our authors. My partner, Ryan, and I decided to do Dr. Seuss and we got assigned to a grade two classroom along with two other groups. Presenting was a lot of fun although the kids were kind of crazy and wild and VERY talkative because we came just before their recess time. In any case, the teacher split her students up into three groups of five and so each of us had five minutes to tell the kids at our display about our author before they rotated to see one of the other presentations. I had found this neat find-the-differences activity sheet online using two pictures of the Cat in the Hat that had five differences between them so I'd printed out a bunch of those and we had each kid do that. When they'd found all five things Ryan gave them each a Tootsie Roll lollipop and then we told them what we'd learned about Dr. Seuss.


I'd forgotten how amusing kids can be. One little girl in the first group that came to our table informed us that she had 55 Dr. Seuss books. I was greatly impressed since Dr. Seuss wrote around 60 books for kids. A little boy in the second group exclaimed loudly, upon the receiving his lollipop, "Wow, this is my FIFTH dessert today!" (we found out later that the first group of kids at the James Marshall display had pretty much eaten a whole plate of cookies by themselves, some of them taking four or five cookies each). Another boy in the second group told me that he and his sister are Thing 1 and Thing 2. When I asked him why he said, "Because there's two of us." (Of course! Why didn't I think of that?) Then he told me his sister is older and that has always made him mad. I, assuming that he and his sister were twins, asked him how much older and he replied that she was in fourth grade. It took me a second to wrap my brain around the fact that they weren't twins and by the time I figured it out he was already off of the Thing 1 and Thing 2 subject and was telling me that the activity sheet was "soooo easy." So the kids were fun to talk to and interact with. I just hope they will actually remember one or two things about Dr. Seuss. Maybe they'll remember that his real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel or that he loved hats and had a huge, diverse collection that he wore as "thinking caps" while he was writing or that he made up another pen name (other than Dr. Seuss, which was both his middle name and his mother's maiden name), Theo LeSieg - his last name backwards. I think maybe at least one of those facts might have stuck with some of the kids we talked to, which makes me happy.

I can't even remember the last time I was in an elementary classroom. Even though I had a lot of fun visiting grade two today, I'm very glad that I'm not an elementary education major. I like kids. I'm even good with kids. But I'm not sure I would be able to think fast enough to keep up to 15 rowdy, rambunctious, rollicking grade two-ers for five days a week, 9ish months a year, much less be able to teach them all they need to learn. I'm pretty thankful I'm a journalism major. Anyway, if you care to see, here's our presentation board.


Ryan gets all the credit for making the hills and the Lorax trees and for designing the middle panel, which would mean that I get the credit for compiling and writing up all the information on the side panels. It guess this group project had a pretty equally-shared work load.