Q: What is one way in which you are free?
A: "I am free because I can sit with different racists. I am also free because I don't have a slave owner and I am getting an education."
I have to admit, I cracked up the first time I read that journal entry. (No, that is not a typo.) However, mistake aside (I'm not sure if you could really call that a malapropism?), she has some good things to say. First, I appreciate the big emphasis many of the kids here put on racial integration as a freedom. In some ways, there is a large emphasis on race a lot of the time, and in other ways, not at all.
This week I did have a girl tell me that she was going to get her hair straightened so it would be "flimsy" like mine. "Are you calling my hair 'flimsy'?" "Yes." I let it go.
One time this week I also went over to a desk group of students and remarked that it smelled like sunscreen. A girl told me it was probably her lotion, but the students turned to me eagerly: "Do you wear sunscreen a lot?!" "Um...in the summer I guess." Oh, right. Didn't know sunscreen was going to be such a fascinating topic.
I was also delighted to see the connection between freedom and education :) When I assigned an essay on Friday ("500 words?! That's too long!!!" "This is the length of the shortest essays I wrote in high school." "That's YOUR high school!"), a kid told me, "I'm not free because I have to write this paper." "Would you rather leave school? Go ahead! Are you going to be free then?" "No...that's not what I meant...."
We read Sojourner Truth's "And Ain't I a Woman?" in American Literature (11th).
Q: Are Sojourner Truth's arguments about equality for women and minorities still relevant today?
A: "Yes, because they are human."
Q: Pick one sentence in "And Ain't I a Woman?" and draw a picture.
I'm not entirely sure what is going on there. I remarked to the artist that the man looked like a chicken, and he laughed and told me it was the man's hair. Some sort of sexist portrayal, with the man earning money and the woman taking care of the children at home...but why is she so angry? (Angry about the sexism?)
I like this girl's answer to question 7 (same question as above as to if these rights are still important today). Her picture made me crack up - but it's a good extension, a good modern application! Maybe we aren't stepping into carriages of our own abilities anymore to prove anything, but we can change the oil!
"You sinned me!"
Q: What are features of African American Vernacular English?
Some of these responses made me want to dance and start pulling out phonetic symbols and examples (DO YOU SEE HOW [ð] turns into [d]?!?! Do you see how postvocalic "r"s are deleted?!)
Q: In your group, write a short story using all of the week's vocabulary words.
Cheers!
Anneke