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Today I screened the first part of a documentary film called Pokołenie '89 by director Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz. This comprehensive exposé provided a series of concise vignettes about the Independent Student Union [in Polish, "NZS"] participants who, in the late '80s, actively opposed the Communist government in Warszawa, Poland. Says the Visegrad Documentary Library:

The portrait of the first generation of Poles who reached adulthood after 1989, the turning point for the political transformation in Poland. The protagonists are middle-class people from Warsaw.

I will show the conclusion in the following class meeting. Granted, this material is hardcore and radically different from anything I've shown thus far. For example, the production is subtitled. So, for several at least, this is the first opportunity some of the students have had to literally "read" a film as a text. My decision to immerse them . . .

Dear Convention-Defying Instructors,

When hurtful stereotypes and ignorant prejudices collide, a major accident is bound to ensue. Mao once said, "without destruction there can be no construction." I interpret this to mean that in order to construct (or re-construct), a positive deconstruction is sometimes necessary first . Crash is layered enough to do that and much more. If you have a class of top-level English students that seem open to receiving pop-cultural topics for writing and discussion subject-matter, you might have some success with this piece.

The film itself is a full two hours long and it took two complete class periods to show this film in its entirety to my class. Should you decide to screen this film, your students should be forewarned: It's certainly violent, graphic and has something to offend almost everyone. But, at the same time, some really important social issues are first toyed with and then brought to the surface. The narrative results in an amazing chain-reaction of hatred, prejudice and bigotry. Does hate fuel the uninformed and misguided opinions or do uninformed and misguided opinions inform the hate? In the third class period, I conducted a . . .

Scholars,

As several of you might know, I lived as an expatriate for many years overseas, primarily in post-Communist Europe, teaching, doing research and operating new businesses after the Berlin Wall came down in East Germany.

I made many good friends there including Mr. Bernard Offen - a survivor of the Holocaust - who has dedicated much of his life to giving, sharing, educating and promoting peace. I had the opportunity to learn a lot from Bernard and . . .

English Students,

We’ve discussed previously the concepts of metaphor and simile. Both compare different ideas and draw connections, thus offering a new perspective or interpretive definition. But, what’s the difference between them?

Here's some help:

Simile - A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as, as in “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get" - Forrest Gump (or) "My love is like a red, red rose" — Robert Burns
Metaphor – The metaphor is similar to the simile, but doesn't say that one thing is like another thing. A metaphor says one thing IS another thing! For example, “Life is a process of becoming . . ." - Anaïs Nin (or) "No man is an island" —John Donne

Katrina. A name many will likely never forget, no matter how much they'd like to.

The damage she caused was absolutely devastating, her aftereffects heartbreaking and the embarrassing bureaucratic response to her a national tragedy. These points are not the subject for this post. Instead, I ask you to consider the subject of "process" on the subject of this catastrophe.

On the surface, process is only a word, like procedure, that we use everyday in a rather benign way. In theoretical terms, it is nothing more than a signifier that signifies "an action, or a series of actions or events, progress [or] course" (OED). The process of getting from here to there, from this state of affairs to that. As a verb, we "process" our feelings about things and even process our food. As writers, can we . . .

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~ Anaïs Nin

Comrades,

Lots of people have lots of different opinions on what process is and means. For some, this notion is a philosophical key to life and for others a big wasted of time. Nin's notion seems to contrast another famous persona's concept of life and the game of process. Television's Oprah Winfrey once said . . .

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward." ~ Amelia Earhart

Prepping for courses and class assignments can be daunting for even the most experienced teacher or student. Besides the matter of preparedness, the other issue is time! How much of it are you willing to contribute so that you'll get everything you want and expect from the content? This juggling act of time spent in preparing and maintaining one's own sanity is one that many of us deal with on a daily basis.

So, what is your organizational procedure for class preparation? Do you have a failsafe M.O. (method of operation) or would you say there is a method to your madness? University websites, such as the St. Louis University of Law, often have . . .

"The Stone Age was marked by man's clever use of crude tools; the information age, to date, has been marked by man's crude use of clever tools." ~ Source Unknown

I've been using the instructional videos from this production company, the Standard Deviants, for some time now. They also have a series on grammar and punctuation in a similar format but it's the one on writing for college that I generally try to incorporate somewhere in my writing courses near the beginning of the semester. The overall success of this series has . . .

“Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach” ~ Albert Einstein

Many learned men and women have had much to say on the subject of examples as a method of teaching. But, do they serve a useful purpose anywhere else?

This is the question I put to my writing students when trying to get them to see the fundamentals of a good argument or position paper. With or without research data, the example is the cornerstone of good reasoning . . .

Photograph: 'Der Danzig Danse Macabre I' © 2006 Lee Hobbs

"Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horseman; pass by!" ~ W. B. Yeats Under Ben Bulben

Caption: A grim church ornament gives a grisly grin over onlookers in a Danzig cathedral (2002) . . .

Photograph: 'Rock Devil's Head' © 2006 Lee Hobbs

"I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here." ~ Wislawa Szymborska

Caption: A side of the Chimney Rock mountain - which resembles a face - looks gleefully over the valleys of North Carolina . . .