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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 . . .

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

"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 . . .