Scott Pilgrim vs. Thomas Jefferson: Weekly Student Spotlight

The Weekly Student Spotlight is a feature I began this past summer with my last Rhetoric of Comics class, in which I posted a blurb from and link to an exceptional blog post made by a student. The idea was to encourage better blog posting by my students through the promise of bonus points for posts selected and to increase feedback by opening their work to another audience. We got off to late start with blogging this semester, so the feature wasn't really necessary. But as both my Movies in the Classroom Learning Community class and my non-LC English 111 near their blog-heavy case studies, it seemed an appropriate time to resume the feature.

And since my Movies LC class is blogging for their Case Study about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World while my non-LC English class' Case Study is about the Texas Board of Education's Social Studies curriculum changes last spring (which involve decreased emphasis on Thomas Jefferson for his belief in the separation of church and state), I thought I'd also give extra bonus points to whichever post has the most comments at the end of the week--yes, I'm trying to guilt you, Dear Reader, into commenting on their work. Not to worry if you aren't familiar with the issues, because the best posts accurately summarize them for you; just click on their titles for the link! So without further ado, Olivia Kuykendall's"Don't Hate" and Racheal Chacon's "Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams":

Don't Hate

In the article “Scott Pilgrim vs. the Unfortunate Tendency to Review Audiences”, the writer, Linda Holmes discusses how some film critics have been stereotyping their opinion of intended audiences for the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World...I agree with Linda all the way on this issue, just because you hate a movie doesn’t mean you can hate on the people who like the movie or want to see it. I have not seen the movie, but it looks pretty awesome, and like Linda I am not a gamer, I’m not a teenage boy, I’m pretty sure I don’t have ADD and I have a life. My life heavily involves watching amazing movies, and this is one I plan on seeing.

Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams

“The Wall of Separation” by Daniel L. Dreisbach begins with the presidential election between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Religion has always played a role when it comes to political campaigns. In this particular presidency election between Jefferson and Adams, religion was one of the main things that made this election so intriguing. One of the main arguments about this election was the religious backgrounds of both candidates. A majority of people believed that Thomas Jefferson was not fit to be president because he had no set religion...In 1802, President Jefferson wrote a letter. In this letter he talks about the first amendment and how it “denied Congress the authority to establish a religion or prohibit its free exercise, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.” This metaphor has been interpreted several different ways. This “wall” has censored religious expression in schools, stripping public spaces of religious symbols, and denying public benefits to faith communities.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Mid-Semester Report

It's been two months to the day since my last blog post. I'm not proud of that. I've missed writing. But it's been a hectic semester so far. For some reason, I've taken on a record number or responsibilities and activities, which include but are not limited to: coaching U10 soccer, which is surprisingly more stressful than U8; playing on the adult soccer league (I suck, but I'm getting better); being faculty adviser for the university's co-ed soccer club; adopting a puppy; joining a writing club; auditing a life drawing class; collaborating two learning communities; and suddenly deciding that my care-free-winging-it attitude to teaching was no longer for me and that I needed to spend more time planning, preparing, enlivening my classes. *Phew* My wife's usually the one who takes on more than she should, but I seem to have caught the bug.

Despite it all, however, I'm actually really enjoying it! I have a new-found love for soccer that I'm not sure I ever had when I was younger. And I love coaching. On my birthday, my wife filmed our game and we hosted a screening/pizza party. The kids loved watching themselves on the big screen, and I used it as an opportunity to show mistakes and praise good plays; in fact, I may have learned more than them.

Our new bagle hound (beagle/basset hound) Memphis is awesome. He's ridiculously cute, and manages to lighten my mood just being. Granted, he's still house training and wakes up (literally) before the crack of dawn, but he and I have gotten into a routine. We get up and go for a quick walk, I make us both breakfast, and he falls back to sleep while have a cup of coffee and work on all that school stuff I mentioned.

Which is crazy for me. I'm making lesson plans now! I simply never bothered before because I believed in the organic classroom. But they keep me on track, remind me of the important stuff I used to forget to mention, and I still manage to leave myself wiggle room when a student wants to argue about why Star Wars is such an important film. I like the structure it's created, and I like planning assignments and activities more now--like putting together a puzzle. And my students are churning out some excellent work! I'm ashamed I haven't continued my Weekly Student Spotlight series, because there have been some great discussions that should be shared. So starting next week, the series will return! It should be especially interesting as my Movies in the Classroom Learning Community begins its Case Study about Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

The only major downside is that a lot of things I really love doing have taken second fiddle to this stuff--like blogging and writing in general, really. I hardly play video games much these days, which I suppose isn't a terrible thing. I'm also not reading much--something I really got used to over the summer; case in point, I have a stack of comics I got on my birthday two weeks ago that I haven't touched! But even then, there's a several lining. What I have read has been high quality--catching up on the Usagi Yojimbo series! I even met Stan Sakai last month!

And as the Fall Break begins this weekend, I've lined up some reading in preparation for the 200-level literature course I get to teach next semester. I'm extremely excited about it, and we're offering it as a learning community about popular culture. I'll be a taking a kind of "Pop Culture Through the Ages" approach to it by having students read a traditional work of fiction like H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines followed by a contemporary comic like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The other pairs include Tom De Haven's It's Superman! with The Dark Knight Returns and Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association (which was recommended to me by my chair, and so far, I'm enjoying) with Scott Pilgrim's Volumes 3 & 4 (which seems odd, but I have my reasons). I'm very excited to try my hand at teaching lit.

So yes, it's been an insanely busy semester, and I don't foresee having a ton of time for blogging (or reading or gaming for that matter) for the rest of it. But I think that's okay, as long as they don't feel like major sacrifices. And right now, they don't...Though Fall Break will likely be a chance to recharge those batteries.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?