Sources of Memorable Words for Teaching on YouTube

          Occasionally, for lesson prompts on writing and public speaking, I look up "Commencement Addresses" or "Graduation Speeches" on YouTube. These searches lead me to exemplary speakers sharing inspiring words, especially for young people. I found the compelling Stanford commencement speech by Steve Jobs in this way. I printed that transcript and had my students analyze his use of language, as well as his style of delivery, to discover what made him a sought-after speaker and why his words live on even after his death. Many lessons grew out of watching that video on YouTube.

          Today, I was browsing videos online again and came across Chris Gardner's 2009 commencement speech at University of California-Berkeley.  I have added it to my Favorites in my YouTube account, to share with my students this summer, but I feel compelled to share some of the inspiring words verbatim here.

          Mr. Gardner, known as the single father who transformed himself from homeless to famous as an esteemed business executive, whose life was the subject of a film starring Will Smith, "The Pursuit of Happyness," wrote that he would like to see:

 "….a new vision of the American Dream that says achieving balance in your life is more important than the balance in your checking account, a new vision of the American Dream where appreciation is greater than expectation." 

He adds to that powerful vision these words, which remind me of the lesson learned by Scrooge in Dickens's A Christmas Carol:

"…for too long a lot of us have been living in exile in a place called Things, and it's time for us to come home to Friends, Families, and Folks."

I may use the first quotation to discuss parallelism, repetition, and contrast as stylistic techniques. I will probably have my students emulate his structure with their own continuation of "a new vision of the American Dream," a dream not based on acquisition. The second quotation could prompt a fiction piece about exiled people dwelling in a materialistic world until they discover the existence of a more meaningful place. And the video of Gardner's speech will prompt discussion and emulation of his pacing, eye contact, use of humor, purposeful pauses, etc., so that students can practice reading the pieces they have written with a group.

          Yet again, I have found that YouTube can serve as an enlightening resource for education when we take the time to search for quality!

Remember AMELIA BEDELIA and Her Confusion over Homophones?

     Puns make use of the double-meanings within homophones--words that sound the same, but have different meanings--to make us laugh…or GROAN, in many cases! I recall, as a child, finding this pun-based joke surprisingly amusing:

                   What's black and white and red [read] everywhere?... A newspaper!

Forget the fact that the joke is completely out-of-date, since many people don't bother with newspapers anymore. The point is that everyone enjoys, even though they might cover their enjoyment with a groan, figuring out a clever pun--especially children.

       

       The classic pun-centered children's books about Amelia Bedelia featured the hapless housekeeper  confusing her orders from her boss because she heard homophones instead of the boss's intended words. When told to "dust" the furniture, she throws dust around the room; when told to "dress" the chicken, she puts the dead bird into a doll-sized dress, etc. Homophones comprise both homographs, words spelled identically that have different meanings (such as "dust" and "dress"), and homonyms, words spelled differently that sound the same and have different meanings ("red" and "read," "bare" and "bear," "knight" and "night," etc.). Young children can also enjoy a homophonically humorous picture book by Fred Gwynne (a.k.a. the actor who played "Herman Munster" on the old TV sitcom, "The Munsters"), titled The King Who Rained.   Using Gwynne's book, as well as Pun and Games, by Richard Lederer,  I recently prompted some of my private students, from 8 to 12 years old, to write their own mini-stories about someone's confusion over a homophone. Of course, they also had to use my "D.A.D. Technique" (Description, Action, Dialogue) to paint a word picture. This year, as always, the kids show obvious enjoyment in playing with words and creating slapstick scenes. Plus, it forces them to brainstorm lists of homophones, and appreciate the complexity of our language in the process. 

Homograph Confusion Exercise--Student Sample, by A.C.

“COAT”

“Hey, you over there, go put two more coats on the wall. It looks a little bare,” I direct the worker. I turn away and shout to my boss, “We’re putting two more coats on the wall…” I check the map [by map, this young author meant architectural plans]. “Wall X on the right wing,” I tell him. He nods.

Wiping sweat from my brow, I start drilling again. I turn back around, hoping the worker is back with paint by now. But when I turn around, there are two yellow construction jackets plastered to the wall and no worker in sight. “What the—“ I stammer. All the workers around me burst out laughing.

“It was a good joke, Kim,” one of them sputters.

“It’s not funny,” I bark at them, but even my boss has started to laugh, so I can’t help but join in.

TRY WRITING YOUR OWN SCENE USING HOMOPHONIC HUMOR! And please post your comments below (or on my Google+ page). 

Creating a First-Person Narrative Out of a Nonfiction Article

     After reading a book called The Invisible Thread, I decided that this memoir, about a white woman who befriended a hungry child begging outside her New York apartment building, would make a very interesting writing prompt. The woman, Laura Schroff, bought lunch for the boy, Maurice, and after talking with this appreciative, earnest, abused child, she promised to keep him from going hungry. In addition to taking him out for lunch once a week for years, she even packed him lunches for school, which she left with her doorman for Maurice to pick up every day. I read a description of the book to my students from ages 10 to 14, and offered six different prompts from which they could choose. An assignment that called for an exploration of narrative voice would offer a way to not only enrich writing skills and imagination, but also to elicit compassion from my students. My students created stories from the boy's point-of-view, from the woman's point-of-view, and from her doorman's point-of-view (the doorman delivered packed lunches to the hungry boy). Some chose the prompt about two kids during school lunch time, one with daily lunches who notices another who never has lunches. And the last prompt was to write a poem about this story of compassion.

     Featured below is one of the remarkable pieces I've collected in response to this prompt. This story was written by an eighth grader, F.H., and he displays proudly his recently developed skill with the third-person omniscient voice. The details, too, add such richness to the scene, such as: "They froze, as if having a staring contest"--one of my favorite similes. Here are "then and now" photos of the real people who have become the characters of my student's story, which appears below them.

TRUST : A New Thing  

     Mother was having another ‘business meeting’ with the local drug gangs again. Maurice knew well enough what that really meant, but nonetheless, he had to leave the house early for school. Not that it was an issue. The old house smelled of drugs enough to make police dogs at school sniff and bark at him. Maurice’s feet took him out of the ghettos and into the nicer area of town. There were big glass skyscrapers and fancy people in their fancy suits. This was the best place to be able to find money – there was enough dropped on the ground.  Just a few feet away, he noticed an annoyed- looking woman whose face read: “Taxi. Where is the taxi?” She would do. He walked up to her and pulled on the sleeve of her coat. They froze, as if having a staring contest. But Maurice’s stomach couldn’t hold it any longer. Not daring to break eye contact, Maurice told her. “I’m hungry.”

     Suddenly, the woman seemed to realize what he was doing here. Her eyes searched the road, and she pointed her finger to her prey. She walked off in her gesture’s direction. Maurice turned, unsure if he should follow. When he didn’t, she turned, and asked him, “Do you want a cheeseburger?” He felt a rush of excitement, and he nodded, unable to find his tongue. 

     The stranger bought him a cheeseburger, and a shake, and a whole serving of fries. It wasn’t exactly a traditional breakfast, but, Maurice felt gratitude towards the woman. Just as he was about to finish his fries, he realized that they could help later. He put the fries into the paper bag, now empty, and placed it carefully in his backpack. “They’ll get cold, you know.” Maurice felt his cheeks turn pink, the way it would if his hand had been caught in the cookie jar. Not that they could afford cookies.

     “I’m uh, you know, saving them for – for lunch.” He seemed to force those last words out, and the woman, still nameless to him, studied him with a perplexed face. Her eyes drilled into his face.

      “Do you want me to pack you lunch for tomorrow?” 

      

      Maurice was shocked. “You don’t need to do that, ma’am.” Maurice was scared, questioning where this pity had come from. He knew that she was trying to help, but Maurice knew not to trust people so easily. But the lady was not listening. She was writing something on the back of the receipt, and she handed to him her address.

      “I’ll leave early tomorrow, so you’ll just go to this building”-- she pointed her pen to the address –-“and get your lunch from my doorman.” She got up before Maurice could object. “C’mon. I’ll walk you to school. It’s over there, right?" Maurice nodded, and followed her out the building, dazed. Neither of them spoke, Maurice knowing she didn't want to ask him personal questions. Onlookers seemed to watch them with craning necks--an African American kid dressed like he came out of the homeless shelter, and a white woman in a work suit with two briefcases. Yet it was the police officers that scared Maurice. They halted and narrowed their eyes, but the lady kept on walking. They had reached the school. 

     “By the way, I’m Laura.” The woman looked at her watch and jumped. 

     But just before she could walk off, Maurice told her, "I'm Maurice." She waved at him, and Maurice waved back. Maybe he could trust her. 

DO I HEAR APPLAUSE? (Oh, that's from my hands! How about yours?) Applaud in a comment below or on my Google+ page, if you have trouble commenting here. THANKS!

Prompts that Inspire More than Require

          I believe that teachers enrich lives by offering students choices, not immutable guidelines, and by celebrating innovative approaches, not hunting for mistakes. 

          When I offer writing prompts--usually multiple options based on a single topic--I relish the student who says, "Can I do the second one, but change it so that…?" The students who see their own alternative within the alternatives provided are showing me that they are taking a vested interest in the assignment. Sometimes, I like their prompts better than the options I've offered!  For example, one student took a prompt about exploring a moment in which a character realizes that his win is simultaneously his competitor's loss and she turned it into personal narrative about a tennis match that she won, but felt almost guilty for winning. After she read her story aloud, and listened to feedback from me and her two classmates, she suddenly raised her eyebrows. "Wait, now that I think about it, I didn't really feel GUILTY about winning," she commented. "I mean, I LIKE winning, and someone has to win, right? Actually, I felt SORRY for my opponent because she was crying after she lost, and then her mom lost her temper and actually said 'shut up' when the little brother asked out loud why she was crying. I couldn't believe her mom did that. And the whole thing was really…embarrassing." As I began suggesting ways that the student could show those feelings of shock and embarrassment via mood-setting actions and more descriptive details, she quickly nodded, picked up her pen, and declared preemptively, "Okay, I think I know how to change it." The final draft of her story ended up sparking a discussion about good sportsmanship, parenting, and showing mood in writing with vivid verbs and descriptive details. All in all, her alternative approach to the prompt turned a writing lesson into an introspective exercise for all of us.

          Students grow as learners by considering various approaches to developing their understanding of a topic, and by exploring the approach that most challenges their creativity and interest. They learn more from asking questions than from reciting answers, and retain more from listening and discussing than from writing rote responses or taking notes from a lecture to memorize for a test. The most memorable learning is, at least in part, self-directed, I have found. 

          If you're still pondering that last statement, think about some of the most enriching school work you've done--the assignments you remember best. Did you follow steps exactly or make that assignment unique to you in some way? And did you surprise yourself with your own creative flow?

Modernizing Myths for Writing Practice

The Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea is one of my favorite myths to have students modernize and continue. In the story, Pygmalion, a king and a sculptor, can find no woman he loves as much as the beautiful statue he carved and named "Galatea." He prays to the goddess of love, Aphrodite, for a miracle: the animation of his statue into a real woman to love. His love, of course, is based entirely on external beauty, a point not lost on even my youngest students when I ask, "Can he really be in love with a statue?" to which some have replied, "Not really. He doesn't even know if she's a good person, only that she LOOKS good." At that point, I ask what might have happened after the story, the part not mentioned in the "they lived happily ever after" conclusion. And students from age nine to fifteen have written a variety of fascinating creative endings to show his disillusionment upon discovering that his "love" is either 1) mean and cold inside; 2) dumb as the stone from which she was carved; 3) jealous of his other sculptures and anyone else he might look at with admiration; 4) bent on destroying him and all other men who worship beauty without knowing a person's inner self; 5) stuck in infancy because she never matured normally, just came to life as an adult; or 5) completely uninterested in him.

Nine-year-old A.C. wrote the following new ending that I've decided to feature here. I hope you find it as charming and impressive as I do. I asked her to include a simile that fit thematically into the story, and to include description, action, and dialogue (as I always request). I also asked that she write in the myth-telling style of the original story, which I'd read with her.

What Happened to Galatea After Coming to Life?

by A.C., age 9 (UNEDITED)

          They had been living happily together for the last hour, when he noticed her smile fade away and a face of evilness appeared.

          

          "I have come in my true form," she said in a musical voice, "and now you shall be king no longer!" She cackled, rubbing her hands together simultaneously. Pygmalion stepped back with fright. Now in his eyes her beauty faded away and she was nothing but an ugly old witch. He ran as fast as a horse pulling a chariot in order to escape. Then he stopped at a dead end. He closed his eyes and prayed to Goddess Aphrodite, wishing Galatea would return to her stone form.

          Immediately, a light came from Galatea's eyes and then there was silence and everything went still. There, standing in front of him was a stone figure of Galatea. He rushed to the temple and thanked Aphrodite (afro-die-tee) for showing him that outer beauty doesn't matter. The next day he met a woman who had ragged clothes and seemed too thin, but as she spoke, she showed she was worth loving and she had inner beauty. After years of true love, they got married and had a beautiful daughter named Galatea.

If You're Blessed Enough To Move, You're Blessed Enough To Move Others

Writer's block does not exist as long as our bodies, eyes, and minds have the energy to move, to observe, and to ponder. Discovering the world is how we help others to discover what we see, what we imagine, and how we feel. We can then share our discoveries by building them from word pictures into mental movies. But first we must move in order to move others. Look at what I found while taking a walk in an old LA neighborhood--a writing prompt hiding in a rectangle of the world that I was blessed enough to capture with my camera:

Rather than sharing my answer to the "what if" questions prompted by this picture, I am asking you--readers of any age--to describe what you see/imagine in this rectangle of the world, and what would happen next if this picture had a Play button.

Will you write a poem, or a story? Will it be a fantasy, a horror story, a sci-fi tale? What do you see: a magical, arboreal eruption; a giant's foot or a monster's hoof; an extraterrestrial invader or protector? Who will see this image, and how will he/she/they react? What if you awoke to see this outside your window, from the house across the street?

If you share with me and my readers your opening lines or paragraphs in the comments section below, I promise to share my positive feedback. You're blessed enough to read, so you're blessed enough to have your words read by others!

YouTube for Enrichment--yes!

DO NOT PLAY THE VIDEO BELOW YET. FIRST READ THIS:

I opened YouTube to this video and, before playing it, asked some of my Chinese students to look at the cover shot--the close up of the young man with sunglasses and a large instrument, only halfway visible--and guess what and whom they were about to watch. Most agreed that he was probably a rapper musician about to chant a song, and maybe play upright bass at the same time.

"Okay. Why do you say that?" I asked.

Shyly, one replied, "Well, he's wearing sunglasses, and not to sound racist or anything, but usually black guys with sunglasses on YouTube are, like, rappers, you know…."

"Or a comedian. Maybe he's going to do a parody song."

Keeping a blank face, I continued questioning: "Really? And what do you guess that his voice might sound like?"

Another student answered, "Kind of like a Southern accent, like African-Americans in cities talk."

"Mmhmm. So, keep in mind what you predicted and watch with me now." I clicked the Play arrow.

[READER, NOW CLICK ON THE ARROW, TOO, AND WATCH THE VIDEO, IMAGINING YOURSELF AS A CHINESE MIDDLE SCHOOLER, WATCHING THIS WITH ME.]





"WHAAAAT?!" they all exclaimed.

"How does he speak Chinese better than I do?" Giggles and uncomfortable looks were exchanged between the girls and boys.

"Wow, is he that guy from Pentatonix, Mrs. Lipson? The beat boxer? I didn't know he could play cello, too!"

I nodded, smiling.

"Gosh, I didn't even know you could play cello like that--so cool!"

"I didn't expect him to start beat-boxing while he was playing!"

I interjected, "You expected a lot of things, but not what he did, right?" They all nodded.

"Yeah, especially the Chinese! How did he learn Chinese? I mean, he's African-American!"

"He's obviously very smart," replied a 13-year-old boy. "He said in Chinese that he goes to Yale."

"Is this for real? Like, did he learn a script or something? Is this a scam?"

Another student answers the question, shaking his head. "No, he was speaking Chinese perfectly." Turning to me, he added, "Mrs. Lipson, his vocabulary was not even basic, like you'd expect. He uses really advanced words. Wow…"

"Yes, he's a remarkably talented young man. He happens to be a friend of my daughter, too, by the way." Jaws dropped, but before more enthusiastic commotion could start, I declared, "Okay, everyone, listen up. Here's your prompt: Write about how this video defies expectations and illustrate each of the stereotypes that this brilliant, talented, young man, Kevin Olusola, has challenged via his YouTube performance. And I want you to reflect upon what your expectations show you about yourself and your perceptions of others, as well as how you defy expectations of Chinese people."

The short essays that resulted from this prompt, overall, discussed how Kevin Olusola singlehandedly dispelled five stereotypes and enlightened these viewers with his YouTube video. Their main points included how this video taught them: 1) That a dark-skinned man in sunglasses is not a rapper, a comedian, or a "thug," and may be an Ivy-league college student; 2) That a black man might play cello, an instrument usually associated with classical music, not pop or rap; 3) That a cello can play music other than classical style; 4) That beat-boxing can pair with cello for an awesome, one-man band; and 5) That an African-American can speak better Chinese than a Chinese-American--and that they needed to study Chinese more! The students' reflections regarding themselves included their realizations that they needed to keep biases out of their expectations regarding black people and people of other races, in general. And their realizations regarding how stereotypes of Chinese people affect who they are and how they act made for a lively discussion about academic pressures based on expectations that they must be smart and great test-takers and get perfect scores in math, etc.

Thank you, Kevin Olusola, for unwittingly providing such an enlightening writing prompt! Look up Kevin Olusola on YouTube, and find him as one of the five brilliant a cappella singers of Pentatonix.