Teaching the Drake/Kendrick Beef – First Person Shooter – Rap Beef as Socratic Dialogue

[This post is part 5 of a series on teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – click here for part 4 –“Poetic Justice” – Even When They Were Friends There Were Issues]] For about the first two weeks of the unit, the class had now listened to and analyzed several songs - “Ab-Soul’s Outro” (Ab-Soul featuring Kendrick … Continue reading Teaching the Drake/Kendrick Beef – First Person Shooter – Rap Beef as Socratic Dialogue →

Teaching the Drake/Kendrick Beef – Last Prequel – “Poetic Justice” – Even When They Were Friends There Were Issues

[This post is part 4 of a series on teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – click here for part 3 – “Hiiipower” and “So Appalled” – How Kendrick Signifies on Kanye] A final lesson I did leading up to my students studying the beef itself was about Kendrick Lamar and Drake co-performing on the 2012 song … Continue reading Teaching the Drake/Kendrick Beef – Last Prequel – “Poetic Justice” – Even When They Were Friends There Were Issues →

Teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – Prequel 2 – “Hiiipower” and “So Appalled” – How Kendrick Signifies on Kanye

[This post is part 3 of a series on teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – click here for part 2 – “Ab Soul’s Outro” – Purpose in a Larger Context] Here’s a question - a literal AP Lang question - that Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 song “Hiiipower” could have been answering, from the 2010 exam: In his … Continue reading Teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – Prequel 2 – “Hiiipower” and “So Appalled” – How Kendrick Signifies on Kanye →

Military Madness Board Game Project – Version 0

I used to love this game back in the day. I have fond memories of playing it on my NEC Turbographx 16. The Turbographx was sort of niche even back then - Genesis and then the SNES were much more popular, and to be honest I eventually sold my TG16 and moved on to those … Continue reading Military Madness Board Game Project – Version 0 →

How This Really Ends (please, prove me wrong)

"You can be angry, you an be outraged, but you need to stop being surprised." That is what a retired coworker said to me one day when I was debriefing with her about a particularly frustrating discussion about racial equity in our classrooms. I had told her I was just so surprised how often so … Continue reading How This Really Ends (please, prove me wrong) →

It’s a Perfect Time to Update My Blog

So this has been an on-again, off-again thing since sometime around 2003. There used to be several of us writing - then just a couple - then just me, 17 years later. There's a lot hidden within the archives at this point, especially some multi-part projects that I really did put a lot of time … Continue reading It’s a Perfect Time to Update My Blog →

Something Nelson Mandela Taught Me about The United States

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher Growing up in white suburban America in the 80's, I thought I knew some things about South Africa. Mostly I was taught that there was something called "apartheid" there and that it was bad (though I was not taught that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher both did what they could … Continue reading Something Nelson Mandela Taught Me about The United States →

The Overstory – A Study in White Environmentalism

White environmentalism is a thing. I know I'm not the first to say that, but as I read over The Overstory, Richard Powers' in some ways majestic, and in other ways, deeply problematic 2018 environmental epic of trees, I got a clearer and clearer picture of what white environmentalism is and what some of its problems are. … Continue reading The Overstory – A Study in White Environmentalism →

James Baldwin – The Evidence of Things Not Seen

This is - I believe anyway - the last book James Baldwin wrote and published before his death. There are lots of other incomplete manuscripts and unpublished materials, but this is a full essay. It's about a series of murders of black children in Atlanta in the early 1980's. Its foremost project is to problematize … Continue reading James Baldwin – The Evidence of Things Not Seen →

The Amen Corner

I missed reading this the first time through. I was trying to stick to chronological order but since this play wasn't included in the Library of America volumes (neither is Blues for Mr. Charlie) I'm coming back to it now. I don't have that much to say about it. In the edition I found, there's … Continue reading The Amen Corner →