Author Archives: Dr. Ayers

An essay from Newsweek by Michelle Obama. The Jamie Oliver TED talk, which we watched in class. A response from Daniel Engber in the online mag Slate. A website and petition from myfoodmychoice.org. Here’s a blog post by Richmond Ramsey … Continue reading →

The topic over the last week has been “Education.” We started off watching Ken Robinson’s talk about “changing educational paradigms” (see previous post for video), then read Price’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read” and Baldwin’s “A Talk … Continue reading →

On Thursday, we watched this video in class. It’s by educational researcher Sir Ken Robinson, and it opens our discussion of education:

If you missed class on Monday, I gave a lecture on Michel de Montaigne and handed out four of his essays. They are, if you want to get started on them before coming to class, “Of Idleness,” “Of the Inconstancy … Continue reading →

Don’t forget, folks, we start blogging steadily this week. That means you need to have at least three posts, for a total of at least 1200 words by midnight Sunday night (or Monday morning, if you like). See the link … Continue reading →

A short one, by Oliver Sacks.

For anybody still out there and willing to take a second, I’m curious to know what people thought of our experiment using Google Docs this term. Anything else in the class you want to talk about at all–blogs, our AP … Continue reading →

When trying to come up with this theme (which wasn’t easy), I wanted something that would allow the essays to be tied together, but would still provide the maximum possible flexibility for individual students. Obviously, we learn things all the … Continue reading →

Stop blogging! At some point I’ll ask you to write one last post, but for now you are done. For the sake of clarity, let me inform you that as of Monday, May 17, you should have fifteen (15) blog … Continue reading →

I’d like you to use your reading notebook while you’re preparing for your author study. I’m writing this on 5/6, and you have until 5/21 to complete your reading, so let’s say a total of SEVEN ENTRIES dedicated to your … Continue reading →