1. Students came in and quickly got settled to begin their comma quiz. Once that was finished, they were to begin reading an essay given to them titled “On Seeing England For The First Time”.
2. We continued with reading through the poetry on the overheads. Some of the poems were more difficult than others but the message was clearly the same – that the surroundings and history of each author was a huge influence on their identity, their search for their true identity, and their desire to feel a sense of belonging.
3. Students were asked to paraphrase the final poem and hand it in. We began reading through the essay given but the bell interrupted us near the beginning. I asked them to have the essay read for tomorrow.
4. I also asked that students try to create their blog accounts already to see who is having difficulty receiving their activation codes and passwords. While some are not getting them, others are getting them easily and quickly so we’re trying to work out those kinks. I hope no one becomes too impatient and loses their energy over this project.

1. We began the class with a review on Comma usage. They had a handout outlining the eight types and while they watched the powerpoint presentation ( commas1.ppt )they were to fill in examples and notes. They will be tested on Commas tomorrow and Thursday.
2. We had started a conversation yesterday about Affirmative Action and weighted the positives against the negatives. It reminded me of a portion from the T.V. show The Office where a black man is a former convict and Micheal wishes the man who hired him had been more progressive and hired a white convict. We watched a piece of that and another video to start a further discussion about this topic. In the end, a young man who created a video talking about the flaws in Affirmative Action, as he sees it, made the strong point at the end that Discrimination being an action against race is as bad as Affirmative Action, making a positive decision based on race.
3. We moved on and read through the poem, “The Cattle Thief” which was fairly easily understood and the students were able to relate it to their prior knowledge of the history of the two groups represented in the poem.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/XpoPvsn0ds4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] He makes a good point: if 10% of the country's population were both without lips, then 10% of the people in colleges shouldn't have lips? Does that necessarily have to be? Watch and decide.

1. We started off the class and I shared with students a story my brother, an R.C.M.P. officer, has shared with another group of my students that he came to speak with. He was mistaken once when he assumed a man had asked a woman for spare change so he could buy alcohol, when in fact the man turned out to be buying the gasoline he had been claiming he needed. My brother felt badly for assuming the man was lying, based on his looks. We talked, as a class, about the assumptions some people make, including ourselves. People are so afraid of the term “racism” that we get very protective and guarded of ourselves regarding topics relating to it.
2. We read aloud a story called “Panache” about a few Aboriginal men who have finished their mechanical training and are off for new jobs, only to get there and find they are unwanted and untrusted by the other workers. The mine receives money for hiring Aboriginals, so they are allowed to stay and work but are given menial jobs with little importance. One of the men die, though, in trying to save the life of another “white” worker. He dies honorably, with “panache”, and the men from the mine suddenly show a change of heart towards the Aboriginal men, although we have not yet figured out exactly what causes this change.
3. We were going through the questions and answering them together when we got to the topic of Affirmative Action, which most students were unaware of. I explained that, in an effort to even out the workforce and give opportunities to people who would otherwise not have them, the government opens certain jobs to people not based on their qualificiations but by another category, such as race or gender. We listed what we thought the positives and negatives of such a hiring practice would be and had a fairly lengthy conversation about it.

1. Students had been informed that a portion of their overall grade will be measured by their work with grammar. On Mondays we will have an overview of a part of grammar they may already know and just review or possibly that we will have to address for the first time. While Monday is the review of teaching of that grammar portion, Wednesday and Friday will be the test days to see whether they can use what they have learned effectively. (There is also a reason for them to learn the grammar and pay attention, if there is an evaluation of it.) We went through a powerpoint that covered the Eight Types of Comma Uses, which we later narrowed down to three basic uses and it will be these that they will be tested on tomorrow, since this will be a short teaching week for us all. (I will be away Thursday and Friday marking the ELA A30 Departmental Exams that these students just finished writing!)
2. We looked at poetry written by authors from many different countries, some even from more than one country. The main thing all the poems have in common is that the authors are all searching through their past experiences to find their sense of identity of belonging. I personally really enjoy the emotions given from the poems and am happy for the opportunity to share these poems with the students. I hope they can appreciate them for what they are, someone’s effort to share their perspective, and not be too nervous of the fact that it is poetry. We went through a few of the poems today, reading through parts several times, finding information from within them to give insight into the author’s perspective or incentive for writing the poem, and considered what affect their history has had on that perspective. We’ll continue tomorrow after the comma test.