Weekly Wrap-up for March 11, 2012: Big Breath.

I have a million and a half things to do today, so I am probably going to cut this short. This week has been crazy busy, and this is really the first time I feel like I can take a big breath and relax!

I successfully finished my first week back at school, and considered everything, it went really well. The juniors had ACT and MME testing for three days, so I was proctoring the exam two mornings. We also had conferences on Thursday night, so that was a fun time. They were actually the easiest conferences I've ever had since I had only seen the kids a couple of days!

I've been working hard trying to get everything set up and ready. I'm starting The Hunger Games this week with one of my classes, so I had to plan and prep the whole unit last week. I only have a couple of things left to do for it, but I'm confident the unit is going to be awesome. :)

I got in a little bit of reading. Since I was prepping for the unit, I read through The Hunger Games real quick. It was my third read of the novel, but I was still addicted. :) I also got through a bit of A Clockwork Orange yesterday, and I am going to finish it today (I'm only allowing myself to do a few necessary items for school so that I can actually relax a bit). It is an interesting read, and I had to read the first two chapters a couple of time to get into the flow and vibe of the novel, but now I am hooked. :)

The only other big news for the week is The Classics Club, started by Jillian. It seems to have blown up, which makes my classics-loving heart so happy. :) You can see my own list on the designated page on my blog, or by clicking here. I had a hard time trying to decide how many books to list for it, so I decided to combine the remaining 114 titles from my original list to any that came to mind. Altogether, I have 450 classics on the new list. I'm going to keep adding to it as I stumble across more titles I want to get to. If you haven't joined in on the fun, you should!

Anyway, I'm going to go do a few hours of school work while Matt is gone (he's working this morning), then I am settling in with A Clockwork Orange before doing some cleaning.

Have a great week and happy reading!

Weekend Cooking-March 10, 2012: Easy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip "Muffins."

Welcome to this week's Weekend Cooking post. Weekend Cooking is held by Beth Fish Reads and serves as a place for bloggers to talk about anything food related.

Today I'm sharing a super easy recipe. Last fall when I was working at a high school, I was in charge of the student government class for about 8 weeks. We held a bake sale to help our canned food drive, and these muffins were brought in by a student. I demanded the recipe and was in a bit of disbelief when he told me what was in them.

Anyway, they are really delicious and so simple.

Here is what you need to get started:

1 box of yellow cake mix
1 15 oz. can of pumpkin (you can use pureed fresh pumpkin as well)
1/2 c. mini chocolate chips

That's it! Insane, right?

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a mixing bowl, add the cake mix and the can of pumpkin:

It takes a little while to stir together. For awhile, it will just look like this and you'll be thinking, "how does this combine?":

Just keep stirring. I also kind of "squish" the pumpkin down so that it spreads and collects the cake mix. Add in 1/2 c. mini chocolate chips and mix those in as well. It'll eventually come together and look like this:

Line a cupcake pan or muffin tin with liners, and drop the batter in by the tablespoon full until they are about 2/3 full. The batter is really thick, so clean fingers are helpful:

Pop them into the over for about 15 minutes. They are done when they are firm on top and slightly golden. Matt and I have decided that slightly under-baking them is the way to go, but you do want to make sure they are set and firm.

And that's it! The recipe usually makes about 18 of these muffin-cakes. They're really easy and the pumpkin flavor isn't overpowering (very subtle), so even pumpkin haters will like them! And while you might not think that they are moist because of the ingredients, these are just so good!


Next week I'm going to share the Berry Cobbler I made, so look forward to that! ;)

The Classics Club.

I'm excited to announce my participation in The Classics Club.

You might think I'm crazy-that this is another challenge. And while I might be crazy, and yes, this is another challenge of sorts, it fits in perfectly with my current and long-term goals.

The basic premise of the club is to bring together Classics Bloggers-as well as inspiring others to add a few classics to their book diet.

Each blogger can create their own goal for reading, as well as a timeline for accomplishing the goal.

Since switching over to reading primarily classics in September 2009, I have come to love this new focus in reading. I am always inspired by what I am reading, and I am curious to see what else is out there I haven't read yet. Because of that, I will always be reading the classics. While I do think I will allow myself to read more things outside of my classics focus once I finish my 250 list, I always want to be pursuing literature.

With that in mind, I created a Classics Club Page for my blog to explain my goal and list the books I want to get to. I am not setting a timeline for myself because that's just too much pressure. Rather, I am seeing my involvement in this project as a lifetime desire and commitment. So, on the page, you'll see a very, very long list of books. 450 of them to be exact. They include the 114 titles I have yet to finish from my own 250 project, as well as many new titles and rereads. And before anyone asks, I will be working on those 114 before I tackle the rest.

Anyway, I hope you'll visit the new page and see what books I'm going to be reading in my future. I also hope you'll consider signing up. You can decide to read 10 classics in 5 years! You can do it! :)

Let me know if you're participating!

Thoughts on The Girl Who Was on Fire edited by Leah Wilson.

*If you haven't read The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay, please don't read this post, as there will be spoilers*

I feel a lot of pressure to make my unit on The Hunger Games the best unit ever. There is so much that I can discuss with this book that I feel like I have to do it all! Last week, I asked you for some suggestions for the unit, and your comments were amazing. I am definitely mulling them all over as I plan out my unit. A couple of you suggested I read The Girl Who Was On Fire as a place to gather some ideas about the novel. I actually bought a copy at a Border's sale over the summer, so my copy was already on my nightstand as a resource.

I wasn't sure what to think going into this book. Basically, the book is a collection of essays by various authors on different aspects of the series. I was hoping to walk away with one or two essays to share with my class, but I ended up with a LOT of information about the series in general!

The essays were diverse enough to keep my attention the whole way through the collection. I thought I would be bored of reading about the series by the third essay, but I was surprised to find myself interested in each one. In particular, I thought I would hate the essays on the reality and fashion aspects of the series, since I started to dislike those sections so much in Mockingjay, but I was surprised that I really loved those two essays! Considering the fact that I am teaching The Hunger Games to high school juniors and seniors, I think those aspects of the book will really appeal to them. I already have a discussion planned around the ideas of reality, reality TV, and false appearances. I hope we can have great discussions about how Katniss and Peeta chose to act while "live" on camera. The essay "Smoke and Mirrors" really focused on those ideas, and since the first chunk of the essay stays true to just the first book, I am going to use that section in class.

One of my other favorite essays in the collection was the third, titled "Your Heart is a Weapon the Size of your Fist" by Mary Borsellino. This essay focused on the weapons in the series-those of the Capitol and District 13. But I also liked the idea that Katniss and a few others fight with emotion-with love. It reminded me a bit of Harry Potter in that love can conquer evil, you know? The author brings up what happens with Rue in The Hunger Games as a prime example:

"The effect of this tiny, humanizing act-singing to a dying child-has immediate and far reaching consequences," (34).

When I read that statement, I had to stop for a moment and think about that word choice-"child." While I obviously know that all of the tributes in the Games are children, there was something different about Rue, right? And the fact that Katniss holds on to her humanity and honors her death as a child, well, that IS powerful. Her choice to share her love has a profound impact on what happens afterward in the novel-Rue's district sending her bread, gaining other supplies from other districts and sponsors, and the choice she makes at the end of the novel with Peeta. Because rather than always resorting to violence, Katniss chooses another route. And it works. Because without that symbol of love towards Rue, would the districts have banded together to fight back? Who knows.

The one essay I wish I could share with my class but can't is "Bent, Shattered, and Mended" by Blythe Woolston. The essay focuses on the mental side effects of what happened to Katniss, Peeta, and others throughout the three books (since I don't want to spoil the second and third books, I can't use this one in class, but I will talk about the mental effects of the Games in general terms). I know that there are some who weren't happy with the ending in Mockingjay-that Katniss seemed to have lost her mind and that the ending was unsatisfying. As I said in my review,

"There is no way a young girl of 17 can handle the amount of death and destruction she sees..."

Woolston expands on this a great deal in her own essay, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. The fact is, Katniss is a battered and bruised war veteran by the time Mockingjay comes to an end. And she is younger than those we allow to enlist in the U.S. Military! That should say something about her psyche! Because as tough and as strong as you think you are, I don't think anyone is prepared to kill another human being-especially in the circumstances Katniss was subjected to.

I am sure that this will be something we'll talk about in class-how Katniss must feel. There is that section in The Hunger Games where she talks about her first human kill, and I am sure that my class will have questions about it. I'm also hoping we'll talk a bit about Haymitch, since he is another example of the PTSD that all Hunger Games Champions seem to suffer from.

In all, I would say that this is a great collection of essays on the series. I was interested in all of them in some way, and I found a lot of interesting tidbits to use as discussion starters in my class. I am also looking forward to my own reading of the book with these ideas in mind. My only wish is that there was one essay without spoilers for the last two books, since I would love to expose these kids to a bit of criticism on a modern book. I will certainly let you all know how they feel about it!

A List of Great American Authors: I Need your Help Again!

The sophomore English class I am teaching focuses on American literature. The ending project for the course is a mini-research presentation. Last year, we had the kids research current event topics, which jarred the focus away from the rest of the course. This year, another teacher wanted to try focusing the research on American writers we don't cover in the course. I thought it was a great idea, so we're going to be planning the new unit together.

One of the things we are trying to do is develop a BIG list of American authors for the students to choose from. Ideally, we'd like to have 100 writers for the students to choose from (I have 93 sophomores, and I don't want any doubles between classes). For each author, we'd like to have a number of shorter pieces for the students to choose from. This could be a short novella, a play, a couple of short stories, or a whole slew of poems. The main goal is to get the kids to explore a new author and become relatively knowledgeable about that author's life and works.

Here is where I am hoping you can help me. Below is my starting list (she is creating one as well and we are going to compare when we start planning). We decided to go through the textbook to pull those authors we don't get to during our planned units as viable options for students (you'll see those titles listed sometimes as excerpts). After plowing through the textbook, we are now trying to branch out into other authors so the kids will have a broad range of ethnicities, time periods, etc.

I have already started to list authors off the top of my head, as well as other stories/pieces I think might work for this age group. If there is an author I forgot, or a story I should add to an author, please let me know! Any help you can give me will be MUCH appreciated!

• Henry W. Longfellow: "Cross of Snow," "Ropewalk"
• Ralph W. Emerson: "Nature and Self Reliancy"
• Henry D. Thoreau: Excerpt from "Walden" and "Civil Disobedience"
• Herman Melville: Excerpt from "Moby Dick" and Piazza Tales?
• Walt Whitman: "Song of Myself," "Sight at Camp," and "O Captain, My Captain"
• Emily Dickinson: poems
• Kate Chopin: "Pair of Silk Stockings" and The Awakening (maybe too difficult?)
• Mark Twain: "Life on the Mississippi"
• Lorraine Hansberry: A Raisin in the Sun
• Jack London: "To Build a Fire"
• Robert Frost: poetry...
• Edgar Lee Masters: "Spoon River" Anthology
• William Faulkner: "A Rose for Emily"
• Allen Ginsberg: "Homework"
• John Updike:
• Alice Walker: "Everyday Use"
• Amy Tan: Except from Joy Luck Club
• Sylvia Plath: Poems...maybe The Bell Jar
• Sandra Cisneros: House on Mango Street
• Ray Bradbury: short stories (not "Sound of Thunder" since I teach that one)
• Truman Capote:
• Kurt Vonnegut: short stories (not "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" since I teach that one too!)
• Jack Kerouac:
• Stephen King: short stories
• Maya Angelou: poetry?
• Edith Wharton: "Roman Fever," other stories
• Henry James: "Turn of the Screw"
• Stephen Crane:
• Benjamin Franklin: excerpts from autobiography
• Thomas Paine: Common Sense
• Edgar Allen Poe: short stories and poetry (have to make sure they don't double up)
• Frederick Douglass: Narrative of a Slave
• Harriet Tubman: speeches-"Ain't I a Woman?"
• Nathaniel Hawthorne:
• T.S. Eliot: "The Waste Land"
• Langston Hughes:
• Ezra Pound:
• e e cummings:
• Ernest Hemingway:
• Tennessee Williams: (not allowed to do Streetcar)
• J.D. Salinger: short stories (No "Catcher in the Rye")
• Flannery O'Connor: short stories (might be a more difficult choice)
• Jhumpa Lahari: stories?
• Martin Luther King Jr: speeches (not "I have a Dream"), maybe Letter from a Birmingham Jail?

What/Who else do I need to add?