The test is finished.

46 multiple choice
three short answer
29 matching

May the force be with you.

Who knew?

https://soundcloud.com/dj-oncomouse/electromix1clipped

Taking a break from test writing

I've been working on it the entire day with the exception of the times that I have had to, as I say, "feed the beast," meaning make some member of my family a sandwich or an omelet or a bowl of soup.  Each of them is pretty much helpless in the kitchen.

So, far I have 43 multiple choice questions.  Those are not easy to write.  I'd really like to have 50, but I don't think it is going to happen.  There will be two or three short answer.  And so far,  33 or so matching.  Know your people and your terms. 

I am scouring each of the 470 pages one by one to create the multiple choice questions.  I am currently on page 395 and I feel like I am going to lose my mind.  Hopefully, this makes you feel better.

I am planning to go on a run with Sra. Laurell soon.  It is pretty quiet on the blog.  Is everyone off on some super fun Labor Day vacation excursion?

Okay, well, back to work.

Warmly,
Mrs. McAllister

Thinking about the test.

So far, I have written about thirty multiple choice questions and about ten short answer.  I am thinking that it would be appropriate to have a matching section as well.  Actually, I think a matching section may make your lives less stressful.  The multiple choice are difficult to write without getting overly detail oriented.  I am trying to be fair.  My goal has always been to keep everyone accountable for reading this book that will play such an important part in our coursework this summer and to stress the importance of close, critical reading.  Hopefully, most of you are finished by now.  My advice: review, review, review.  Ask yourself which items (people, events, etc.) are repeated throughout the text.  Identify what you believe to be significant events in the history and "biography' of cancer.  Identify significant terms.  Know the definitions of those terms.  I am not talking vocabulary words as much as concepts, discoveries, methods in the history, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

This is not an easy test.  470 pages is a lot of text to master.  Know that most of our assessments will not be like this one, but I have not found another way to keep students accountable for the summer reading, and so we will take this test.  The very first day.  And it will be difficult.  So, prepare yourself.

Having said all of that, everyone is capable of getting an "A" in AP Lang if you are willing to work hard and do your best to improve.

It has been my pleasure to read the comments that have been posted this summer and I am very excited about our work together this year.  Have I said this yet?  I love teaching AP Lang.  I think it is one of the most important courses you can take to determine your future success in all other classes.  You must have a facility with language in order to avoid the glass ceiling.  You must know how to articulate your ideas in all other disciplines and in your personal life.

I will be checking the blog periodically throughout the weekend to answer your questions, if I can.

Sincerely,
Mrs. McAllister

P. 363

"Varmus and Bishop were awarded the nobel Prize for their discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes in 1989.  At the banquet in Stockholm, Varmus, recalling his former life as a student of literature, read lines from the epic poem Beowulf, recapitulating slaying the dragon in that story: 'We have not slain our enemy, the cancer cell, or figuratively torn the limbs from his body,' Varmus said.  'In our adventures, we have only seen our monster more clearly and describe his scales and fangs in new ways--ways that reveal a cancer cell to be, like Grendel, a distorted version of our normal selves.'"

"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book."  -John Green, The Fault In Our Stars.


"Monsters make such interesting people." -Bugs Bunny

Who says there are no such things as monsters?  I say they are everywhere. But we are not powerless.  We have an incredibly powerful weapon with which to fight each and every one.  That weapon is language.  "A word after a word after a word is power."- Margaret Atwood.

I cannot wait to get started on this book with all of you on Sept. 4.  We are going to do so much with it.  There is so much to learn from what Mukherjee has synthesized and the ways in which he has chosen to do so.  There is much to emulate.  Again, I can't wait.

"A unitary cause" p.337

"Our encounter with cancer has rounded us off; it has smoothed and polished us like river rocks."

Some of you may know Mrs. Engelhardt.  All of you--unless you were absent on the day of the "cancer presentations" last year--saw her speak about her experiences in the chemo ward at Lemmen-Holton. I have gone with her to several appointments when she has received the results of her scans.  I have met her oncologist.  If you've gotta have an oncologist, he's a nice guy to have to deal with.  But, every time I leave his office, I wonder  how he does what he does every day.  (He's read Emperor, by the way.  Yes, I asked.) 

This section, paired with the section on 307 about Thomas Lynch, gives me insight into my wonderment above.  Like teaching, or any other profession, it is an art and a science.  Dr. Brinker, who is Mrs. Engelhardt's oncologist, reminds me of Rikki Tikki Tavi, the mongoose from Kipling's story.  Mostly, it's his eyes.  But, it's also the way he laid out the plan for treatment.  The swishing sound that Rikki's bottle brush tail made when he would encounter a cobra kept entering my mind.  He was very matter-of-fact: here's how we are going to "corral" (his term) this.  This is what we are going to next, and then, best case scenario, this is the outcome.  All of this explanation while Mrs. Engelhardt and I are sitting on the edge of our seats. He does this all day long.  Delivers results, lays out options while people sit in the plastic chairs contemplating life, death and all of its implications for loved ones, etc.  Important work.

I like the fact that Mukherjee includes this section about the ways in which his experience has changed him and his fellows.  I hope it's real.  I like the fact that he takes time to reflect on his experiences.  Metacognition and reflection are crucial for growth and learning.   We will do a lot of this in AP Lang.

"Counting Cancer"

Let's hear from you if you loved this chapter.

Golden Line:  "Statistics," the journalist Paul Brodeur once wrote, "are human beings with the tears wiped off" (267).

How is it already August 14?

So, I don't know if any of you were aware of this, but just before the school year starts, teachers have these anxiety-fueled nightmares.  Let me describe the one I had last night.  I showed up on the first day.  All of you were there and I felt like Fouch.  You were all about three feet taller than me.  Strange.  I know.  I had no lesson plan, no AP Lang Summer Reading Test and I just stood in front of the chaotic classroom as you all just kind of wandered in and out at will.  Sometimes, when I have these dreams, I can't speak above a whisper.   I'll be screaming for control at the top of my lungs and no one will be able to hear me. It's really quite awful.  I used to have the same kinds of dreams when I was a waitress only they involved overcrowded tables, demanding customers and my own inability to move faster than a turtle.  So, it was basically the same dream :)  By the way, Fouch is sitting next to me at a teacher meeting and suggested that I include him in the above comparison.  He is a great guy.  If any of you have him this year, be sure to be extra cooperative.

So, I think the anxiety is coming from the fact that I abandoned all of you in favor of completing coursework that would allow me to remain your teacher this fall.  I wasn't just kayaking.

So, now we are back at it and I'm wondering where everyone is in the book.  If just one person could post a comment and tell me where you are in the book, I will pick up these posts there and we can continue in our somewhat lop-sided participation in this "book study." It's okay.  It's summer.  I know.

So, what page are you on?  Anyone? Anyone?  Buehler?

So, if I've got this figured out correctly

and you've been maintaining the seven page per day rule, well, then-- by golly--you are on page 263 or so.  This means that you are more than half way finished!!!!  That has to feel good.

So, all along we've been talking about structure a bit.  What are your thoughts about the way Mukherjee has organized the text?  Are there any patterns that are becoming more apparent to you?

McAllister, where have you been?

It has been kind of silent on this end of the discussion this week. It won't be so silent next week, I promise. .Here's something you can do in the meantime.  Log into your Forest Hills GMAIL account and add the "voice comments" extension.  To do this, you must use Google Chrome.  Add the app, "Voice Comments."  We will be using this during the school year  I think it is going to be a great way for me to provide you with even more feedback on your writing.  If you can't figure out how to add the app at this time, don't worry.  We will be going how over the basics of the app at the beginning of the school year.

Until I get back to our book, keep on reading.  My next post will pick up at the page where we are supposed to be according to our seven page per day commitment.

I can't believe it is August.

Sincerely,
Mrs. McAllister

Don't worry.

I haven't deserted you.  I will be back in a day or so.

pp.139-172

Sharing my thoughts on 42 pages today.  Whew.
Summertime sure does get in the way, don't she? (intentional grammatical error to create an effect there; also known as a "rhetorical choice." Writers make tons of them, consciously and subconsciously--or maybe instinctively is a better word choice there.)

Actually, I want to back track a bit because I noticed that an important thing happens on p. 130, and that is the creation of the protocols and the community, "the cooperative group model [that] galvanized medicine."  Kind of a big deal, that.  And evidence that no matter how much some of us (myself included) like to "fly solo", the meeting of minds is a powerful thing.   I know what you are thinking right now.  "Group work sucks." And that very well may be....but it is reality.

Does it seem really terrible to anyone else that poor Min Chiu Li lost his job?

I love this sentence:  (aka "Golden Line") "The academic stodginess of the leukemia consortium--its insistence on progressively and systematically testing one drug combination after another--was now driving Freireich progressively and systematically mad"(139).

And it is interesting to think about the medical community's reluctance to use a four drug treatment back in the '60's when we learn that Carla will be treated with NINE of them.

On p. 146, Mukherjee spends a paragraph defining "Failure".  Definition is one of the modes of discourse along with Narration, Argumentation (which always feels redundant to me as everything is an argument), Comparison and Contrast (which we get later with the two narratives that begin the "Anatomical Tumor" chapter), Classification, Cause and Effect, Description (for which you must admit that--for a scientist-Mukherjee has a strong command. Case in point: the patient. Beatrice Sorenson, p. 153-154), Process Analysis (shall we just say the whole book?).

I appreciate the way that Mukherjee throws a line in every once in awhile that forces me to review who certain people are.  For example, on p. 149, he brings us into his reminiscence of "the Chiribaya mummy, to Atossa, to Halsted's young woman awaiting her mastectomy," or on p. 158 during his description of Hodgkin's disease, he reminds us of "Halstedt's vision of cancer on its way to becoming Galen's."  Makes one pause, doesn't it.  Start flipping back frantically through pages to figure out who the heck Galen is, keeps all of us honest and accountable. We even hear about ol' Virchow again on p. 146. (You might notice the ways in which I've blended in the quotations here.  Being able to effectively blend quoted material in a variety of ways is an important skill to master in a composition class.)

Other golden lines: "In 1898, some thirty years after Hodgkin's death, an Austrian pathologist, Carl Sternberg, was looking through a microscope at a patient's glands when he found a peculiar series of cells staring back at him: giant, disorganized cells with cleaved, bilobed nuclei--"owl's eyes," as he described them, glaring sullenly out from the forests of lymph" (157).

"She was almost preternaturally minuscule: about eighty-five pounds and four and a half feet tall, with birdlike features and delicate bones that seemed to hang together like twigs in winter" (154).

"Every three weeks, just as his counts recovered, the whole cycle would begin all over agian--Sisyphus on chemotherapy" (152).

"But the story of leukemia--the story of cancer-- isn't the story of doctors who struggle and survive, moving from one institution to another.  It is the story of patients who struggle and survive, moving from one embankment of illness to another" (148).  Actually, that whole paragraph is eloquently written.

And then we get the example of  (Exemplification is another mode of discourse that belongs in the list) Mukherjee's primary research with the VAMP survivor.  A challenge: can you include some primary research in this Monster project we are going to spend our time on in the first quarter or so? I mean, anybody can look up articles on the internet, right? Ahhhhhh, but to find a source to interview.  Really interview.  Someone you haven't talked to before.  I'm not talking about interviewing your grandma here, who I'm sure is a very fine person and more than willing to help you out.  Thanks, Grandma. No, I'm talking about investigative work here.  Not investigative work that puts you in danger, of course.  But, work that stretches you out of your comfort zone a bit, requires you to make a phone call or write a letter of inquiry.

This post is long enough.  I'll write another for the next 20 pages so as not to overwhelm anyone.  (Too late?)

Calling all John Green fans.....

That's where I have been for the last few days, completely absorbed in John Green's, The Fault In Our Stars.  You might know his other books, Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines.

So you might guess at my complete happiness after reading the following in the Acknowledgements section at the end of the book:

Anyone seeking an actual history of cancer ought to read The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

And in one of the chapters Green actually uses the phrase omnis cellula e cellula which is what we in AP Lang are completely immersed in at the moment. I know it is kind of English teacher geeky, but I stop just short of jumping up and down when I find this kind of cross reference.

Why am I talking about John Green?  Well, first I wanted to explain my absence.  Second, I highly recommend it as a fictional companion to our required text.  Not mandatory, mind you.  But, it deepened my understanding.  I am also thinking about using a few sections from it for class this fall.  So, if you hate having endings spoiled for you, and you think you might want to read it, do it now.

Emperor catch up tomorrow.

pp.109-137

"the fairy godmother of medical research." Hmmmm.

For me, as a teacher of Language Arts, I can't help but think about how important it was for the Laskers to have a facility with language in order to do all of the following: "They were extraordinary networkers, lobbyists, minglers, conversers, persuaders, letter writers, cocktail party--throwers, negotiators, name-droppers, deal makers. Fund-raising-- and, most important, friend-raising---was instilled in their blood, and the depth and breadth of their social connections allowed them to reach deeply into the minds--and pockets--of private donors and of the government" (111)

If either of them could not clearly articulate ideas in speech and writing, they would not have had the kind of success that they experienced. LANGUAGE IS POWER!

Diction=word choice.  "Moribund" is an ironic term to describe the American Society for the Control of Cancer.

The thing I really appreciate about Mary Lasker is her ability to strategize her campaign against cancer.  She makes choices about audience, etc.

All this reading and writing, all this language:  "regularly corresponding with Farber", "Farber wrote back long, detailed meandering letters", "She spoke and wrote passionately and confidently about her cause, emphasizing her point with quotes and questions", "a retinue of assistants to scour newspapers and magazines and clip out articles containing even a passing reference to cancer--all of which she read, annotated on the margins with questions in small precise scrip, and distributed to other Laskerites" (114-115).

Poor Albert.

Word: annealed

Is anyone else out there?

Bad, bad teacher.

Bought a kayak.  Abandoned you and all of my other responsibilities completely. And my absence and neglect is unforgivable, I am posting a sample test question so you have an idea of what to expect on the first day of class.  Hopefully, in this way, I can redeem myself. Here it is:

 Mukherjee argues that the reasons for what seems to be the rarity of incidents of cancer in the distant past compared to today are all of the following except:

Mukherj  

                             a. Cancer is an age related disease--more people are living long enough to get cancer.

                   b. The capacity to detect cancer earlier and to attribute deaths to it has increased.

                   c.  Technological progress and changes in social habits have radically shifted the     spectrum of cancers.

                   d. Cancer was submerged under a host of other illnesses that claimed lives before cancer could surface.

                   e.  The presence of more environmental influences provides more opportunity for cancer to develop.

Sorry about the formatting!  Blogger is working against me.
Here's another in the form of short answer:

                 Relay the narrative that Mukherjee shares concerning the discovery of X-Rays.

Hopefully, that will make up for things.

The next post will cover enough pages to be back on the official seven page per day schedule.  I will try not to let this happen again.....ahhhhh, summer.

Ken Burns

http://www.emperorofallmaladies.org/

pp.101-109

 "A successful advertisement, Lasker contended, was not merely a conglomeration of jingles and images designed to seduce consumers in buying an object; rather it was a masterwork of copywriting that tell a consumer why to buy a product. Advertising was merely a carrier for information and reason, and for the public to grasp its impact, information had to be distilled into its essential elemental form" (109).

The above is especially relevant for us in AP Lang as we learn that Everything is An Argument.
AP Argument Recognition, Construction, Expression, Analysis.....

WILL YOU LOOK AT THIS?!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2013/06/04/ken-burns-mukherjee-collaborate-on-cancer-documentary/2388627/

AHAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

pp. 89-100

I know--again--more than 7 pages.  Again, it makes sense to me to stop at the end of a section when it is only a few additional pages.

Golden:  "Clinicians described the phenomenon as an eerie 'softening' of the cancer, as if the hard carapace of cancer that Galen had so vividly described nearly two thousand years ago had melted away" (90).

I love this kind of transition:

"When Hitchings found Trudy Elion, who would soon become one of the most innovative synthetic chemists of her generation (and a future Nobel laureate), she was working for a food lab in New York, testing the acidity of pickles and the color of egg yolk going into mayonnaise.
        Rescued from a life of pickles and mayonnaise, Gertrude Elion leapt into synthetic chemistry" (91).

An interesting concept, the mustard gas thing and a cure coming from poison.

It occurs to me, as we come back to Farber, what a monumental undertaking writing this "biography" is.  I mean, that's obvious right, but think about where we have been so far.
In 92 pages, we've been introduced to Mukherjee, acquainted with Carla Reed and we've now read about much of the early history--not just of the disease--but also of the history of medicine in general as it relates to cancer, the history of surgical treatment, radiation treatment, and the development of chemotherapy.  That is much to accomplish in 92 pages.

Alliteration: "Flickering and feeble, the leukemia remissions in Boston and New York nevertheless mesmerized Farber"( 93).  Let's suppose Farber's name was....wait, let me pick one out of the phone book (yes, I still have a phone book)....I lied, no phone book....
wait, online name generator....http://www.namegenerator.biz/last-name-generator.php....

Hackman...suppose he was Stanley Hackman instead of Stanley Farber, which two words might Mukherjee then choose to begin the sentence quoted above?  Instead of "flickering" and "feeble", we might have ___________________ and ____________________.

Golden:  "Scientists often study the past as obsessively as historians because few other professions depend so acutely on it.  Every experiment is a conversation with a prior experiment, every new theory a refutation of the old" (93).

Also golden:  "The suspension of patients inside these iron lungs sybolized the limbolike, paralytic state of polio research" (94).


This is Eddie Cantor who started the March of Dimes.  In some of his online photos, he looks like Mr. Bean.  A comedian, definitely :) Almost all of his online photos look like this one.  I wasn't just choosing this one to be funny :)
His creation of the March of Dimes lead to the provision of fuding that allowed Enders and Sabin and Salk to accomplish their goals.

Again, this work of the campaign will be relevant to us as you determine how to create your own this fall.





Photo:

"Lucy & Eddie Cantor." Lucy & the Stars: Eddie Cantor. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 July 2013.

 

Mukherjee's characterization on p. 96 makes me like Farber even more: "In contrast, when Koster stopped by Farber's office, he found an excitable, articulate scientist with a larger-than-life vision--a messiah in a box.  Farber didn't want a microscope; he had an audacious telescopic plan that captivated Koster."

What are your thoughts about the Jimmy narrative?

pp.80-88

Interesting connection in this section between the textile industry and medicine.

Golden:  "Biology was chemisty: perhaps even a human body was no different from a bag of busily reacting chemicals--a beaker with arms, legs, eyes, brain, and soul" (83).

So, has anyone picked up the "Spark Notes" version of this book?  It probably isn't Sparknotes, actually, but some other brand.  What is the comparison between those and the regular text?  I don't own those and so I am curious.

What are you noticing?

pp. 69-79

Golden Line:  "Pierre and Marie (then Slodowska, a penniless Polish immigrant living in a garrett in Paris) had met at the Sorbonne and been drawn to each other because of a common interest in magnetism" (74).

I think I found an error.  It's grammatical, or mechanical, or syntactical, or, maybe, just the result of poor editing.  The wrong word. Depends on what the author's intentions were.  I could be wrong here, but I don't think so. It's on p. 75.  See if you see what I see. Maybe I'm reading it incorrectly?  But, I don't think so. Put on your editor cap.  First one to respond will receive a resounding, "HIP HIP HOORAY!"

I'd love to hear from someone.  All I've got are crickets right now.

A Double Entry pp.55-69

Tell me, what is your opinion of Dr. Halstedt? Explain.

46-54

I know.  This is more than seven pages.  But, it made sense to cover these two sections in their entirety.

The humors thing on p. 48 will really come in handy when we read The Canterbury Tales this fall.  I usually have to spend a bit of time covering that before we can fully appreciate Chaucer's work.  Not anymore.  If you find that theory interesting, you might look up "physiognomy".

There has been--up to this point--much discussion of metaphor and illness.  Sontag, tuberculosis, the Romantic poets.  What do you make of this:  "The black-bile theory of cancer was so metaphorically seductive that it clung on tenaciously in the minds of doctors" ( 49).

Here's a golden line:  "In the seventeenth century, a paste of crab's eyes, at five shillings a pound was popular--using fire to treat fire." (50).

"Anatomy came alive for him in this grisly world of the dead" (51).  Ah, Dr. Mukherjee, such a wit.

Hey, what did you all think of those awesome book marks I put in your books?  Did you notice that they are about several different topics?  It is getting kind of lonely here talking to myself.  About a book.

A Recommendation

It is my sincere wish that all of you do well on this first test.  So, I want to tell you--maybe you are already doing this--that as an "expert" reader in my field, what I find myself doing as I approach each new section is flipping through all of the previous sections from the beginning of the book and reacquainting myself prior to each new section with all of the details from those previous.  Names, dates, events, structure, golden lines.  For example, I flip to page p. 25 and the name Matthew Neely leaps out at me, and I have to think to myself, "Who is that again? Oh, yeah, he's the senator who proposed the 5 million dollar reward for the arrest of cancer further personifying cancer and playing into Mukherfee's idea of the 'biography'."  Or , I flip to p.11 and remember that Farber began this journey as a pathologist with all his jars and specimens.  Or I flip to p. 26 and I remember the detrimental effect that WWII had on the newly established National Cancer Institute.  I am always reviewing what I read.  That is what good readers do.  The more times a reader revisits an idea, the more likely it is to be integrated into the reader's schema.

Just sayin'.
It's up to you.
Peace.

pp. 37-45

"A Private Plague" is one of my favorite sections.  I think this is because it begins in a way that is more literary than scientific with its references to Sontag's essay (which I think we will read this year) and to the great Romantic disease of "Consumption".  In Victorian and Romantic literature, tuberculosis is always referred to as "consumption".  Probably because-I'm guessing here- that it consumes the individual.

I especially like the comparison and contrast between tuberculosis and cancer and the ways in which the author applies the lens of literary criticism.

Golden Line:  "It lives desperately, inventively, fiercely, territorially, cannily and defensively--at times as if teaching us how to survive."

For me the most attractive part of all of this literary discussion is that it is written by a scientist, a doctor, which gives further credence to the value of the humanities in their ability to help us understand and think about the non-literary, such as disease.

"So to begin again..."(39). I think it is here that the structure of the text becomes more apparent.


Questions, questions everywhere.
And then every once in awhile, Mukherjee shows us that he is also a comedian of sorts, that he enjoys word play.  For example, on p. 43. when he is discussing Arthur Aufderheide, a paleopathologist at the University of Minnesota, he quips, "There are nearly five thousand pieces of tissue, sores of biopsies, and hundreds of broken skeletons in his closet."   BAHHAHahahahah!

pp.32-38

My absolute favorite part of this section is the beginning of Mukherjee's rhetorical analysis and critique of Farber's report after he has experienced some "success" with the anti-folates. And his summation of Farber's dream.  The tone is so hopeful that I feel we must be close and then I realize we have 440 pages to go.

I am also inclined to favor the personification and character analysis of cancer in the beginning of the section titled, "A Private Plague".


Your thoughts? Golden Lines?

I'm falling behind!!!!! pp. 24-31.

What is exciting for me about this section is the way that we can see the efforts of writers creating political action.  You know, "The pen is mightier than the sword" and all that.

I must point out the beauty of the transition on p. 26.  the third paragraph ends with " 'their contributions usually summarized in obituaries' ".  And the next paragraph begins, "An obituary might as well have been written for the National Cancer Institute."

It is this kind of transition-among others- that we must try to emulate.

"disease of the chest wall".  Man.

Golden line:  "The illness lived on the borderlands of illnesses, a pariah lurking between disciplines and departments--not unlike Farber himself."  I'm trying to figure out if what we are seeing here is a Zeugma.  Your opinion?

And I can't help but note the irony in the idea that Farber was successful because of his isolation.

And I am kind of wondering what the hematological riddles of other decades were.

So now we've got Lucy Wills ( a woman finally) and George Minot and Yellapragada Subbarao.

Another one of my favorite lines:  "But Subbarao was a foreigner, a reclusive, nocturnal, heavily accented vegetarian who lived in a one-room apartment downtown, befriended only by other nocturnal recluses such as Farber."  Hilarious that "vegetarian" is listed in the catalogue of what seem to be eccentricities.  But this sentence creates some strong imagery to establish the character type.

This is pathetic entry, I know.  But it is so late. And I am so tired.  Especially because I saw Gatsby for the second time tonight and that is an emotionally draining experience- in a good way.  But now, all I can think about is DiCaprio :)

One of my favorite lines from the Gatsby film is when Daisy says to Tom:  "Why don't I make you a drink so you don't seem so stupid to yourself."  And then the scene at Carraway's cottage, when Gatsby brings all of those flowers and cakes and then goes and stands in the rain?  So good.

pp 17-24

More Carla and then some background on Sidney Farber.  And back to the beginning of the science and discovery of treatment.

I love that the next section which begins on p 21 is titled, "A monster more insatiable than the guillotine".  This ties so nicely into our themes for AP Lang.  The entire syllabus is structured around one monster or another.  Junior year in and of itself is a monster.

Here's a vocab term:  Zeitgeist.  It means "the spirit of the times".  How does that relate to the info in this next section?

"The public willingly spends a third of that sum in an afternoon to watch a major football game" (24).  Some things will never change.

All of the information about Fortune, The New York Times, Time and Life is especially relevant to us as well as we will all be bringing about awareness in regard to some monster this fall in the shape of a Monster project.  When I say that, I mean it's huge and it's about a monster.

pp. 11-17

So, now we know who Sidney Farber is. And we've met Virchow and Bennett and Biermer and I hope I'm not leaving anyone out.

Golden Line:  "He felt trapped, embalmed in his own glassy cabinet" (12).  What I love about this sentence is that in the previous paragraph Mukherjee takes much trouble to describe the work of Farber.  He mentions the jars and the embalming fluid and then one paragraph later he uses that imagery to describe how Farber feels about being a pathologist.  That, my friends, is craftsmanship.  The author has used the content, the nature of the content to describe a new idea in a way that is relevant to the work of Farber.  I feel like I'm talking in circles here.  But do you get the idea?  Mukherjee does this kind of thing throughout the book.  Watch for it and share it with the rest of us when you find what you think might be an example.

Here's an interesting idea: text structure.  No, really.  It is interesting.  Remember the phial of aminopterin.  Pay attention to when it comes up again...and again.  and let me know if you can decide on an organizational structure for this book. Pay attention to when we return to Carla.

I loathe the word 'pus.'  Disgusting.

I could write all day.  What are your thoughts about this section and the "suppuration of blood"?

Did anyone notice the use of questions?

I also like to keep track of all the times that Mukherjee personifies Cancer.  It is, after all, a biography and he told us why in his prologue.  I think it is important to check for consistency on this point.  One way that an author establishes ethos is to deliver on promises made.

Your turn.

The Author's Note and Prologue

I think that one of the things that makes this work such a rich and multi-layered read are the number of quotations that the author has included to open each new section.  It is interesting to think about how the quotations that he has chosen add to the meaning of the section that they precede. Do you notice any patterns as we open with this short excerpt?

And the information that we get about the author's exigence (vocab term: someone look it up and tell us what it means and how it applies to this book), his purpose and intent, the initiating questions that guide the research and the composition are valuable to us as writers and readers. I'd love to hear someone who agrees with this contribute an explanation about why they believe this to be true.  If you don't agree, I don't want to hear from you. I'M KIDDING, OF COURSE.  OF COURSE.

And it strikes me that it is never a bad idea to begin with a narrative.  
What are your thoughts on any or all of this?  It's a deceptively short section--7 measly pages--but there is so much contained within.

Another vocab term:  ethos.  Anyone wanna take a stab at how this is established in these first seven pages?

Can't WAIT TO GET A REPLY!  I'll limit the caps in future posts.  I promise.

I posted this on the Facebook page as well.  So, if you are more comfortable with that format, comment there. It's called "Mrs. McAllister's AP English Language and Composition"

Facebook Page

Mrs. McAllister's AP English Language and Composition Page

We might as well try this, too.   Search for it on Facebook.  It might be a more manageable forum.  I'll keep both going for awhile and we'll see.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mrs-McAllisters-AP-English-Language-and-Composition/97554487855?fref=ts

Tomorrow......

we start.  In the early evening....let's say by 7 pm, I will post some comments, notes, observations, questions, appreciations, about the first seven or so pages and then we'll see what comes of it.

58 Page Views and I'm the Only One Talking

One of my smarter colleagues suggested that the reason for that might be that I have not invited you all to comment.  Or that I haven't shut up for a second to give someone else a chance.  Consider this your invitation.  Let's see...some questions to get it started.....what do I want to know about you?  How about this.....

What are you thinking about all of this?  The overwhelming reading?  The offering of a workshop?  The blog?

Or we could go in this direction: Why are you taking AP Lang?
What have you heard about it so far?

Here's another track:  What is your reading life like?  You know, the one that exists outside of school assignments?  What do you read when you have the time?  All of my juniors are currently in the middle of an "Independent Reading Experiment"  where every they read what they want to read just because.  Sometimes they write me letters about what they read.  Reading those letters is my favorite "grading" because I learn about so many new good books.

Does anyone have an interesting "Fun Fact to Know and Yell" about any topic at all that you could share with us in this school environment?

Looking forward to some comments,

Mrs. McAllister

Learn to Listen to the Language

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzUEL7vw60U

Coming Attractions (to the tune of the end of the Pledge of Allegiance)

The Writer's Notebook

Independent and Student Selected Reading

And a Blogger account for all.

Bummer Summer Reading Test: The Importance of Close and Critical Reading

Every fall there are many students who become discouraged after the summer reading test.  They mostly say the same kind of thing, "I READ the book.  I don't understand why I did so poorly on the test."  Okay, they don't use those words, but the message is the same.  And here's the deal: I believe every one of them.  I believe that they read the book.  I also believe that students don't often know HOW to read a text like those assigned for AP Lang.  Oh, they can look at each word on every page and get a general idea of what the book is about.  But they don't really engage with the text. 

So, I am offering a mini-workshop.  I am offering this same workshop five times during exam week.  Every day during the week of June 3, students are invited to come to West 13 where I will model for you the kind of close and critical reading that is the expectation of everything you will read in AP Lang.  Not one person has signed up yet.  But thirteen people viewed this blog last night and so I am writing this new post in the hope that tomorrow there will be at least one name on the lists posted outside my classroom door.  Every time I look at those blank pages, I am saddened.

I understand you are busy.  This isn't mandatory.  But I think we can avoid a lot of heartache in the fall if you are willing to take just one half hour to observe close and critical reading.  I can tell you to read carefully.  And you can agree to read carefully.  But what does that mean?  What does it look like?  That is what I am eager to show you in one of the workshops.

Whadda ya say?  Be the first brave person to sign up.  It'll be painless, I promise.

Welcome! 

This is the place--for now--where we will be discussing the summer reading text, The Emperor of All Maladies:  A Biography of Cancer.  You are not required to be here, but it may help you to more fully comprehend what you are reading and to integrate it into your schema.  In case you are wondering, your "schema" is defined in Reading for Understanding by authors Schoenbach, Greenleaf and Murphy as "a personal library of knowledge, --based on a lifetime of reading and experience" (234).  It is basically all of the stuff you have in your head to help you make sense of text and experience.  The more stuff you have in your schema, the better equipped you are to think critically and solve problems. 

It is going to be difficult for me to wait till June 27 to start, but I will do my best.  In the meantime, if there is anything else AP Lang related you'd like to discuss, post it as a comment here.