Literacy Speaks Volumes

Approach of Winter by William Carlos Williams The half-stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter dryly, and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmine-- like no leaf that ever was-- edge the bare garden. I am a consummate consumer of the written word~poem or prose, fiction or nonfiction. I'm like Sherlock Holmes~constantly noticing those unusual sound combinations and odd spellings that make for an interesting gem of a word. Besides the overall feeling of this poem, I'm impressed with the word "half-stripped"; it implies tenacity (another great word)~the tree seems to know that winter is on its way bringing with it the harsh reality that all will soon be lost.  As a lesson, I would first ask students to tell me how they know that this is a poem~I'll probably get answers like "it looks like a poem" or "it's shaped like a poem.&

My son, now a teenager, asks quite a few questions. About a week ago, I was helping him study for a biology test; the test was over the cell cycle. As an English Language Arts teacher, I don't know much about cells other than they can be found in all living things. One of his questions was, "Is our body always going through the cell cycle?". I didn't know and was too tired to help him research the answer to that valid question. My answer was, "You need to ask your teacher." Last night I asked him if he'd ever asked his teacher about the cell cycle; he said no, because he didn't think of it anymore. The question should have been answered the night that it was asked~but the time was gone and neither one of us will bother to ask or attempt to answer it again. The teacher will move on to some other important learning and the cell cycle will become one of those topics that will not come up again...except on the end-of-course exam.  No matter how