I spend far too much time "surfing" the Internet (i.e. watching porn) and not enough time either reading or writing. I should be doing both, and so - just today - I pledged to read a half-hour every night. Some people already do this. Most don't. But, funny, there's a lot of books here, and for some reason I havn't read as many as I have desired to.
Right now I am reading Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire by Rafe Esquith. It's an inspirational tome Toni picked out because she knows I am going to be leading a theater camp this summer, and thought I might need some ... inspiration.
Rafe Esquith, for those who do not know, is the famous fifth grade teacher from Los Angeles who teaches ESL students (presumably at-risk) to - among other things - perform an entire Shakespearean play by the end of the school year. He teaches a lot of other things, too, but that's the bit that gets him so much attention.
While she was at it, Toni got me the documentary about his work, The Hobart Shakespeareans, from the loal library. I like the book better. While it is exciting to see these children actually performing scenes from Hamlet, the filmmakes chose to forgo an narrator, and so left Rafe to explain everything he does to the camera. I can see why his fellow teachers at Hobart find him insufferable, no teacher should be opened up to such scrutiny. He comes off as very pleased with himself, which I don't believe is accurate nor fair. But there it is.
Also ... were the children really that exciting that Micahel York visited their class? I mean ... were they really? Also, I wanted to be introduced to Ian McKellen's lover, but as movie this produced in part by PBS, they just let him sit there anonymously and smile. Damn you, Buster Baxter, you coward, you.
The book (not his first) is much more enjoyable as not a memoir, but as a how-to manual for teaching kids - any kids. Or for that matter, raising them. I'm enjoying it a great deal.
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