Books I Teach

9 Quest:

• Catcher in the Rye
• Lord of the Flies
• Of Mice and Men
• The Piano Lesson
• Death of a Salesman
• My Antonia
• Joy Luck Club
• Our Town
• House on Mango Street

Advanced Placement Literature and Composition (12)

• Invisible Man
• Crime and Punishment
• short stories by Faulkner, Hemingway, Chopin, Ellison, Wright, Gogol, etc.
• poetry, poetry, poetry
• As I Lay Dying
• In the Time of the Butterflies
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Hamlet

Perspectives in Language and Literature (World Lit 12)

• excerpts from The Iliad, The Odyssey, Sundiata
  
• The Journey of Ibn Fattouma
  
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
• Macbeth
• Things Fall Apart
• All Quiet on the Western Front
• A Place Where the Sea Remembers

CIS Modern Fiction

• Green Grass, Running Water
• Going After Cacciato
• Dreaming in Cuban
• As I Lay Dying
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Sula
• The God of Small Things
• Dubliners
• Servants of the Map

10 IB

• The Iliad
• The Odyssey
• The Aenead
• Flood Myths
• Creation Myths
  
• Sundiata
• Antigone
  
• Beowulf
• The Inferno
• The Canterbury Tales
• Decameron
  
• Dr. Faustus
• Everyman
• Macbeth
• As You Like It
• excerpts from The Tale of Genji
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• various poems throughout course
  

Bloglines

I don't know if I have said this before, but I love bloglines. I think it is great that I can follow so many of my favorite on-line things at the same time. One of my favorite blogs is gadling found at: http://www.gadling.com/. It is a travel blog and I love reading the funny traveling stories as well as it has a lot of great travel tips and since I am now planning my trip to Europe this summer, this blog has been essential reading. Plus, it has amazing pictures from around the world that inspire me to dream of traveling to other places as well.

Another favorite blog I follow is serious eats: http://www.seriouseats.com/. As anyone who knows me would tell you--I never cook. This is not a hyperbole, which is probably why my mom almost always says, "Don't forget to eat" before she hangs up the phone. I heat food in the microwave periodically and I eat cereal (Kashi is my favorite) a lot. I like to cook, don't get me wrong, but I never do. Twice a year I bake: sweet potato pies for Thanksgiving and a rhubarb merengue dessert whenever the rhubarb from the garden is ready. This is the only time the oven is turned on. Now, having said that, I love food (and hardly ever forget to eat). I love going to the grocery store to look at all the options. I love eating out and I love cruises where you can eat all the food that you want whenever you want. Serious eats has great recipes, great food stories, and they often have pictures of delicious looking cupcakes. They even make brussel sprouts sound and look delicious! (Don't believe me? Look at this picture: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2008/05/dinner-tonight-dan-barbers-brussels-sprouts.html). I loved this story too that has ice trays that look like Han Solo has been frozen in them: http://www.seriouseats.com/required_eating/2008/05/the-most-awesome-star-wars-han-solo-ice-cube-tray.html. Sadly, they said they were removed from the website they were originally found on, but it would be great to try to find. The article also had the suggestion of using the tray for chocolate molds.

I do follow BBC World News too, so I am not just dreaming of foreign countries and food. :)

Anyway, RSS feeds are really cool. Love it!

Sadly, not something new...

Grading research papers is always a daunting task for me. I want to make sure that I am assessing them fairly and give them appropriate feedback, but I also want to finish grading them in a timely fashion as well. It becomes completely demoralizing when I find plagiarized papers. Everything that I have done in teaching the research paper process, and yet, two of the papers are plagiarized. I wish I didn't take it so personally, but yet, I do. I am offended and defeated at the same time. WHY do they cheat? Why do they think they can get away with it? Why didn't they learn how to cite their sources? Why didn't they learn the process? Why, why, why?

Post Test

Happily, I am finished with the Post test. I was really worried about getting computer access since we don't really have a working lab at Central, but Leslie Yoder saved the day and loaned me some laptops. My students really seemed to like taking the test online, versus the paper copy we used in the fall. I am looking forward to seeing the results!

My new website

I just "finished" my website on Franz Kafka and the trip I am taking this summer following Kafka's footsteps after reading all his works. I have spent a lot of time on it, which is how I missed my blogging session for last week. I have been slightly monomaniacal about it spending 6 to 8 hours on it each night after work. Every free moment was spent on programming this site. There is a lot more content to add, which is why, I suppose, no website is ever truly finished, but it is complete enough for me to take a step back for a moment and breathe. Check it out if you have time: http://vader.lib.umn.edu/lis753/peifer/ParistoPrague.html (no www). P.S. It doesn't look good in safari (I don't know why) so please use Firefox or Internet Explorer for full effect.

Google Documents

Google documents are so cool! We are in the process of choosing our Link Crew leaders for next year. We have to post the names of our applicants (over a hundred names) so they can sign up for an interview, but we keep all this information for next year as well. Anyway--my colleague Megan and I have to type in the data so we did it at the same time on the same spreadsheet on google docs. We could see what the other person was doing instantly and where we need to fill in information. It was fun and fast. Additionally, our colleague Annette can access the information as well so she can do some last minute tracking of a few students who will then be referred to Megan tomorrow so she can finalize the list to be posted tomorrow. Google documents have allowed us to streamline this process. When we go through the interview process, we will be able to take notes online and be able to see what we all thought even thought the interviews will take place in four different rooms. How great is that! Honestly, I love google docs!

Another new thing

I created a new wiki using wetpaint, which is supposedly more popular with users than pb.wiki. It is not as easy to use, but it is isn't that different from pb.wiki. It has more templates that make it more aesthetically pleasing, but it does use ads which is a negative--although, if it is for educational use, you can ask wetpaint to remove the ads so it is just one additional step. My wiki is to plan my dad's retirement party with my sister and mom so the educational part doesn't apply for this one. It has our to do list, our invite list, invite ideas, and our menu. It also automatically adds the pages to the side table of contents so you don't have to link the pages like one has to on the sidebar with pb.wiki.

It has been great fun using the wiki with my mom and sister. My sister and I were at Paper Source in Uptown buying paper for the invites. I created three different invites that were very different on wetpaint based on preliminary discussions with my mom and sister. Each has a different theme, so I was a little unsure of what paper to buy for our invitations. Courtnay, my twin, and I had pulled out about thirty different color combinations trying to figure out which would go with each idea. We each had our arms filled with beautiful different packages of papers from linen vellum to margarita inspired stationary with ribbons to match. My mom calls me while we were at the store. She had shown the wiki to my dad and they were able to tell me which idea they liked the best for the invites, which really helped in choosing the correct paper. How fun is that!