Day 35 - To The Man I Met On The Bus Last Night - Lena Keown - BHS Senior

This post originally appeared in the BHS Collab - Burlington High's Literature Magazine

Here, in its entirety, is Lena Keown's poem, "To the Man I Met on the Bus Last Night," which was the winner of our 2013 poetry contest, which gathered over 50 submissions, our highest-ever total for anhy of our writing contests. Congratulations Lena!

“To the Man I Met on the Bus Last Night”

by Lena Keown

I didn’t mean to be rude, sir;
it is not that you,
yourself, frightened me,
for you were pleasant and kind.
You liked my hair, you said,
but your lips said you dreamt not
of tugging it salaciously,
malignantly.
You spoke of simple things;
you intimated no rage
nor lust
nor a ghostly heart.
In truth, I liked you;
you intrigued me,
and the cadence of your simple words
was light and warm.

I didn’t mean to be rude
when I turned from you:
I did it because they want me
to be weak,
to run without reason,
and what can I do?
I was alone and it was dark;
such effects weakness
in a woman,
they tell me.

I know you will not think of me;
I know you have not since I left.
But you will linger with me longer
than the smile of polite fear
that seized my face as I passed you,
for the last time,
and I tried to look at your eyes.

Day 19 - BHS Drama and Journalism Classes Causing Scenes - Callie Graham and Anne Ford, BHS English Dept.

This post originally appeared on the BHS English Department Blog

You can follow the BHS English Department on Twitter - @BHSEnglish1

Callie Graham and Anne Ford, teachers at BHS, recently collaborated on a Journalism project. Ford’s Drama class prepared scenes that might happen in a high school setting. They then performed them guerrilla-style, where the remainder of the class was caught off-guard. Then Graham’s Journalism students entered the room and had to conduct impromptu interviews of the bystanders, “victims,” and “administrators” to piece together the story. Drama students were able to work on fully engaging in a believable scene, while Journalism students honed their interviewing skills.

Ms. Graham’s plans for this year’s Journalism students is to bring back the paper copy of The Devil’s Advocate, and this exercise gave them some great, on-the-ground experience with how to interview subjects and how to “find the story.”

Check out more pictures from the event below!

Day 11 - Science Night For Memorial - Deb Dressler, Memorial School Principal

This information originally appeared on Deb's Blog (Memorial School Blog)

Science Night for Memorial families! 

October 10th, 2013

6:00-8:00 pm

Day 4 - Why The Three Little Pigs Is A Perfect Story In High School History Class, Michael Milton, BHS History Dept.

This is a BPS Blog original from Michael Milton - Mike also blogs regularly one his own blog here. 

You can also follow Mike on Twitter - @42ThinkDeep

While it may seem childish to start a high school social studies class with the story of the Three Little Pigs, I am really glad that I did! In social studies we are not simply focusing on the facts that make up the past, but looking at events and movements from a variety of perspectives. We are playing with concepts like bias and validity. 

When class began, I asked the class to tell me about the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. While one person took the role of the storyteller, others joined in to help when the storyteller needed it. When we got to the end of the story, I told them that that was simply one point of view. I proceeded to read to them The True Story of The Three Little Pigs, which is from the wolf's point of view (turning the story on its head). From the wolf, we learned about his motive for going to his neighbors house - he was looking for sugar to bake a cake for his grandmother's birthday. And his blowing the houses down wasn't malicious, he had a cold which caused him to sneeze!

As we unpacked the story, the conversation went from the simple "what were the differences in the stories?" to the more complex "what sources can we turn to to verify first-hand accounts?". At points in class, it felt a bit like we were on Law and Order trying to prove a case. This activity was followed by looking at two perspectives on the Stamp Act in my US History class and two perspectives on human nature in my World History classes. In both, we asked similar deep questions as we did with the Three Little Pigs.

Eventually we will move from simply being able to identify bias to constructing narratives based on several sources and I am certain that this activity will have helped propel us along the way.