Period 1: Nigeria - Building a Power, Day 9 - Class Recap

A picture I took of an elephant at the Oregon Zoo, last year. Yes, there are elephants in Nigeria. Hopefully, not lonely ones.
Hello and welcome to another class recap!

I'm going to try and take my time on this one, because hopefully all of you will be checking out this post after the talk we had in class today about the importance of following along online. Today was a good class, though I can sense that there is a lot of angst and confusion about the essays. That's okay, really. For Wednesday, I just want you to have as much written as you can think of. It will truly help you.

Essential Questions: How do different structures of power impact the people over whom they govern? Why do some countries thrive while others fail? - Again, we are really starting to try and hone in on answering these questions!

Soundtrack: "The Circle of Life" by The Lion King (Broadway Musical). Lyrics here. I picked this song because it (as we all know) is related to Africa. That, and it's just plain a great song. I told you a little bit about my job working at the airport - I remembered after class that I actually had a cell phone video of my friend Clarke doing the "Circle of Life" song with the "Last Bag" tag from Lufthansa, so if you feel like it, watch below and laugh at how awesome we are.


As I said in class, I would highly recommend The Lion King musical, if you ever get the chance to see it. I'm really not that into theatre, but it was outstanding when I saw it in London in 2007.

AGENDA 3/2/09:
Blog Recap
News Brief
Pen Pal Letters
Essays - Rough Draft Work

Homework: Rough draft of essay finished. Check blog!

I'll talk a lot more about this in the essays section below, but basically, I want you to bring in a rough draft essay, trying to answer the essential questions of: How do different structures of power impact the people over whom they govern? Why do some countries thrive while others fail? - especially in relation to what you know about Nigeria already. There are tons of tools at your disposal for this, but let me know if you are having trouble with ideas. I have no length requirement, but I will say that if you follow the introduction, three main points, and conclusion format that we talked about for the persuasive speeches, you will be fine. Remember, this is for you to express your opinion, because it matters!

Blog Recap: This is self-explanatory. I pulled up the class recap from last class, read everything aloud, showed the class how to post a comment, and tried to make the point that reading the blog and knowing about what is going on in class is very much related to your success.

News Brief: Some of this happened before the blog recap, but to make the flow better, I am putting it here. I asked the class about the weekend. I remember Jazmyne telling us about the chili cook off that she attended at McKenzie's house. I told the class about my intramural success (or lack of it) at Lewis and Clark on the weekend. Archana recapped the Blazers game (and by the way, Archana must have taken the Blazers performance to heart, because she was amazing the entire period long at staying involved with what was going on), which was fantastic.

Jillian shared a news article with the class about Iran. I'm guessing this was not the exact article, because it was published two hours ago, but here is a similar one: LA Times.com - "U.S. commits to arms control, engaging with Iran". This brought up a lot of interesting questions! We talked about the "Axis of Evil" (which I believe I also linked to when we were talking about North Korea). I also asked the question, "does Iran scare you?" This is probably the most important area in the world as far as U.S. foreign policy goes. Do we try to talk them out of developing a nuclear weapon, if they are? Do we use force (again) to intervene? Difficult questions! Excellent article Jillian, thank you. Alondra, you are up for next class. One current news article, having to do with something outside the United States please.

Pen Pal Letters: I really liked this activity, thanks everyone! I asked you to read over someone's letter, and then we came together as a class to discuss aspects of a good pen pal letter. I actually graded all of these already (it is amazing what I can do when I am not correcting or writing comments), and almost everyone that turned it in today got a 10/10, because they were fantastic. Incredibly heart warming too, by the way. I'm glad that it seems you took this assignment to heart. I also liked the "P.S.: Tell me about your culture" that was added to a few. That made me chuckle. All in all, job well done. I gave these to Mrs. DeFrance to send on over to Nigeria. I will let you know once I hear anything about them again. :-)

By the way, as agreed upon, I will have your Africa Travel Guides graded and returned to you on Wednesday. So far, they are amazing!

Essays - Rough Draft Work: I can hear the groans now. By the way, I loved the groans when I said "just watch me get fired up about writing essays!" That was a highlight of the day for me. Okay, let's go over this nice and slowly.

As a form of introduction to thinking about writing an essay on a question that is completely up to you, I asked Jillian, who was nearest to the window, her opinion about what the weather was outside. She said that it was sunny. I told her that she was wrong and that it was partly cloudy. For some reason, the class seemed to conclude that I must have been right, because I am the teacher. Really? So if it was snowing outside, and I said that it was sunny, would I still be right? I think it's weird how students sort of expect that teachers are never, ever wrong about things. I know that I did it in school too.

The point here being that both Jillian and I could have made good cases for why we thought the weather was the way that it was outside. We could have cited evidence like "about 5% of the sky has clouds in it, over there on the horizon" or "there is rain on the ground" or "the sun is clearly hitting the trees outside" to back up our case. This is clearly almost exactly what I am asking you to do when you are writing your essay in response to the essential questions on Nigeria. What do you think?

How has the recent transformation from a dictatorship to a democracy affected the people in Nigeria? Do you think that Nigeria is "thriving" or failing? Again, this is not really a persuasive paper, it is more of a "here is the evidence which proves the point" paper. We are going to talk a lot in class on Wednesday about building points around a thesis, but here is a great little website that should help in the meantime: The Five Paragraph Essay.

I had some interesting comments after class from a student that said that there was no way that Nigeria was not failing. Really? That is an interesting perspective. Take a look at the PowerPoint again:

"Nigeria: Building a Power" PowerPoint
I see at LEAST five extremely positive things going on in Nigeria that a good case could be built around in that presentation, should you choose to go that route when talking about why some countries thrive while others fail.

Finally, I know this is hard. I know that many of you are having an extremely difficult time even knowing where to start with this. That is fine. However, if you work with me here, I guarantee it will pay off in the long run.

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There is a special two hour long 24 tonight starting at 8:00, which I am pumped about, but I have to meet with some of my fellow teachers at Lewis and Clark to watch our delightful in-class videos at 7:00, so I'm hoping to make it back in time. Until next class, please continue to work hard and comment or e-mail me with any questions or concerns. Have a great evening!