Monday morning. We have a large assignment (a benchmark in SLA parlance) due on January 20th. And it’s Zoom school.
I’ll begin by playing “Keep on the Sunny Side.” I may play the Johnny Cash version. I may play the Mother Maybelle Carter version from “Will the Circle be Unbroken?” I’m partial to the quiet version from The Low Anthem.
Then I’ll ask what they do to sustain themselves when they get blue. What do they do when they’ve had enough? (Setting up Whitman, #38 , from Song of Myself.)
They’ll “write” or do whatever they do on Zoom school when I ask them to write in their journals.
We’ll discuss any strategies they may have, both positive and negative. I’ll probably ask the question so that kids can discuss in a general way as opposed to feeling like they have to disclose anything.
We’ll discuss how Coates might help someone to keep going (Ta-Nehesi Coates, Between the World and Me, we’re mostly done.) And we’ll talk about, speculate upon, and use our understanding of the reading to think about what kept him going.
Then we’ll read Whitman and work though it together. Here he is, declaring, “Enough! Enough! Enough!”, yet he’s still trying to find a way to keep going. Like the narrator from Milosz’s End of the World, he’s managing the day-to-day, he’s working the memories of the Civil War from himself, he’s trying not to succumb to the voices that say man everything you touch turns to shit.
From there we’ll do a bit of free-writing to set up the drafts of their benchmark. They have an idea, or should have an idea, about the topic they intend to write to their descendants about. How might four primary emotions shape their drafts — if they wrote from anger, sadness, fear, or happiness, what might they include. Some good drafting occurred
In person, I would have asked how these emotions fueled or supported Coates’s work, but here I improvised, sharing my own ideas.
Coda: As the class began, I asked if they were ready to keep on the sunny side.
On the chats came one word:
No.
Happy Monday.