Thankful for a Classmate

This year in Mr. McCarthy's sixth period American Literature class, many students have helped me. Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I would like to dedicate this blog to these special people who have helped me. The three people that I am most thankful for are Danielle Craan, Karla Perez and Dominique Cole. Without them, I do not know what I would do.

The first person that I would like to focus on is Danielle Craan. Danielle, who was in my group at the beginning of the year has haelped me a lot. Even though we did not know each other previous to this class, we got along just fine. During group discussions, Danielle helped me better understand some questions that I did not understand fully. Without her, our group probably would have done worse on the group activities. Danielle also contributed to our good grade for the Phyllis Wheatley presentations. She brought great ideas to the table and I'm sure this helped our grade. Danielle has also let me know about blogs and other assignments that were due via Facebook and I am TRULY greatful for that.

The next person that I would like to thank is Karla Perez. Karla and I along with Danielle and Dominique was in the same group at the beginning of the school year. Karla always contributed to the group discussions. She would sometimes look in the book and read a direct quote to help us understand how to answer a discussion question. This helped us answer that question to the best of our abilities and I am thankful for that. Also, Karla was my partner for one of the partner quizzes we took in this class. She knew the answer to the questions I did not know the answers to and this helped us get a better grade. Karla also brought poems to choose from for our Phyllis Wheatly presentations.

The last person that I am thankful for is Dominique Cole. Dominique and I became good friends this year thanks to sixth period American Lit. Dominique has personally helped me with another partner quiz. Similar to Karla, when I did not know the answer to a question, she would help me and in return we recieved a better grade. Dominique has also helped us in group discussions to help me understand the answer of a question. To conclude this blog, I would like to say THANK YOU to Danielle Craan, Karla Perez and Dominique Cole because without you, I would be lost. Thank you for reading my blog and have a great Thanksgiving!

John Proctor: Hero or Stooge?

John Proctor is a character in The Crucible who has an affair with a young girl named Abigail. John Proctor is sort of an outcast because he doesn't go to church like most people in Salem. This is because he feels that Reverend Parris rarely speaks about God in his sermons anymore. Abigail is a young girl, Rev. Parris' niece and she has practiced witchcraft and instead of admitting this, she accusses others of this crime.

A stooge is a person who is under the control of another person. Whereas a hero is a person distinguished by exeptional courage. I believe that John Proctor is a stooge because in a way, he is controlled by Abigail. Joh Proctor's wife is arrested for witchcraft and he knows that Abigail is behind it. He wants to tell the court that Abigail was behind it but he feared that Abigail would tell the whole court that she had an affair with Proctor. If this happened, Proctor's wife, Elizabeth would find out and he would be hated more by society. He already has one strike against him because he does not go to church anymore, matters would be made worse if everyone found out that he has committed the sin of adultery. Like I said, Proctor is a stooge because he is under the control of Abigail. He knows that if he says that Abigail has been practicing witchcraft, then Abigail will tell the court that they had an affair with each other. This causes Proctor to keep his mouth shut and this shows that Proctor is just a puppet and Abigail is the puppet master yanking his strings!

A Direction the Class Needs

So far, I have liked the direction of the class for the most part. But like any class, I have some suggestions on what could be modified to better the class. In this blog I will be explaining in detail the good and the bad of the class, my opinion on them and how they can be modified slightly.

The first thing that I would like to talkt about is Independent Reading Thursdays. Although I believe this is a good idea because it lets us read for enjoyment, I have just a few issues with it. First, I can say from my experience with the independent reading, it was a little hard to read that book on Thursdays and read The House of the Seven Gables for the remainder of the week. This was difficult because I was just starting a new book and I was trying to get far into the book because there was going to be a project at the end. To accomplish this, I had to read beyong just Thursdays and this was hard because I had other homework to do. It was also hard to keep up with the characters in both books. Maybe independent reading should be eliminated altogether or we should have less to read for the class novel while independent reading is going on.

Another issue I have is that it is not always clear on what is due and on what specific date. About half of the class did not know that this blog was due on Friday, so the due date was pushed back to this morning (Sunday). I feel like Mr. McCarthy expects us to check the calendar on Edline to see what is due instead of announcing this information during class. About five of my friends and I did not know that the first draft of our comparison papers were due earlier this week. I feel as if Mr. McCarthy in this example expected us to read the informational sheet about the essay outside of class to know when the drafts are due. I feel as if he should take the time out to loudly and clearly announce these things in front of the WHOLE class well before the bell rings.

Another thing that I find difficult in this class is multi-tasking. Just this week (Friday to be exact), we started to watch the Crucible movie. We have also started to write our comparison papers and we still have quotes from the Crucible due in two weeks. I feel as if we are doing TOO MUCH at the same time. I am now confused because I do not know if we ar to finish the Crucible, or if we are just going to watch the whole movie and we should forget about the book.

One thing that I did not like was the big test that we just took on the House of the Seven Gables, Christopher Colombus, and Phyllis Wheatly. I did not think this test was fair because we took this quiz two months after school started and some of the material on this test was from the first month of school. Plus, the other half of the test was on the House of the Seven Gables that we just finished reading. It was kinda hard to tried to make sure you knew everything that you needed to know about the House of the Seven Gables and things that were reviewed during the first month of school for this test. It would have been better, I believe, if we had a test on Phyllis Wheatly, Christopher Colombus and Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God at the end of September, then had a test on the House of the Seven Gables last week.

Three things that I DO like are group work, reading comprehension quizzes and the background information that we read about the puritans' point of view, and the information on the Salem witch craft trials. I felt that this helped me understand Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, the Crucible and the House of the Seven Gables. Hopefully this blog assignment would help Mr. McCarthy see what he can do in class to help us undersatnd the material better, and improve our grades.