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Posted by Unknown on January 20, 2016

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Why I haven't posted today...

Thanks @therealbanksy

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Huck Finn: Essay Questions, first eight chapters

In these first eight chapters of Huckleberry Finn, I see connections with the literature that we read (covering American literature from pre-1492 to the writing of the Constitution in 1787-88).
I see a lot of Thomas Jefferson in Tom Sawyer, the way he set up a gang of robbers and tried to govern them.I think Jim, with his superstition and his witchcraft, would have been quite infamous in Salem.I think the Widow Douglass and Jonathan Edwards had a hell of a lot in commonI read about Pap and Huck's struggles to be free of his drunkenness, and I can almost see King George III, fighting to keep the American colonies under his thumb.I try to see similarities between these events and me. I connect with the stories and the characters.How do you connect with Huckleberry Finn? What are some stories from the reading that you identified with? Leave your answer as a comment below.
To receive credit, agree or disagree with one of the connections I mention above in an essay of 100 words. You …

Reflections on Testing: TNReady Round 1 for High Schools

It's been a busy break, and I haven't been able to blog.

There has been time for reflection, which I'm hoping will result in many cogent thoughts and account for my month-long break from blogging.

For the record, I have been an advocate for both testing and high standards. I have published views in favor of testing in the past, so I hope these thoughts aren't dismissed as a mere confirmation of opinions I had before Tennessee's first round of TNReady testing.

The GoalsTNReady lauched this year after the Tennessee state legislature elected not to go with PARCC testing as my state had planned to do when it adopted Common Core State Standards in 2009. Like the standards, the goal of testing was meant to ensure that students were college and career ready and an adequate measure of the new standards. (In 2013 and 2014 Tennessee had simply continued on with the previous contract that tested earlier standards.)

I was a TNCore coach this summer, so I felt confident in my k…

Gatsby: Who Is He?

Throughout the 20th Century, The Great Gatsby was a popular book because it brought to life the "Roaring '20s:" jazz, Prohibition, the 'motorcar,' and the fabulous wealth that was building in American cities at that time.
Today we are far closer to the centenary of Fitzgerald's writing of the book in 1923 than we are to the Jazz Age. This means that we read the book in a far different way.
In class I have tried to demonstrate that the characters in Gatsby have become archetypes. In class, we looked at comparisons that writers had made between the characters and Presidents Bush and Obama.
How do you connect with the characters in The Great Gatsby? Do you see any connections between them and those that Fitzgerald created? He certainly had others in mind when he wrote the book. For example, the athletic, free-wheeling Jordan of the book was based on a female golfer Fitzgerald knew, Edith Cummings.
Who is Gatsby? Is there someone you know--either privately o…

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James A Dittes

If You Must Know...

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