Identity Unit

Brainstorming web on identity

Ashes English Connect page 36

Poem Identity

Priscilla and the Wimps (see handouts)

What Are They, Stunned?

Cookie versus Gingerbread Man

One Team, One Country

Invictus

Part 1: Create an identity web to share with the class. Your project should include information that reveals to your audience the type of person you are. You can add images, poetry, song lyrics etc. to give us more insight. Feel free to add your own, but here is a list of possibilities to get you started:

Place of birth As a baby… Family and friends Life at school Family pets Hobbies/interests Favorite foods/music/movies etc. Pet peeves (things you don’t like) Nick name and why Strangest quirk Fondest memory/worst nightmare Biggest dream Vacation hot spots Future plans

Ashes page 36

When two people argue, one person is always right.

Strongly disagree Strongly agree

1. The main character, Ashleigh, describes her parents as being opposite in personality: her father, a dreamer; her mother, practical and level-headed. In the chart provided below, give support from the story to show that these traits are accurate.

Dad as a dreamer Mom as practical

2. Explain how Ashes gets caught in the middle between her two parents. Give two examples to support your answer.

1 2 3 4 5

3. Predict what you think Ashes is going to do. Why do you think this?

4. Tell of a time when you were caught in the middle. What were the circumstances? Who was involved? What did you decide to do?

Identity Unit English 1202 Name: ___________________________________

Identity

You said to be beautiful,

I had to be thin.

You said to wear that dress,

I needed perfect curves

(Whatever that meant).

You said to drive that car,

I had to have gorgeous eyes.

You said to wear that scent,

I needed flawless skin.

You said in order to get that man,

I had to have long, luscious lashes.

You said to get that job,

I needed big, pouting lips.

You said to succeed in life,

I had to be perfect.

You said to be happy,

I had to conform to all your obsessions.

And now as I lay here,

With my living breath departed,

Looking beautiful against

The creaseless silk of

My eternal bed,

I ask you why you do this,

Why I died this way,

Trying to exemplify

Perfect.

Pre-reading activity: In small groups, look through the magazines provided and find 10 examples of advertisements with people in them. Try to find both men and women.

Discuss what you notice about these people? Now, share your ideas with the rest of the class.

What does society say about how women should look? About how men should look?

Read the poem Identity and answer the questions:

1. Who is the speaker in the poem? What happened to her?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. List all the characteristics that would make the speaker perfect.________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. To whom do you think the speaker is talking? Who is the “you”?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. What do you think happened to the woman in the poem? Support your answer.

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Priscilla and the Wimps

by Richard Peck

Listen there was a time when you couldn't even go to the rest room around this school without a pass. And I'm not talking about those little pink tickets made out by some teacher. I'm talking about a pass that cost anywhere up to a buck, sold by Monk Clutter. Not that mighty Monk ever touched money, not in public. The gang he ran, which ran the school for him, was his collection agency. They were Klutter's Kobras, a name spelled out in nailheads on six well-known black plastic windbreakers. Monk's threads were more...subtle. A pile-lined suede battle jacket with lizard-skin flaps over tailored Levi's and a pair of ostrich-skin boots, brassed-toed and suitable for kicking people around. One of his Kobras did nothing all day but walk a half step behind Monk, carrying a fitted bag with Monk's gym shoes, a roll of rest-room passes, a cash-box, and a switchblade that Monk gave himself manicures with at Lunch over at the Kobra's table. Speaking of Lunch, there were a few cases of advanced malnutrition among the newer kids. The ones who were a little slow in handing over a cut of their lunch money and were therefore barred from the cafeteria. Monk ran a tight ship. I admit it. I'm five foot five, and when the Kobras slithered by, with or without Monk, I shrank. And I admit this, too: I paid up on a regular basis. And I might add: so would you. The school was old Monk's Garden of Eden. Unfortunately for him, there was a serpent in it. The reason Monk didn't recognize trouble when it was staring him in the face is that the serpent in the Kobras' Eden was a girl. Practically every guy in school could show you his scars. Fang marks from Kobras, you might say. And they were all highly visible in the shower room: lumps, lacerations, blue bruises, you name it. But girls usually get off with a warning. Except there was one girl named Priscilla Roseberry. Picture a girl named Priscilla Roseberry, and you'll be light years off. Priscilla was, hands down, the largest student in our particular institution of learning. I'm not talking big. Even beautiful, in a bionic way. Priscilla wasn't inclined toward organized crime. Otherwise, she could have put together a gang that would turn Klutter's Kobras into garter snakes. Priscilla was basically a loner except she had one friend. A little guy named Melvin Detweiler. You talk about the Odd Couple. Melvin's one of the smallest guys above midget status ever seen. A really nice guy, but, you know, little. They even had lockers next to each other, in the same bank as mine. I don't know what they had going. I'm not saying this was a romance. After all, people deserve their privacy.

Priscilla was sort of above everything, if you'll pardon a pun. And very calm, as only the very big can be. If there was anybody who didn't notice Klutter's Kobras, it was Priscilla. Until one winter day after school when we were all grabbing our coats out of our lockers. And hurrying, since Klutter's Kobras made sweeps of the halls for after-school shakedowns Anyway, up to Melvin's locker swaggers on of the Kobras. Never mind his name. Gang members don't need names. They've got group identity. He reaches down and grabs little Melvin by the neck and slams his head against his locker door. The sound of skull against steel rippled all the way down the locker row, speeding the crowds on their way. "Okay, let's see your pass," snarls the Kobra. "A pass for what this time?" Melvin asks, probably still dazed. "Let's call it a pass for very short people," says the Kobra, “a dwarf tax." He wheezes a little Kobra chuckle at his own wittiness. And already he's reaching for Melvin's wallet with the hand that isn't circling Melvin's windpipe. All this time, of course, Melvin and the Kobra are standing in Priscilla's big shadow. She's taking her time shoving her books into her locker and pulling of a very large-size coat. Then, quicker than the eye, she brings the side of her enormous hand down in a chop that breaks the Kobra's hold on Melvin's throat. You could here a pin drop in that hallway. Nobody's ever laid a finger on a Kobra, let alone a hand the size of Priscilla's. Then Priscilla, who hardly ever says anything to anybody except to Melvin, says to the Kobra, "Who's your leader, wimp?" This practically blows the Kobra away. First he's chopped by a girl, and now she's acting like she doesn't know Monk Klutter, the Head Honcho of the World. He's so amazed, he tells her, "Monk Klutter.""Never heard of him," Priscilla mentions. “Send him to see me." The Kobra just backs away from her like the whole situation is too big for him, which it is. Pretty soon Monk himself slides up. He jerks his head once, and his Kobras slither off down the hall. He's going to handle this interesting case personally. "Who is it around here doesn't know Monk Klutter?' He's standing inches from Priscilla, but since he'd have to look up at her, he doesn't. “Never heard of him," says Priscilla. Monk's not happy with this answer, but by now he's spotted Melvin, who's grown smaller in spite of himself. Monk breaks his own rule by reaching for Melvin with his own hands. "Kid," he says, "you're going to have to educate your girl friend." His hands never quite make it to Melvin. In a move of pure poetry Priscilla has Monk in a hammerlock. His neck's popping like gunfire, and his heart's bowed under the immense weight of her forearm. His suede jacket's peeling back, showing pile. Priscilla's behind him in another easy motion. And with a single mighty thrust forward, frog-marches Monk into her own locker. It's incredible. His ostrich-skin boots click once in the air. And suddenly he's gone, neatly wedged into the locker, a perfect fit. Priscilla bangs the door shut, twirls the lock, and strolls out of school. Melvin goes with her, of course, trotting along below her shoulder. The last stragglers leave quietly.

Well this is where fate, an even bigger force than Priscilla, steps in. It snows all that night, a blizzard. The whole town ices up. And school closes for a week.

Create a comic version of Priscilla and the Wimps

What are they, Stunned?

Kids can't tie shoes, do laundry. What have we done?

The Associated Press

Kids can’t tie shoes, do laundry, take a bus. What have we done?

New York—Second-graders who can’t tie shoes or zip jackets. Four-year-olds in Pull-Ups diapers. Five-year-olds in strollers. Teens and preteens befuddled by can openers and ice-cube trays. College kids who have never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope.

Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things simply the result of kids growing up with push-button technology in an era when mechanical devices are gradually being replaced by electronics?

Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter “literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else.”

Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her “kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger.”

Many kids never learn to do ordinary household tasks. They have no chores. Take-out and drive-through meals have replaced home cooking. And busy families who can afford it often outsource house-cleaning and lawn care.

“It’s so all laid out for them,” said Maushart, author of the forthcoming book “The Winter of Our Disconnect,” about her efforts to wean her family from its dependence on technology. “Having so much comfort and ease is what has led to this situation — the Velcro sneakers, the Pull-Ups generation. You can pee in your pants and we’ll take care of it for you!”

The issue hit home for me when a visiting 12-year-old took an ice-cube tray out of my freezer, then stared at it helplessly. Raised in a world where refrigerators have push-button ice-makers, he’d never had to get cubes out of a tray — in the same way that kids growing up with pull-tab cans don’t understand can openers.

But his passivity was what bothered me most. Come on, kid! If your life depended on it, couldn’t you wrestle that ice-cube tray to the ground? It’s not that complicated!

Mark Bauerlein, author of the bestselling book “The Dumbest Generation,” which contends that cyberculture is turning young people into know-nothings, says “the absence of technology” confuses kids faced with simple mechanical tasks.

But Bauerlein says there’s a second factor: “a loss of independence and a loss of initiative.” He says that growing up with cellphones and Google means kids don’t have to figure things out or solve problems anymore. They can look up what they need online or call mom or dad for step-by-step instructions. And today’s helicopter parents are more than happy to oblige, whether their kids are 12 or 22.

“It’s the dependence factor, the unimaginability of life without the new technology, that is making kids less entrepreneurial, less initiative-oriented, less independent,” Bauerlein said.

Teachers in kindergarten have always had to show patience with children learning to tie shoes and zip jackets, but thanks to Velcro closures, today’s kids often don’t develop those skills until they are older. Sure, harried parents are grateful for Velcro when they’re trying to get a kid dressed and out the door, and children learn to tie shoes eventually unless they have a real disability. But if they’re capable of learning to tie their shoes before they learn to read, shouldn’t we encourage them?

Some skills, of course, are no longer useful. Kids don’t need to know how to add Roman numerals, write cursive or look things up in a paper-bound thesaurus. But is snail-mail already so outmoded that teenagers don’t need to know how to address an envelope or put the stamp in the right spot? Ask a 15-year-old to prepare an envelope some time; you might be shocked at the result.

Lenore Skenazy, who writes a popular blog called Free-Range Kids, based on her book by the same name, has a different take. Skenazy, whose approach to parenting is decidedly anti-helicopter, agrees that we are partly to blame for our children’s apparent incompetence, starting when they are infants.

“There is an onslaught of stuff being sold to us from the second they come out of the womb trying to convince us that they are nincompoops,” she said. “They need to go to Gymboree or they will never hum and clap! To teach them how to walk, you’re supposed to turn your child into a marionette by strapping this thing on them that holds them up because it helps them balance more naturally than 30,000 years of evolution!”

Despite all this, Skenazy thinks today’s kids are way smarter than we give them credit for: “They know how to change a photo caption on a digital photo and send it to a friend. They can add the smiley face without the colon and parentheses! They never took typing, but they can type faster than I can!”

Had I not been there to help that 12-year-old with the ice-cube tray, she added, the kid surely would have “whipped out his iPhone and clicked on his ice cube app to get a little video animated by a six-year-old that explained how you get ice cubes out of a tray.”

Friends playing devil’s advocate say I’m wrong to indict a whole generation for the decline of skills they don’t need. After all, we no longer have to grow crops, shoot deer, prime a pump or milk a cow to make dinner, but it was just a couple of generations ago that you couldn’t survive in many places without that knowledge.

Others say this is simply the last gasp of the analog era as we move once and for all to the digital age. In 10 years, there won’t be any ice-cube trays; every fridge will have push-button ice.

But Bauerlein, a professor at Emory University who has studied culture and American life, defends my right to rail against the ignorance of youth.

“That’s our job as we get old,” he said. “A healthy society is healthy only if it has some degree of tension between older and younger generations. It’s up to us old folks to remind teenagers: ‘The world didn’t begin on your 13th birthday!’ And it’s good for kids to resent that and to argue back. We want to criticize and provoke them. It’s not healthy for the older generation to say, ‘Kids are kids, they’ll grow up.’

“They won’t grow up,” he added, “unless you do your job by knocking down their hubris.”

Pre-reading activity: in small groups of 4, illustrate the generation gap.

1. What is the writer saying about kids these days? What examples does he give to support what he is saying?

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2. What is the argument against the view that kids are stunned?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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3. Who do you think would be the most interested in reading this article?

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Previewing:

Ask students if there is anyone who can recount the story of the Gingerbread Man! What is the lesson of this story?

1. Why is this relationship doomed to have conflict?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Explain how the different facial expressions reveal this conflict?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Explain how the Gingerbread Man in the fable is different from the Gingerbread Man in the cartoon. How does this add to the humor in the cartoon?

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One Team, One Country page 50

Complete the KWL chart about Nelson Mandela

K what I know

W what I would like to know

L what I have learned

1. What is the bitter conflict that Nelson Mandela, as newly president, must try to resolve?2. Mandela decides to use the Springboks-the country’s rugby team-to help unite the

country. Why is this a risky decision?3. How does Mandela’s support of the team show other South Africans that it is time to put

differences aside?4. How does Mandela’s and the country’s fan support also help the Springboks?

5. This is a picture of the Springboks’ team today. Did Mandela’s plan work? How do you know?