Politics and the Funny

I am already wincing, waiting for John McCain's new attack ads. Apparently he has decided to take a "new" approach in his campaign ads...which, by the way, already seem pretty negative. So, if these new ads are going to be the first real negative ads, I'm actually bracing myself for them.

Now, on to the funny. Stephen Colbert has a hilarious segment about the presidential candidates and their Shakespearean connections. You can check it out at: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/186547/october-02-2008/shakespearean-candidates---stephen-greenblatt

I've been reading English-As-A-Second Language (ESL) Teaching and Learning (2006) and was interested to find out that over the next twenty years, second-generation Hispanics will make up a majority of the Hispanic population. This is really interesting if you consider that second-generation Hispanics are mainly bilingual in Spanish and English, whereas first-generation Hispanics are mainly Spanish-only. That makes a big difference in terms of ESL students and education. Also, native-born Hispanics are more likely to go to college and earn higher incomes than first-generation Hispanics.

My Honors students just finished reading and explicating "Courage" by Anne Sexton and tomorrow they'll be working on "Tonight I Can Write" by Pablo Neruda.

My College-Prep students begin The House on Mango Street tomorrow. We've been reading a selection of short stories out of the HRW Elements of Literature series and I've found that "American History" by Judith Ortiz Cofer and "Exile" by Julia Alvarez are great examples of multicultural literature from that textbook that connect well with the issues in The House on Mango Street.