It's Actually Not That Complicated; Tuesday, Second Period, 11/01.

[died8yearsago]

Last night had been a very late one for Rosa, and she honestly didn't feel like teaching very much this morning, but the problem with a class about movies is that it made wanting wing it with a movie day a little more....well, complicated.

Ironic, since that was kind of the movie they were supposed to talk about that day, that the whole class title was based on, but Rosa didn't want to get into it that day.

Luckily, she found an elegant solution.

"Today," she said, "we'll be watching a movie, but it's not a Nancy Meyers movie. It is one of the greatest movies ever to be made in the entire existence of the world, but that's beside the point. Consider this sort of a test: we're going to watch this other movie, and compare and contrast: what similarities do you see with a Nancy Meyers film? Are there any fundamental differences? Would you classify this as a Meyers-esque film, why and why not? All that good stuff. And I've got candy, too, if you aren't sick of it yet."

And, if you hadn't guessed it by now, the movie was definitely exactly what you should have thought it was.

American Inventors, Tuesday, November 1, 2022

[heroic_jawline]

Well, no one was an animal today, or was talking to someone they thought was an animal. Steve was here for small, achievable victories this week.

"Hello, class," he said with a tiny smile.

"Hope you all had a fun Halloween with the candy falling from the sky," Tony said. "We'll be getting right back into it with an agricultural inventor and innovator, George Washington Carter."

"If the name sounds familiar, it's because he's one of our most famous 20th Century Black scientists," Steve added.

"He advocated for a rotation of crops for farmers in order to prevent the soil from being depleted. Like what happened during the Dust Bowl," Tony said. "Which, for those unaware, was one of the greatest ecological disasters in this country. Where a combination of over-farming and drought caused the soil to erode and created these huge, choking dust storms."

"It wasn't great," Steve said with the tone of someone who'd lived through it. Because he'd lived through it. "Cotton, in particular, is a crop that leaches nutrients from the soil and since Carter was located in Alabama, he could see the problems and then the results of his recommendations."

"His work brought sweet potatoes and peanuts to US farmers on a larger scale to replace those nutrients," Tony added. "Which doesn't seem like a lot, but it was a major boon to the farmers of the south."

Steve nodded. "Because part of the reason they wouldn't let fields recover between cotton harvests was the farmers needed the money. These were crops that helped the soil and could feed people. Carver found more than 300 different uses for peanuts--everything from food to shaving cream."

"So, today we'll be giving you all a challenge," Tony said. "Come up with something unique you can do with a sweet potato."

Libraries and Books: Highlights and Dangers, Tuesday

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

"Right." Jon nodded. "So today we're looking at a few research tools you can use with books." He waved at the computers in the room. "There's search engines, of course, any number of them. But some libraries might be older, or more niche, and be left with ancient tools like a card catalogue. Also there are tools like concordances and bibliographies that are kept in books themselves and that may not yet have been digitized." He grimaced. "Or it's entirely possible things have been left purposefully mismanaged."

He pulled up a narrow drawer. "This is a card catalogue drawer. I couldn't carry an entire thing. Look through it, get an idea how it works, and let me know if you have questions. This," he plopped a large book on the desk, "is what a concordance looks like. It's an entire text boiled down to each significant word and all the instances in which it occurs. And this," he plunked down another book and opened it to the middle, "is an annotated bibliography. It lists books on a particular topic, along with brief overviews and sometimes reviews of each. You can come up and look at these, or you may look up similar texts on your computers. Then write me a brief annotated bibliography of around ten things in a single topic, even if that topic is what you've read this year, and write up catalogue cards for each book as well."

Yes, there was actual work this week!