David Rickert

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“Icarus” – Edward Field

April 17, 2015 By David Rickert Leave a Comment

Icarus

Only the feathers floating around the hat
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore
The confusing aspects of the case,
And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.
So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.

“That nice Mr. Hicks” the neighbors called,
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. And had he told them
They would have answered with a shocked,
uncomprehending stare.
No, he could not disturb their neat front yards;
Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:
What was he doing aging in a suburb?
Can the genius of the hero fall
To the middling stature of the merely talented?

And nightly Icarus probes his wound
And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,
Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for trying.
He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,
And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;
But now rides commuter trains,

Serves on various committees,
And wishes he had drowned.

-1963

Filed Under: Greek myths, icarus Tagged With: greek myths, icarus, teaching greek myths


Welcome

Bruegel’s “The Fall of Icarus”

April 16, 2015 By David Rickert 1 Comment

icarus

I’ve always likes this painting. It’s a great supplement to the Icarus myth, and a great lesson in composition.

The title is The Fall of Icarus, which would make you think that Icarus would be the most prominent image in the composition. But he isn’t. In fact, you have to look around a little bit to find him. The most prominent figure in the painting is the farmer plowing, followed by the ship.

So what’s going on here? Icarus’s fatal flaw is said to be hubris, or excessive pride or self confidence. He was too cocky, so he flew too close to the sun, his wings melted, and he fell into the water and drowned. Game over.

But this painting teaches us a great lesson for when we get a little too big for a britches and think that we are more important than we actually are. Icarus is too self-centered for his own good, and probably believed that the sun revolved around him (in pre-Galilean days, not as far fetched as you might think.) But in reality, our lives matter very little to most people. The farmer never looks up, the ship probably never stops, and life goes on even though Icarus’s doesn’t. It’s a lesson that plenty of self-centered people need to learn – we probably wouldn’t think overly highly of ourselves if we realize how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. The Greeks new this, which is we they had their gods.

Filed Under: Greek myths, icarus Tagged With: bruegel, icarus, teaching myths


Welcome

Anne Sexton: “To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph”

April 12, 2015 By David Rickert Leave a Comment

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph

Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well.
Larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.

-Anne Sexton

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anne sexton, greek myths, icarus


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Clip Art – Muslim student reading

December 14, 2013 By David Rickert 1 Comment

clipart3colorI have never seen a girl wearing a hijab in any educational clip art. The results of a search for “Muslim children clip art” and “Muslim children reading” were entirely religious in nature. Since I have so many Muslim students, I felt like they needed to be represented doing regular school activities. So here it is.

In preparation for the drawing I asked one of my Muslim students where you could buy hijabs online so that I could get some ideas. She told me her mom always bought them at the grocery store. The other students said the same thing. I decided to just use the one she was wearing. The outfit is pretty similar to what she had on too. I loved the Keds.

In the future I’d like to do some more work with patterns. I have seen some beautiful hijabs that I’d love to work into a design.

If anyone uses this, let me know if the size works. And please tell people where you got it.

For more fun cartoons for educational purposes, visit my store.

Filed Under: clip art, Uncategorized Tagged With: clip art, education, english, language arts, muslim children, muslim girl reading


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Why Students Don’t Read (And What To Do About It)

May 15, 2013 By David Rickert 5 Comments

bookIn college I worked at a local book store where one day we received a humorous couple of phone calls.

“Do you have the Cilffsnotes to Hiroshima?” the boy on the other end asked. The book was read in the local high school, and the students had to buy it for class. Unfortunately, there are no Cliffsnotes to Hiroshima (probably because the book is so short), so he hung up.

Two minutes later, the same kid calls back. This time he asked, “uh, do you have Hiroshima?”

This story was a lot funnier before I had students like this in class.

I have a fair number of students that don’t read the books that I assign. I know that many do the reading, but some don’t. The fact that this is in an AP Literature class make this all the more unbelievable. Why sign up for an AP class if you don’t want to read? Most say they just want the weighted grade or the college credit.

If these students didn’t read and were failing as a result, then I could rest assured that the students are being punished for their misdeeds. However, most of the kids that don’t read aren’t dumb; they are actually very smart. Smart enough to come to class having read summaries of a book, prepared to eagerly listen to class discussion so that they can fake their way through actually reading it. And it’s especially grating that many of them take pride in getting through school without reading books. 

So the simple answer to the question of why students don’t read is simple: because they can.

This is probably my biggest headache. However, in order to deal with this problem and not get extremely angry and frustrated, I try to keep a couple of things in mind.

1. Don’t take it personally. If a student has made up their mind that they aren’t going to read books in my class, there’s a good chance that this isn’t the first time that they’ve done it (I teach seniors). They have honed their ability to get by in school without reading for years now. I might inspire them to read something, but I’m not likely to change patterns of behavior that have become habit. And chances are, if they had another teacher, they would be doing the same thing.

2. This doesn’t reflect poorly on me. If I went to the office and complained that my students weren’t reading, no one would say “you obviously aren’t a good teacher.” They would say, “You obviously have lazy students.”

3. This is not a problem I am ever going to solve. I have tried every method I can think of to outwit kids that don’t read,and sometimes have a pathological obsession with catching the culprits. I have never come up with a solution that absolutely punishes those who don’t read while rewarding those who do. Daily reading quizzes make more work for me and don’t always catch those who only read the “study guides” online, and can punish those who read, but may not understand the text. For the most part, all I’ve come up with is ineffective solutions that only make more work for me. And if I don’t catch the non-readers, then all I’ve done is made the original problem worse.

I have to accept the fact that this is a problem that I’m never going to solve. That doesn’t mean that I should ignore the problem completely; I can always take steps to curb the problem as much as I can.


4. Whether or not students read is their choice. Pretty much everything in school is, actually. When I give a test if students ask if they have to take it, I say no. They can always choose not to do it. They are free to not do work, but they aren’t free from the consequences of their choice. And that’s really where I get stuck with kids who don’t read; I feel like their should be a negative consequence for choosing video games over books. I can tell them that later in life their lack of effort will catch up to them, but who knows if that might be true. It might or might not, and I’m not likely to get the satisfaction of a student coming back to me ten years later to tell me that I was right all along.

Anyway, I really don’t want to live in a world that’s consumed with this kind of bookkeeping where if you make a mistake then you will pay for it. That doesn’t seem to be a very kind thing to do for anyone, and is not likely to encourage kids to read. In fact, it is more likely to encourage them not to read even more.

5. Don’t let those who don’t do work take away from those who do. This is a common problem that I know a lot of teachers face: a couple of hairballs in a class distracts you from the kids who are actually there to get an education. But I’ve learned to never base my instruction on what the lowest common denominator will or won’t do.

Dealing with plagiarism is a good parallel here. There are times that I have spent an hour trying to catch a kid plagiarizing. Sometimes I’m successful and sometimes I’m not. But either way I get mad at myself for having spent so much time on one kid that won’t do what he should. Plagiarism, like not reading, is another problem that I won’t solve completely. I read somewhere that trying to completely stop plagiarism is like vaccinating an entire village for one sick person. I do what I can, but I’m not going to spend more whole day trying to catch those who cheat.

If I really wanted to, I could figure out a way to stop kids from not reading. However, it would drastically change the way I teach. I would spend much more time on trying to catch kids not doing work than actually teaching kids. The second is more important, and if I spent too much time on the first, I become very frustrated and discouraged. If you focus too much on the negative in teaching, you won’t allow the positives to guide you through the day.

For some fun comics that might encourage students to read, click here to go to my store.

Filed Under: education, Uncategorized Tagged With: AP literature and composition, cheating, education, kids who don't read, plagiarism, teaching english


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