Letters, Literature, and Portraits

In response to President Obama's speech to students our class wrote letters to the President. Using proper business letter formatting, some of the missives expressed thanks for the message in the speech or congratulations on becoming the first African American to be President.

Other letters addressed issues like students' concerns over the upcoming health care legislation or worry about how money was or wasn't being spent to fix our current economic situation.

Shane was concerned about international trade with China, Cristina expressed her thoughts on the length of the academic school day, and Jeremy broke from the crowd and wrote a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger instead about how budget cuts are affecting us all.

Our letters are being sent out tomorrow so I hope to hear soon that perhaps some of the students receive a reply.

While our class reads The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, a few students are taking on the challenge assignment of reading Matt de la Pena's book, Mexican White Boy. A coming-of-age novel set in National City, San Diego, Mexican White Boy deals with issues of identity and race, issues that parallel what we are studying in the Secret Life of Bees.

This morning we spent time identifying the character traits of Lily and Rosaleen, two of the main characters in The Secret Life of Bees. Afterwards students picked from a list of characters from the book and created portaits to represent them. Each portrait had to include a quote that exemplified their character. Hannah depicted Lily and chose this quote to show us who Lily was, "Standing there, I loved myself and I hated myself. That's what the black Mary did to me, made me feel my glory and my shame at the same time."