The Next Big Thing

When you write a persuasive essay, the goal is to bring people over to your way of thinking, but it's a tricky trick. If you fail to be convincing, you may just push them further away. Your goal on your essay today was to write a convincing and compelling letter to the editor of the school newspaper. Hopefully it was passionate and well-written, but in order to be convincing, it should have also compelled the reader through cleverly chosen facts and powerful opinions. The point is, in order to sway your reader, you must make good choices. Avoid the effort to be right. Maybe the movies you love or your favorite artists are the best things to ever happen to our world, but save your breath, no one will believe you. Tell someone you've just heard the best song ever and their response will be, "Yeah, that's great, BUT HERE, LISTEN TO THIS." People want to lead with their opinions, not follow. Tell someone that you hate lima beans and, as if it were required by law, the response is ALWAYS, "You've never had them the way that I make them!" (And I don't want to, either.)

But our goal in life should be to expand our horizons not constrict them, so okay, I'll try your dang lima beans.

As we discussed in class, your new task is to choose a song that will raise awareness, protest injustice or show that there are people in our world who care. Choose wisely. Choose a song that makes a focused assessment of an issue. Avoid the vague. Don't choose a song just because you like it. What does it mean? Can it help to change the world? Does it make one step back and really THINK?

Here's the fine print: Choose a song that makes a statement. It can be a song from today or from a hundred years ago. The song must represent a cause, an injustice, a political event - something that makes the listener really think. The song must be appropriate for school and must have Stowell Approval.

You must then choose a way to present this song to the class.

     A PowerPoint

     A poster

     An artistic representation

     A project of your choosing (with Stowell Approval)

Have fun with this, but make it matter.  Make us "see the light."  Change our minds. Make a difference.

Think Different

One of the topics of our first week together is How to Think. I realize that at first this may sound a little dumb, but in class we will learn to think a bit differently and to think things through. Here’s an example. This is the color red:

Simple. But if I were to ask you the color of the girl's hair in the painting to the right, “Red” would still be your answer. In no other context is this the color red. Maybe it’s auburn or ginger, but to most people this is simply a shade of orange. Yet we would never say, “Look at that girl’s beautiful orange hair.”

In the English language we learn to think out of the box. It’s why the language is so rich and colorful, and the most used language in the world. In this class we will explore language on a daily basis. We’ll learn to think a bit differently. In the early 1990s, Apple computers put this philosophy to work with their Think Different campaign. (That phrase is actually grammatically incorrect, btw.) They used famous people to show how thinking out of the box can change the world. Okay then, here we go everybody, let’s change the world.

This graphic is not animated. Nothing is really moving. Your eyes (your brain) play tricks on you.  Yep, the brain is an amazing tool.  Bring yours to class everyday!

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