Good morning.
Today’s agenda:
1. Final marks, registration for September
2. Discuss “Totem”
3. Homework If I were you, I would reread “Totem” carefully
and look for possible words and phrases that could be used for quoting.
* Thursday – Final test- Write about “Totem” with “ “
* Friday- There will be no class for you on Friday. I will be doing
final marks. Email me after 2PM on Friday, and I will email you back your final mark.
I might not email you back your final paragraphs.
Summer school begins Thursday, July 2.
I’ll be teaching EF5/6, same as this class but with different stories.
End of term, marks and report cards
You can get your official report card from the school.
Email Helena hgalic@vsb.bc.ca or Nancy at nsanghera@vsb.bc.ca
They will send you a scan of your report card by email.
I will put my marks in to the office on Monday, so maybe email them on Tuesday and see if they are ready.
Do you need your report card right away or can it wait?
Registration for September
Registration for September begins July 8. There will be more information to come, but I’m sure it will be similar to registration for April term- register online by email. There will be an email from the school explaining how to register. I don’t know who you should contact yet.
I do not know what I will be teaching in September. I should find out next week, maybe June 30th. When I find out, I will post it on our blog. Feel free to email me if you prefer.
For people who are registered for Eng 10, you have to pass this class EF 6 first. If you are not passing EF 6, you have no business going in to Eng 10.
When you move up to quickly, you can’t go back. Many students wind up in a high-level class like Eng. 10 or 11, and then they are stuck.
I caution people to be honest with themselves about their ability.
In summer I am teaching the morning EF5/6. That class is full with a 10-person waitlist.
“Totem” Hopefully, you read it carefully a couple of times. It will be our final test. A good paragraph with “ “ quoted text.
MY ROUGH SPEAKING NOTES
• “Totem” module
• Read aloud
look for words and phrases that you think might be important for quoting
keep a list of quotable words and phrases “ “
Reading a story for school – read it twice
1. First read - relaxed reading, looking for setting, characters, plot, conflict - the basics
2. Second read – looking deeper, symbolism, meaning, language, special words and phrases, figure out what the story is about, figure our why the writer wrote the story, figure out what they are trying to say to you as a reader– keep notes
Look at the title of the story? meaning
“Totem”
• A totem is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe.
Totem pole
• http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/jasper-totem-pole-provokes-first-nations-concerns-1.1086266
• genre –, type of writing
genres of non-fiction
-history
-biography
-self-help
-sports
-politics
-cooking
genres of fiction
- mystery
- crime
- romance
- sci-fi, science fiction
- horror
- magic realism
• Talk about magic realism
-a kind of fiction, mix of realistic setting, things happen in the story that couldn’t happen in real life
- not realistic story
- mix of realistic element and fantastic elements
-e.g. novels A Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
movies Birdman, Life of Pi
Try a magic realist movie and see if you like it.
• Symbolic (a)– symbol, one thing represents something else
Symbolism (n) symbolize (v)
• Work from “Totem lit essay”
• Irony – the museum people don’t regard the totem as being historic
Don’t respect it
Don’t understand it
Don’t value it
It is a problem to be solved, not something to be embraced
• Humour, funny , ridiculous, black humour, cynical humour
• NOTES
Setting- Southwest Alberta, home of Blood and Piikani tribes
(http://bloodtribe.org/)
(http://piikanination.wixsite.com/piikanination)
no totem poles from Alberta, they are West Coast- symbolizes disregard for diversity of cultures and traditions of FN peoples
Southwest Alberta Art Gallery and Prairie Museum, temporary shows,
“The current show… featured contemporary Canadian art from the Atlantic provinces… It’s called ‘Seaviews,”
outside geographical context
“show on Northwest Coast carving” out of place
“gargling” sounds of the body
“chuckling”- first hint of unreality
“do something about the problem”
“It would be a fine world, she pointed out, if paintings or photographs or abstract sculptures began carrying on like that.”
First Nations should be exhibited as static history, not as inconvenient reality
“The problem… is that the totem pole is not part of the show, and we need to move it someplace else.”(1)- metaphor for place of FN in Canada
“Find some temporary place”- metaphor for Reservations
Signs, symbols
“bothering some of the patrons” paying supporters of an institution
patrons demand director do something about the ‘problem’
take no responsibility to learn or see, tolerate, embrace, or do anything
-Canadians look to the government to solve these problems
“sortof like a chant. Maybe it’s Druidic.”
“this movie about Druids on a flight from England to New York” interpreting FN through European lens
- try to remove the totem pole
- “It’s really stuck”
- “It appears… that it goes right through the floor”
- First Nations peoples - deep roots in the land, always been here
“Do what you have to do, but do it quietly” (2)
- symbolic of government action in Canada toward First nations people
Residential schools – lack of public knowledge, students didn’t learn about this, education
cut pole down “screaming”, pain, anguish
wood chips damaging displayed art
-next day “grunting” (121)
“Those grunts were pretty disgusting”- of the body, FN stories
distasteful to upper class
“cut the pole down and then cover the
stump with pruning paste. That way it won’t grow back.” Final solution to get rid of First Nations for good,
reminds me of The Final Solution – Nazi program to remove/kill all Jews in Germany
OR reminds me of China today with Muslim minority, Tibet
”you can’t hear it much from the basement”
Idiom “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Settlers, White people
singing “a high, wailing, nasal sound and then fell back into a patient, rhythmic drone that gave Walter a huge headache just above his eyes and made him sweat.”
Who will take responsibility for this problem?
government solution “Provincial” or “more serious than that”
Jimmy – leave it there
“We can’t just leave it there,” said the director. “We need the space for our other shows, and we can’t have it singing all the time, either.”
***
READ TO END
“Maybe if we ignore it, it will stop singing,” said Jimmy. “It might even go away or disappear or something. Besides, we don’t have any place to put it. Maybe, after awhile, you wouldn’t even notice it ... like living next to the train tracks or by a highway.”
“Sure,” said Larue, who was tired of cutting down totem poles and trying to find space for them. “Couldn’t hurt to give that a try.”
The totem pole stayed in the corner, but Jimmy and Larue were right. After the first week, the singing didn’t bother Walter nearly as much, and, by the end of the month, he hardly noticed it at all.
Nonetheless, Walter remained mildly annoyed that the totem pole continued to take up space and inexplicably irritated by the low, measured pulse that rose out of thebasement and settled like fine dust on the floor.
***
patrons, director, workers only chara
