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Showing posts from May 18, 2014

Extraordinary Discourse 174

Mixing Jar Love in the Classroom Al Zolynas —for my students Afternoon. Across the garden, in Green Hall, someone begins playing the old piano— a spontaneous piece, amateurish and alive, full of a simple, joyful melody. The music floats among us in the classroom. I stand in front of my students telling them about sentence fragments. I ask them to find the ten fragments in the twenty-one-sentence paragraph on page forty-five. They’ve come from all parts of the world—Iran, Micronesia, Africa, Japan, China, even Los Angeles—and they’re still eager to please me. It’s less than half way through the quarter. They bend over their books and begin. Hamid’s lips move as he follows the tortuous labyrinth of English syntax. Yoshie sits erect, perfect in her pale make-up, legs crossed, quick pulse minutely jerking her right foot. Tony sprawls limp in his desk, relaxed as only someone can be who’s from an island in the South Pacific. The melody floats arou