To Serve Pancakes?

Last Saturday, our chapter of Sigma Tau Delta sponsored a Pancake breakfast fundraiser at our local Applebees Restaurant. It was a huge success! Student representatives from Sigma Tau Delta transformed from literary critics, poets and avid book readers to busboys and waitresses for the day. We served faculty, other students and the nearby community delicious pancakes as part of a effort to raise money for the Sigma Tau Delta National Convention in St. Louis, Missouri next month- and raise money we did! As an organization, we sold nearly 100 tickets for the fundraiser and as a result of our fantastic customer service and a job well done by the entire STD 'staff' we were able to raise $650.00 in just a few hours!

We arrived at Applebees at 7:30 in the morning for a preservice training session where we learned the ins and outs of the restaurant business. How to seat guests, how to take an order, how to call out an order to the fantastic chefs in the back and even how to bus the tables was part of our training. After a few practice rounds, our waiters and waitresses were ready for the ensuing crowd, quickly scribbling down orders for pancakes, sausage, coffee, juice , you name it! It was a lot of fun to take on this new role for the day, and place orders for everyone from our own best friends to the many faculty members who came to support.

So much planning and preparation went into this day, so a special thanks to everyone involved- but a special thank you to Danielle Katims and Becky McGowan who were in charge of the event.

Now that we're all such pancake experts, it is probably about time for our honor society to open our very own restaurant chain... perhaps a 'Poetic Pancake House'?
















...or maybe we should just stick to our first love, literature!

To Review Tricks?

I recently finished reading a book by Ellen Hopkins called Tricks. The book is based on true events and follows five teenagers as their lives spiral downward and they eventually become part of the prostitution industry. I am a big fan of books by Hopkins, and the first time I read one of her books, Crank, I was only a sophomore in high school. She writes about mature topics, such as drug use, but does so in verse rather than in prose. The style of the text was what originally drew me to her works. However, I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable stocking texts like these in my classroom when I am a teacher. Has anyone else read any books by Hopkins? How do you feel about the mature content? Is there a certain age at which these books would be deemed acceptable to have in the classroom library?

To Make Valentine's Day Cards and Crafts?

TCNJ students whiled away their weekend raising money to go to the St. Louis conference. We`re still presuming no news is good news. While we wait, we make stuff to sell in the student center the week before Valentine`s Day. So stop by our lunch time tables and show your love!

To Teach the Movie or the Book

As an English-teacher-in-training I pretty much question daily what the best method is for teaching books. I've always thought that using a movie of a book as an end-of-unit treat is fine but I've recently been introduced to the idea that people do teach books strictly by their movies.

Now there is a quote that I live by which is: Never judge a book by the movie adaptation.

Still I just sat through an English class full of Seniors who watched Shelley's Frankenstein instead of reading it (and this viewing was supposed to make up their full exposure to Gothic Literature). Now I do not question the teacher because she made an excellent lesson out of what Gothic Literature is and I think that she would have lovingly made the students read the book if time permitted... but the excessive requests of School Boards and State Standards could fill many blogs all on their own.

But I think its interesting to think about whether or not you can really teach a book by its movie?

Personally, I think there are renditions of movies that I think could be useful for visual learners who struggle with reading. There are times when I feel overwhelmed by a text and desperately seek summaries and movie-versions because they give me a structure to follow, a mental picture to return to when I feel stressed out, and the 'lifeline' of a movie can make me feel secure enough to keep reading.

Still, I do not think that showing someone a movie gives them the same experience as a book and I'm not sure I would want to replace a book entirely with a movie and consider it thoroughly taught.

Does anyone else have experience with this or opinions about the scenario?

- Cara Mac Neil

To Start a New Semester?

I love the start of a new term -- when all sorts of learning is still potential rather than actual. Today, I told a student to "just e-mail me your draft and let me look at it; after all, I don't exactly have a backlog of grading tasks." Ah, the start of a new term, when I do not have a backlog of tasks and still have energy and enthusiasm for work!

This term, I'm prepping and teaching a topic I have not worked with (except for Jane Austen's novels) since my first term in graduate school (Ronald Reagan was still president and the Iron Curtain was still in place). It's refreshingly different to be teaching Romantic Era literary works, instead of Medieval and Early Modern texts. Students are finding the language of the texts more transparent, and students are finding that much of their own original poetry was written in the Romantic tradition, even if they had never yet realized this.

No matter which literary period I teach, I find connections to the world in which we live today, and the Romantics are helping me get in touch with the social reformers: those folks who see an injustice or a tragedy, and try to both bring it to our attention, and to arouse us to tackle the problem. Anyone else taking a class that resonates with their world?

To Decide if Walt Whitman Wore Levi's?

I'm sure, by now, many of you have seen the relatively new line of Levi's commercial's featuring poetry from America's indefinite and undeclared poet laureate, Walt Whitman. If not, here is a link to one of these commercials which features a reading (allegedly done by Whitman himself) of Whitman's iconic poem, "America".

The question I raise here (and I'd love to hear what people think) is whether this blending of advertising and poetry is ethical. Having been deceased for over a century, there is no way Whitman could have signed off on this project. On the other hand, Levi's is a quintessentially American company; Whitman has certainly become one of the greatest figureheads of America. Also, Levi's were in fact a company making jeans during the time Whitman was living and writing poetry.

There is nothing (that I can see) flagrantly offensive about the content of the commercial, nothing which spits in the face of Whitman's message or work. The commercial certainly has a historical feel to it and an attitude of independence and rugged individualism that is often associated with historic America. Still, the question remains, is this misappropriation of Walt Whitman's poetry? My question extends beyond just this commercial, which I am referencing as a departure point.

Does literature exist as one of the (relatively) unexplored frontiers of commercialism? When is it okay to mix media this way, to juxtapose an individual poem and individual video to create new meaning? How sacred do we hold the author's intentions and work? What responsibility to we owe to our great late authors? The forerunners of modern literature? And perhaps most importantly: Did Walt Whitman wear Levi's?

-Todd Petty

To Keep Ourselves from Getting Overextended?

The New York Times published an interesting article today about high school honor societies that posed a central question: how much is too much? One thing that caught my attention, of course, was explicit mention of Sigma Tau Delta's daughter organization the National English Honor Society. If high school students have accustomed themselves to graduating with six, eight, or even nine honor society honor cords, they will certainly feel the same pressure to participate in as many societies as possible in college.

The NYT article questioned how many of these societies were as active as they should be and how many were simply "place-holders" or "credentials." I know that we strive to be an active chapter that provides meaningful activities and experiences for students; but these students appear to be increasingly over scheduled, as do many of the faculty involved as well.

My personal resolution for this coming year is to keep myself sane and appropriately scheduled, but that doesn't mean that I want to give up any activities or responsibilities. The obvious answer, then, is to make all of these things work together toward a set of common goals. I'm certain that this is a common resolution among students and faculty at The College of New Jersey.

With that in mind, the Alpha Epsilon Alpha chapter of Sigma Tau Delta and the Office of Academic Affairs will sponsor a leadership workshop for honor society leaders Monday, January 18, 2010. Our goal for this workshop is to help students to develop organizational strategies so that they may find opportunities to work together, to work smarter rather than harder, and to effect lasting change in our institution through partnerships and skillful planning. So STD students, send your friends in other organizations to the registration site so that we can all start working toward the goals we share.

And Happy New Year to all of you!

Dr. Felicia Jean Steele