We talked about Mark Twain yesterday and it was such a fantastic episode that I thought I’d check in with Mr. Twain again.
Intro Music
Oh there’s plenty of quotes to choose from, but I thought I’d choose one that is relevant to teaching.
Quote: The calamity that comes is never the one we had prepared ourselves for.
Comment: Twain exposes the illusion of security. He experienced many calamities toward the end of his life, a leading cause of his writing turning from fun to bitter.
This reminds me of my early years in teaching. I made sure I had everything prepared and written out because I knew I’d be spending much of my energy and time managing the oversized class I was teaching.
I made it a priority to be extremely prepared. I don’t recall the name of the story I was teaching that day, but the story was in the textbook and since it was the first time I’d used the textbook that day, I gave the simple instruction to go grab a textbook off the bookshelf.
I have no idea why students were in such a hurry to go grab a book for an assignment maybe a third of them would actually do, but a stampede ensued.
That’s one calamity I was not prepared for.
Listening to this podcast won’t prepare you for all the potential calamities in a classroom on any given day, but I can help you prepare the lessons you’re going to teach by urging you to head over to elacommoncorelessonplans.com and checking out our novel, short story, writing, and poetry unit plans. Link in the show notes.
Speaking of lesson plans, I mentioned my video course specifically designed for ELA teachers in the first podcast episode about Mark Twain. I’ve linked to it in the show notes, but sometimes we just want them done.
That’s why I combined most of the lesson plan units I’ve created into one pdf file and have made it available to you, my loyal listener. It contains complete units plans for 33 short stories, 11 poetry units, all types of writing, 3 novels, 2 Shakespearean plays, and an epic poem. You could literally not have to create a lesson plan for the entire year and still not get through everything.
Classroom Application
I have a quick lesson plan right now regarding using Mark Twain Quotes, although you can use this lesson for any set of quotations from just about anyone.
I know it’s summer and you’re probably not writing lesson plans on the side while at the beach or in the mountains, so just bookmark this and come back to it before you teach something by Mark Twain or whatever other famous author or person you want to teach.
Get students excited about reading Mark Twain by using some of his famous quotes.
- Instruct students to create a bumper sticker with their favorite Mark Twain quote. Use these or other famous quotes by Mark Twain. Making the bumper sticker simply requires using printer quality labels and a word processor. Let students decorate them, put them on binders, or decorate the room (be careful, however, they can be hard to remove).
- If one quote isn’t enough, try several quotes on a t-shirt. White t-shirts work best, but colors work in some instances. Use Sharpees, Paint, Iron-ons, or blood (OK, maybe not blood) and write down some of Twain’s famous quotes. Have the class wear the shirts as you read “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” or another Mark Twain story.
Life Lesson
Let’s get back to the calamity quote. We really can’t prepare for everything, but we can prepare what we can prepare. One thing I do to prepare myself for whatever calamity comes along is by forming good thought habits, which lead to positive emotions, which lead to necessary actions, and lead to positive results.
So start paying attention to your thoughts and start thinking better ones.
Links
- Free Video Course Sign Up : https://forms.aweber.com/form/34/1733538234.htm
- Mark Twain Quotes Blog Post
- Complete Lesson Plans Collections: https://trent-media.myshopify.com/
