Today I will be at the English Department course fair all day.
I'm sad to not see you on this rainy Monday morning to welcome you to the beginning of the last semester (hopfully) of your high school career.
Tomorrow we will have a chance to catch up and get things off to a formal start. Also, tomorrow I will return work from fourth quarter to you and be able to discuss semester grades, which will be posted by the end of the day on Wednesday. Please do not look at the grades on Infinite Campus and consider them complete - they are works in progress and may contain errors - nothing is official yet.
For today, I'm going to have you think about your place in history and what it means to be a person alive in these times. Why? We inaugurated a new president since we last saw each other. Barack Obama will be the president for the next four years - a very important four years of your life. We will also start to be more philosophical in our work this semester (more on that tomorrow). Let's take a look at what he had to say.
Please read his inauguration address. You can click here to link to it, or here, or here.
When you are finished, please think about his words and how they apply to you and your views of the world in which you live.
- Which issues raised by President Obama are ones that relate to you? Why?
- Which ones do you think are most important? Why?
- Where do you find yourself agreeing / disagreeing with him? Why?
- What do you think motivates these beliefs - what are the reasons for them? What are the beliefs he holds that he is implying but not specifically naming?
Also, please purchase the two books we will read this quarter: Life of Pi and The Stranger. You will need Life of Pi for class on Wednesday.
See you tomorrow!
