Tom Wayman, a Canadian author and professor, spent several of his years teaching English and writing classes (Wayman, “Bio", par. 2). Similar to any other teacher, Wayman invested his time and life in the next generation, giving students opportunities and figuring out the best ways to teach his material while also keeping everyone attentive. However, when an absent student shows up and asks whether or not they missed ‘anything’, the idea of shrinking his class into one word seems to reduce all of his teaching efforts into nothing. In order to convey his reactions and frustrations, he created the poem “Did I Miss Anything?” (Wayman, “Did I Miss Anything?” par. 3-4). While incorporating tone, juxtaposition, and repetition, Wayman effectively asserts the theme of how absence leads to a loss of opportunities in the classroom.
Throughout the majority of the poem, Wayman emphasizes a tone of sarcasm to demonstrate his annoyance as well as the important material that the student potentially missed, before shifting to a more serious tone. Initially, he portrays various exaggerated
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Not only does he believe that the question misrepresents the value of teaching, but it also seems to disregard the opportunities that can be taken from class. The sarcastic tone helps portray Wayman’s frustration and annoyance, and the juxtaposition emphasizes the differences between the two opposite types of answers to the question. The repetition of two words at the beginning of each stanza further accentuates the juxtaposition and the range of situations that could have happened when one was absent from class. In the end, “Did I Miss Anything?” serves as a reaction of the poet towards the common question asked by students, and it communicates the value and importance of one’s presence in the
While explaining the amount of work he put in to his various homework assignments, he states, that he attempted to establish and identity in his work that the teacher did not approve of his identity. The teachers’, for lack of a better phrase, verbal abuse bares down on the students in her class as she publicly humiliates them. The tone of theses dialogues and descriptive techniques used to enhance his real experiences, clearly demonstrate how the author felt during this time. He also mentions that this abuse also occurred outside of the classroom. Which as one could expect, made this experience all the more
Totally agree with you Scott eventhought at the beginning he didn 't sound that insane, cause for example sometimes others people have eyes, body parts , etc, that bothers us just to even look at. However, after he make the decision to kill the old man and worse to dismember his body that 's when he became completely insane, and because the guilt was so strong he coudln 't resist lying to the officers been scare that he was gonna get cut he just started confesing to his crime. So yea hi was completely insane after killing the old man, but at the beginning to me was something normal in
The central idea of the story is to never let anything stand in your way of doing what you love. Amare Leggette is an 8 year old boy, who has been blind his whole life. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and attends Charlotte’s Eastover Elementary school. To start off, Amare began his love for reading and education at a very young age (not letting his problem of being blind get in the way). He could talk in full sentences just at the age of three, and could name all the 50 states at age five!
Tone enhances the overall message of the poem and how it shows the different perspectives. How in the end we are all insignificant when it’s all said and done. The overall tone of this poem is sadness. Tim Seibles states that “So many years together you might think we would be kinder because, no matter what anybody says about anybody else, we were all born to this planet suddenly blinking under the same star and evening sky means the universe is floating.” This quote stated shows the overall message of how to treat others with kindness
As a College freshman in his second semester, I have learned to deal with the challenges that I have to deal with peaceful, yet exhilarating moment when my mind engages with an author’s thoughts on a page. As John Dewey states “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” What Dewey insists is from my early days in high school to my first year in college as a freshman, I wanted to know the full concept of English; however, I have now realized this subject would fill in my void of English with noteworthy complexities. This was not the case for most of my second semester in Montgomery College; I always had trouble in various parts of the subject, such as development in thesis statement, sentence writing and reflecting on previous essays. Writing a thesis statement had been one of my down falls in English.
Which is harder- keeping a relationship going or getting out of a relationship? While “Tips for Women: How to Have a Relationship with a Guy” by Dave Barry gives advice to women about the key to a successful relationship, “It’s So Hard” by Wanda Sykes discusses the struggle of getting out of a relationship. Barry and Sykes both use exaggerated truths and metaphors to create a laughable atmosphere for their readers. However, “Tips for Women” is funnier because Barry uses a man’s ignorance to justify the hardships of a relationship; on the other hand, “It’s So Hard” portrays one’s significant other as insensitive and uses crude humor, which makes the passage less comical. In the first section of “Tips for Women,” Barry discusses the communication
Writers and poets often spread deep meaning in ordinary things: bowl can represent our parents’ heritage, food can represent our relationships with people and chocolate bar can be a symbol of childhood or green tea can be a symbol of love. Those simple things can be really meaningful, but mostly all authors understood the meaning of those objects and the value of the moments that they had lived only after several years. To take things for granted is a human nature, isn’t it? Children usually don’t listen to the voice of their parents, but when they grow up they understand how precious those lessons were.
Through the poem’s tone, metaphors used, and symbols expressed the poem portrays that fear can make life seem charred or obsolete, but in reality life propels through all seasons and obstacles it faces. The poem begins with a tone of conversation, but as it progresses the tone changes to a form of fear and secretiveness. The beginning and ending line “we tell
Few people were contributing to the discussion because on that certain day it was on a voluntary basis. One of them was a Moroccan woman who spoke French, but enrolled in the class to improve her grammar. The narrator paints her as annoying, know-it-all type who was taking it too seriously. “By the end of her first day, she’d raised her hand so many times, her shoulder had given out” – this is how the narrator describes her ceaseless activity (463).
The essay “In Praise of the ‘F’ Word” by Mary Sherry explains some flaws Sherry has noticed in our education system. These observations are from her teaching perspective, and from her son’s own experience in high school. Sherry claims that some students that have earned a high school degree should not have because they are “semi literate.” She starts out her essay by stating this bluntly, but further explains herself as it goes on. Sherry is an adult literacy grammar teacher, and often faces students that wish they could have had a more beneficial experience in high school.
The speaker surfaces to reality in the last stanza when he speaks of how he spends his days now. The student who “knocks on the door with a term paper fifteen years late or a question about Yeats or double-spacing,” is not a procrastinating student, but a student who comes by to visit his former teacher. However, the student who “will appear in a window pane,” is really just watching him. Although this poem seemed to be just for humor, the reader could tell how delusional the speaker is when he shares that he is caught “lecturing the wall paper, quizzing the chandelier, and reprimanding the air,” (Collins 535). The teacher is still living in his teaching ways and has imagined a fantasy town with true descriptions of former
The central theme of media manipulation and the consequences of that are explained and uncovered in Ryan Holiday’s book Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. Holiday offers a brutally honest insight into the world of PR and journalism, one that many people can have trouble accepting and one that makes us doubt every form of media and advertisement around us and exposes the twisted relationship between online media and marketing. In the beginning of the book, Holiday admits that he is a liar, but asks the readers to believe everything he says. As mentioned in an article published by Poynter institute, “He has a point to make, but he 's like the addict warning of the dangers of drugs, all the while snorting a line and shaking his head at how bad it is” (Silverman, 2012).
My considered response is on the poem, “Did I Miss Anything?” by Tom Wayman. This poem is about a teacher that is answering the question, “did I miss anything”. The teacher does answer the question; however they do it in a roundabout, overly sarcastic and exaggerated manner. The teacher shifts from saying they did nothing while the student was absent to saying that they did everything in the next stanza. In my considered response I will explain the poetic devices I found in the poem.
Class Observation Summary #1 My two day observation took place at Summit Academy high school. It is a school of about 700 students located in the city of Romulus MI. The teacher, Mrs. Jill Carbone allowed me to observe the 6th hour class for two days for 60 minutes each day. This class is composed of 11 English language learners (ELL); ten of the students are Spanish speakers and one student is Urdu speaker.
Djimon Bailey 2/13/2018 English ii Honors Mr. Griffin Bad Teacher Essay There’s no doubt that a bad teacher can make school such a frustrating, embarrassing and bad experience, such student won’t learn much. Bad teachers often don’t have organization skills, class management, and professionalism.