My 8th grade students just wrapped up a video project for Religion and here are two of their creations, based on the music of the Catholic band Popple: Little White Square: Papal Disco: The class would love to hear what you think of them, so please leave comments on the videos or on this post. And please spread the word. Thanks, and enjoy!
Need to inspire someone to read? Here’s a fantastic video from Ocoee Middle School: Tip of the Hat to the Educators group on Diigo.
[Note: This is the beginning of a novel I abandoned many years ago. I worked on it, off and on, for over fifteen years and it never got any better. I have notebooks full of backstory, history and characterizations, along with maps, sketches and unfinished scenes. Why dredge it up now? Well, I guess I felt sorry for it, sitting there alone for so many years. A story is meant to be heard, even a bad story. This one is full of clichés, melodrama, and too much exposition,...
St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life is one of my favorite spiritual classics. If you’re looking for a good read this Lent, I highly recommend it, especially the ten meditations St. Francis provides. At one time, I thought I would try adapting those ten meditations for today’s junior high students (age 10-15). I even had the thought to turn them into videos for the iPod generation. I’ve since had to put that idea on hold indefinitely, but here’s the first video I made, for what...
O my all-merciful God and Lord, Jesus Christ, full of pity: Through Your great love You came down and became incarnate in order to save everyone. O Savior, I ask You to save me by Your grace! If You save anyone because of their works, that would not be grace but only reward of duty, but You are compassionate and full of mercy! You said, O my Christ, “Whoever believes in Me shall live and never die.” If then, faith in You saves the lost, then save me,...
[Note: This is an update of an article I wrote last year for Catholic School Chronicle] Fasting, praying and almsgiving are the three penitential practices that we are asked to engage in during Lent. In addition to fasting and abstaining with the rest of the Church on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent, we are also challenged to make individual sacrifices appropriate to our own spiritual condition. However, before we choose something to give up for Lent, it’s important to assess our current spiritual state: What habits...
Like most people, my eighth graders struggle with trying to understand what hell is and how to avoid it. In the following video, Fr. Barron offers a clear and succinct explanation: Tip of the hat to Fr. Christensen of the White Around the Collar blog.
Today I rediscovered one of my favorite albums, Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy, by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. I’ve loved NGDB since I was in my teens. One of my best high school memories is seeing them in concert at the Fox Theater in Billings, Montana in the early 1980s. It was a small venue, and I’ll never forget when two of my friends stood up on the theater seats to surf as the band played a Beach Boys tune. I haven’t heard the music on...
When my eleven-year-old daughter left the house yesterday to go to the mall she was still a little girl, but she came back a teenager. The lobes of her ears were pierced by ruby earrings. This is a new parenting landmark for me. I don’t think I like it. I liked it when she and her brothers and sister each learned to walk on their own; it meant my arms could start functioning normally again. I loved it when they all moved past the diaper stage; it meant...
As I try out the site’s new look, I wanted to see what embedding a video looked like. Here’s a great public service announcement:
While reading Peter Kreeft’s book, Socratic Logic, I came across this anecdote that all teachers will appreciate: There is a story that Aristotle, after one of his lectures, was disappointed that his students had no questions afterwards, so he said, “My lecture was about levels of intelligence in the universe, and I distinguished three such levels: gods, men, and brutes. Men are distinguished from both gods and brutes by questioning, for the gods know too much to ask questions and the brutes know too little. So if you...
In reverse order, here are the best 10 books I read this year: Quest for the Living God by Elizabeth Johnson – an intelligently written survey of where modern theology is heading, for good or ill; I can tell that one reading of this book is not enough His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik – great mixture of history and fantasy Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza – hard to believe a genocide like this took place in my lifetime; with all its tragedy, still an uplifting testament...
Classics Club #32: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevesky
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Classics Club #21: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
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Classics Club #20: She by H. Rider Haggard
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Notes from the Upside Down by Guy Adams
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Cries from the Earth by Terry C. Johnston
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Books and Reading / Chapter-a-Day Read-Along
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