Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Cleaning Out the Curiosity Pile #1: "The Cops Are Outside"
This weekend my father and sister dropped by to visit. Partly in preparation for the occasion, and partly due to the need to clean up for an impromptu dinner party in honor of my grandmother's birthday, I had the chance to sift through a lot of papers that I had brought home from school for various reasons, and not just the typical ones like grading or filing. Nope...there were a few rare and interesting papers in there that I thought merited closer examination. Let's examine the first one together, shall we? (Why not?)
The first paper in the pile is folded tightly into quarters. Upon unfolding, one notices the paper is divided into two parts. The top third or so is a photocopy of an old Family Circus cartoon, one of those Sunday cartoons that goes on beyond the regular single circle/panel. It is dated "Sunday, September 10, 2000" at the top in small capital letters. Unlike a regular Family Circus (or its ever-popular Dysfunctional online variant) this cartoon has no dialogue or caption to speak of. It appears a teacher has deliberately eliminated them leaving empty speech bubbles behind for students to fill in. Underneath the cartoon, and taking up the rest of the page, are a series of empty lines where students are expected to narrate their version of the cartoon after completing the phantom discussion between the characters.
The student who finished this exercise left it conveniently anonymous and if I were slightly more tech-savvy (and less afraid of King Features Syndicate prosecuting me for potential copyright violation), I would eventually like to post this cartoon online with the student-provided dialogue. For now, I'll just post the narration as an interesting commentary on how my students might view a given scenario differently than from what I, or more likely, Bil Keane, might expect.
(narration)
"The cops are outside", replied grandma.
"Why are they outside", said Billy.
"I think they broke in someones house", answered grandma.
"they didn't break in this house because we don't have nothing," replied Jeffy.
(/narration)
NB: Only Jeffy and Grandma are pictured in the cartoon.
This weekend my father and sister dropped by to visit. Partly in preparation for the occasion, and partly due to the need to clean up for an impromptu dinner party in honor of my grandmother's birthday, I had the chance to sift through a lot of papers that I had brought home from school for various reasons, and not just the typical ones like grading or filing. Nope...there were a few rare and interesting papers in there that I thought merited closer examination. Let's examine the first one together, shall we? (Why not?)
The first paper in the pile is folded tightly into quarters. Upon unfolding, one notices the paper is divided into two parts. The top third or so is a photocopy of an old Family Circus cartoon, one of those Sunday cartoons that goes on beyond the regular single circle/panel. It is dated "Sunday, September 10, 2000" at the top in small capital letters. Unlike a regular Family Circus (or its ever-popular Dysfunctional online variant) this cartoon has no dialogue or caption to speak of. It appears a teacher has deliberately eliminated them leaving empty speech bubbles behind for students to fill in. Underneath the cartoon, and taking up the rest of the page, are a series of empty lines where students are expected to narrate their version of the cartoon after completing the phantom discussion between the characters.
The student who finished this exercise left it conveniently anonymous and if I were slightly more tech-savvy (and less afraid of King Features Syndicate prosecuting me for potential copyright violation), I would eventually like to post this cartoon online with the student-provided dialogue. For now, I'll just post the narration as an interesting commentary on how my students might view a given scenario differently than from what I, or more likely, Bil Keane, might expect.
(narration)
"The cops are outside", replied grandma.
"Why are they outside", said Billy.
"I think they broke in someones house", answered grandma.
"they didn't break in this house because we don't have nothing," replied Jeffy.
(/narration)
NB: Only Jeffy and Grandma are pictured in the cartoon.
