Hailey Towne Senior Project

  10:00 am Voices of Color does not meet today, so I will just be reading today. I made a lot of progress in my book yesterday, and I am hoping I can get even more done today since that's all I need to do. I also need to see if the second book came in yet, since it was supposed to come in today.  1:00 pm I haven't been checking in hourly because there's really nothing exciting going on, I am just reading. I added a few more discussion topics to the list, and I hope to be able to add in a few more by the end of the day. I have made a lot of progress so far today, I can't believe how good this book is! (Anyone reading this HAS  to read "The Water Dancer" by Ta-Nehisi Coates) 3:00 pm I know that this was a short and boring blog today, but there hasn't been much to really talk about except that I have been reading the whole time, and no one wants to read a repetitive blog, right? I am hoping to finish up the novel within the next few days so that I can jump ri...

  10:00 am Today it will be just me in Voices of Color because Shauna could not make it in today. The students will be working on a response and using the rest of class time to work on their college essays. While students do this, I will be reading through some more of "The Water Dancer" and helping with essays when the time comes (although they do seem to work pretty independently). Class does not start for another hour or so, so I will be filling this time working on what a typical class day looks like in Voices of Color.  11:00 am I read through three chapters of the book in the last hour and added some discussion topics to my brainstorming list. I am not going to be able to finish the novel as soon as I had hoped, but I will have it done by the end of the week. I still need to read through the second book that I chose, but it should take me only half as long to read that one because it is a graphic novel with lots of pictures and there aren't as many pages, either. Cl...

This week, I learned that it takes a lot more work than I thought to design a curriculum for a class. It was a lot of tedious work like making spreadsheets and researching novels, but the most time consuming so far has been reading through the first novel I chose “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and coming up with discussion topics. Although it’s a lot more work than I thought it would be, I am really enjoying myself. I like that I always have something productive to be doing and I feel good after I get something done, even if it’s a small task. One thing that was kind of upsetting to me this week was that no one signed up for the conference slots I had set up to help the students in Voices of Color with their college essays. I guess I can’t be too upset about it though, I probably wouldn’t want to talk to some random senior about a personal piece of writing either. I am also a little discouraged about how long it’s taking me to read the novel, but I am hoping that I will be able...

  9:00 am This morning I spent some time going over what I have in my brain storming document to see if there were any key factors that I left out. My goal today is to read through the next 2-3 nights of reading and come up with discussion topics for each class. I think that I might do less than four hours today because it is so nice out and I want to get outside today.  10:00 am The only reading I've done so far is finish chapter 5 which I had started reading yesterday but hadn't gotten the chance to finish. It's tough to get anything done today because it's so nice out so I am gonna go read outside for a while and hope I don't get eaten alive by black flies.  11:00 am I read through a few more chapters and added some more discussion topics. I didn't get a lot done today but I also only did two hours so I am not too upset about it. This brings my total hours up to 24 hours so far.

  10:00 am Todays blog is going to be pretty boring, as my goal by the end of Tuesday next week is to read through "The Water Dancer". So, I will be spending the next few days reading. I am still going to check in every hour to give how many pages I've read and such. My goal for today (which might be a long shot) is to finish the first section of the novel, which is divided up into three parts. We'll see! 11:00 am I decided that I'm going to read in increments and every time I finish a nightly reading, I will go into my Google Document and write down discussion topics for that class after the reading. I just finished the first section so I am going to brainstorm now.  12:00 pm I am still reading, nothing really exciting to report. I'm really liking the book, it's definitely not what I expected but is definitely keeping me interested. I might not finish as much as I wanted to today, but I still have a few hours left so who knows. 1:00 pm Today hasn't be...

  10:00 am I got here kind of early today because I felt restless at home and wanted to get a head start. I'm not sure yet exactly what I'm going to be doing today, so I am going to start by seeing how long the chapters are in "The Water Dancer" and map out how long it will take to read the whole novel. Heidi luckily had a copy in the library, and she also has a huge stack of other books to choose from too which is wicked rad. 11:00 am During the last hour I went down to the library and got "The Water Dancer" from Heidi and got to skim through some of the other books that she had picked out. They all seem pretty interesting and intriguing, but I think I want to stick my choices for now. I got to skim through "The Water Dancer" to get a rough estimate on how long it will take to finish it, and it seems a little long. I am hoping that when I go through and map everything out it will come out okay, but we will see. I will be spending the next hour div...

  10:00 am I woke up late and ended up missing the first few minutes of Voices of Color this morning. I haven't really been feeling great the last few days and I've been really tired. Today I am going to talk with Shauna and discuss what I have come up with so far and adjust/proceed accordingly. Just to recap, I've chosen two books, and written paper topics for each and a project to go along with them. After I discuss with Shauna, I will most likely have my goal for the day set into place. 11:00 am So far I have come up with a final project idea for the book that the class is currently reading. The novel that they are reading is "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng, and I wanted to make the project fun so, of course, being me, I incorporated art into it. My idea is that students are going to use their imagination to reconstruct a scene from the novel using any medium of their choice (as long as it's fun and colorful!) like paints, crayons, colored pencils, ...