Getting Ready For A New School Year (And Seeing Lots of Dog Walkers in Jackson Heights)

I love this photograph (even though I took it). If you look at the image carefully you may notice I used “tilt-shift”. By shifting focus and adding a blur effect, the images become “toy-like”. I’m gearing up for the new school year so I’ve spent time these past few weeks planning and creating lessons. I do have a TpT store  I mainly sell English, Humanities, and ESL lessons for middle and high school students - but my philosophy and ethics lessons are suitable for undergraduate and adult learners. I use pictures like the one I took (above) in my classroom - taken from “What’s Going On In This Picture?”, a learning experience from the New York Times, I get my students engaged in visual literacy. It’s amazing what you can do with ten minutes. Ask your students what’s going on in this picture? Zoom in. Go further. What details do you notice? What makes you say that? My ESL students build their vocabulary skills because we’ll label what we see using the picture word induction model. I’ll also make them create a caption. Google Docs or Slides are great for this type of project. I make a template with the picture inserted into the Doc or Slide and make a copy for every student (using Google Classroom). After we label the picture we build sentences and categorize the objects we’ve found. As an added activity, we predict what’s going to happen next. Or, for creative types, we write a short story. Let me know in the comments how you use pictures in your classroom to encourage thinking and writing.

PDF Copy for Printing

Image + Poem: "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie"

i love puppies

sleeping;

puppies

love i

text and image © Greig Roselli

Short Story: "Immanence in the Backseat"

"Immanence in the Backseat" is a short story by Greig Roselli (© 2007)

Ashes and Snow, Gregory Colbert

    
Driving, we saw dogs. We saw them on a rural highway, in a white Volvo. The driver was an adult. The sky was partly cloudy. We had just driven past the firehouse. In the passenger seat I could tell there was a dog and in the backseat was a pack of dogs, all no older than Old Yeller or Prince Hal or the Prince and the Pauper. I could discern them through the tinted brown of their window. The dogs in the back moved in syncopated motion. Their heads jerked back intermittently. It was a combination of the spurting movement of their car and their own unmitigated energy. Our brown discolored Toyota was filled with music; my friend and I were talking about a novel I had been reading for my graduate seminar on Animals and Literature. It was about a woman and her chance, violent encounter with a cockroach. Kind of like Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

Eulogy for My Dog Maggie: 1990-2006

Maggie on a walk

When my dog Maggie died, I wrote her eulogy.
     When a girl reaches that age of sweet sixteen uncertainty, my girl has reached the age of mortal certainty, her skeleton worn out from a teenaged span of use, her gauzy eyes barely seeing, her ears clotted with wind, her matted hair uncombable — she sits in the living room panting, refusing water, wagging her tail nevertheless.
     She was a Humane Society special. $50. That’s what she cost. Including her shots. Nick was 9. I was 11. Brad was like 16. Brad, Nick and I picked her from a mixed bitch’s litter, the babies all scrunched up beneath her teets, we picked the one — eyes still kinda closed — who had the personality we were looking for, independent but lovable.  Mom was concerned, “How big is she going to get?”  The vet assured us this dog could be a house dog (She ended up being an outside/inside dog).  She was a Springer Spaniel mix; we didn’t meet the father. And the mother is a strange memory -- because why would I remember her, the dog who bore my baby when I myself and my family would become a mother to this mutt? Maggie is the name we gave her after severe brainstorm in the living room.  We called her many titles over the years.  Fat girl, we called her. Pretty girl. Morga. Maggie. Morgus. Thing. Baby. Hey, baby. Mooga. Maggie Roselli. Maggie the Magnificent.
     Her first night, we were afraid she would "let loose" all over the house, so we put her in the bathroom and shut the door. She cried all night. I slept in the top bunk, being older — and Nick slept on the bottom. Both of us heard Maggie’s cries. She hated being by herself. Even till the end. She hated it. She would prove to be a dog who followed you wherever you went. Just to be with you. So she wouldn’t be alone.
     She would get on a kneeboard in the Tchefuncte river just so she would not have to wait alone in the boat. She followed Nick and I to the bus stop — and sometimes attempted to get on the bus!  She went with me into the woods and we got lost a few times.  We were off the beaten path; we had gone into the woods to eat blackberries; I turned to her — as lost as she was — “Maggie, where are we?” She just looked at me, crushed chlorophyll frescoed into her face.
     We finally got out of the woods, onto a country road a few miles from the house.  She didn’t complain.  And just a few years ago — in her later years — she followed Zack and I to town.  It’s a long walk to town but Maggie insisted she come along.  When we got to the river she walked down the algae-covered concrete steps and got soaked; she loved it.  But when we got to the hamburger shop near the main drag and I tried to get Maggie some water from the clerk, Maggie wanted to get inside into the Air Conditioning.  Her tongue was panting so painfully, that it almost reached the ground.  But I wouldn’t let her.  She looked like a sea hag come from her morning bath.   She waited behind the paned glass door and at the first moment she got she squeezed past a customer and showed up by my side.  She scared a lady exiting the restaurant. “Get that thing away from me!”  I have to admit, inadvertently, Maggie looked menacing.  I pretended she wasn’t my dog, but when the owner asked whose dog it was, Zach turned me in, “It’s his dog,” pointing directly at me.  I picked up Maggie and cradled her sloppy wetness to my dry shirt and walked out.  We called a cab; they charged a canine tax.  Bastards.  Zach loved it.  So did Maggie.  I don’t think I let Maggie follow me on my walks ever again.