#Bring Out the Best in Yourself

[mkaneshige]

Mark's Musings #48

If you’re not the best that you can be, then you’re not trying hard enough.

[donnatroyyyy]

Dick genuinely doesn’t have a favorite sibling, he’s like the parent that says “I love all my children equally” and you believe it, he actually loves them all equally. He’s been trying to convince them that for the last few years, they don’t believe him, so he does what he has to, he says it’s Steph and let’s her deal with it.

[reigningmax]

The "Daniel is only hyped cause he laughs and smiles a lot" is genuinely the worst take you can have about this lmao.

Daniel Ricciardo is, along with Lewis, THE most recognizable face and name in motorsport outside of the F1 fans bubble. Therefore, he is extremely valuable in terms of marketability. He is also an 8-time race winner. For that to be dismissed and to say he's average as if the past 2 years erased all his accomplishments is insane lmao.

Being an accomplished driver AND one of the most marketable athletes in your sport makes you valuable as fuck.

[suddenrundown]

oh man i always forget moreau happens in season 3. you know what else happens in season 3? scheherazade. gone fishing. season 3 eliot has 99 problems and moreau may be most of those but hardison’s at least one of them. 

[itspileofgoodthings]

Well, I actually have the most mundane of questions, but it’s been so long since I’ve been in an English class that I feel like I’ve completely forgotten (and I’m curious how you do it): how do you go about reading a book as a class? Do you assign them the chapters to read at home and most of them actually do it? Or do you give them class time to read? Do you have the kids who try to spoil the rest of the book for the class? Basically, how does one teach a book in the year 2024?  😀

And do you have your students annotate inside their books? (I know the English teachers in my school require the students to do that, and I get why, but I inwardly shudder every time I see a student marking up a page.) 

Haha I love this question because I too am always asking myself how DOES one each a book in 2024?

It’s sort of a combination. I absolutely assign reading every night (almost) unless it’s Shakespeare or any play in which case we read it all in class. But for a novel there’s a couple chapters a night. I read aloud to them a lot too. Sometjmes I make them read aloud to the whole class, rotating kids who read. Sometimes I assign a chapter to be read in class silently with questions or quotes due at the end of the reading. Sometimes I put them in groups and make them read aloud to each other. There’s no one way that works for sure and of course ultimately I have no control over how much they read and I’m not naive enough to think that most of the reading assigned for homework doesn’t get skipped most of the time buuuuuut.

My bottom line is that I believe it’s my job to get excited about the actual text itself (easier for me in some cases than others but overall pretty easy because it does fill me with excitement) and then commit to taking them on the journey of the story with me. And my goal—that I’m sure I often don’t reach—is to make that experience so much more fun if you have actually read. And the way that I teach is pretty text heavy which is why I always make sure I’ve read the chapters for the day and am not just relying on my memory because the way I do it is just sort of absorbing it all up like a vacuum-cleaner, schwooooop, and then either pulling stuff out of the reading to look at directly or directing them to do the same thing. So the big thing that I have going for me, if any, is buy-in. Is getting kids excited about actually reading the actual text. I also speak often and passionately about the evils of sparknotes etc. not because they help kids get better grades or whatever but because they present you with the husk and shell of a story, stripped of all that makes it interesting, and that by reading that alone they’re reading something so dry and dull and are not achieving what I always want them to achieve —which is, have an Experience with the Literature.

Again, it never works perfectly by any stretch and there are so many ways I want to explore in my quest to get better at it but overall I think, at my very best, I can create this wave of energy and excitement in the story itself which is the most organic and ultimately most helpful way to get them to want to read.

Also no haha. I don’t let them annotate! Though occasionally kids DO of course. But sometimes they bring in their own copies in order to do that. The spoilers absolutely happen and are annoying but I sort of get by it by moving on very quickly and/or talking about how it’s often not the ending but how you get there that makes it interesting. Because that’s just true!

[spaceratprodigy]

one of my favorite things abt how faith reacts to max in fallbrook arc is her being directly faced with her own hypocrisy

[gothyanki]

That time I was still dithering between Karlach and Lae'zel as Vin's canon romance option and then... A SURPRISE CONTENDER APPEARED in the form of Wyllyam (surprising in that while they were bezzie mates, they hadn't had any romantic interaction up to that point). Look at themmmm! Rude of Vin to be compatible with so many people, honestly.

don't get me started on the matching/mirrored cheek scars I will SHOUT

[medics-secret-shipfic-folder]

TBTF in a nutshell:

Cheavy: Haha I don't care if I'm a piece of shit!

Cmedic: Hey this is a really big problem and you need to change.

Cheavy: Yes you're absolutely right I need to change how did I NOT see this.

[deus-ex-mona]

[sad shipper noises]

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

> posts a fic i'm proud of about dark subject matter to do with five and his abuse, which came from a very personal place, on AO3

> gets a comment

> it is, Course, a hate comment from an anti, demanding on anon to know why i would 'spend my value as a writer who's read Legacies' to write it

> roasts their ass like a thanksgiving turkey and immediately goes to write more of the thing

[liesandnights]

Someone said that the reason we like the enemies to lovers trope is because we love the idea of someone seeing the worst parts of us and falling in love with us regardless of them (maybe even because of them) and I just-

[dyketubbo]

goes insane thinking abt how c!clingyduo are codependent to its best and to its worst

[cainware]

Physically ill over the thought that if Wolfwood were to be reincarnated, it would be Vash's luck that he never finds him until he gives up looking completely and then seeing that familiar face in the crowd hits him like a truck

[dimitrscu]

i want malenia to have unbreakable poise… and all her attacks one shot you.. and she heals back to full, so to add insult to injury as you’re dying you see her health bar go back to 100%.. and then she tea bags you as the “you died” screen pops up and a laugh track starts playing

[mifunebooty]

Only thing i have to do to move on from how bitch ass messy 5th grade me was that totally was out of her control is to kill that bitch

[butchhatred]

I hate having shitty object permanence😭😭😭😭😭