Mrs. Espree's AP and Magnet Classes in British & American Literature

This website is a publication of Mildred M. Espree, the new Advanced Placement, Secondary English Lead Teacher in the Houston Independent School District (www.houstonisd.org). I will carry the spirit of DeBakey High School for Health Professions with me whereever I go. It is a place where I have left a large part of my heart.

Welcome to my class! I'm Mrs. Mildred Espree. You're here because I think the most profound thing I can do with my life is to share my love of the world, my love of people, my love of language, and my passion for knowledge, wisdom, books and God with you, my most precious students. So if you're here, join me for one of my favorite blends of Antigua Coffee as I tell you what's in my heart and what my dreams are for you. You see a teacher always has dreams. When I dream, I dream about my students, about how you're so steeped in culture, and wit, and vision, and how it's bubbling over inside you as it tries to get out. I want to know your dreams, and if possible, do my part to help you realize them. So I will ask you to write reflective pieces from your hearts as often as I require a timed writing, an exercise in literary criticism, a dialectical journal, or a content exam. I believe that your writing will help you realize your dreams because I see the rendering of meaning through composition (writing) as a way of life. It is my way of life. I read books, I talk about books, I even dream prose and poetry in my sleep. One day, when I finish teaching and studying, I'm going to finish writing my memoirs. Meanwhile, I'll have to make more memories. I'm working at that too. I have a husband who was my high school sweetheart and we've been married for more than 25 years. His name is Rene Jerome Espree. My college-age son is Jared Hilary Espree, and my daughter is Genevieve Rachel Espree. Besides being a bas bleu (a literary woman), I have another passion, my family.

That's what I'm writing about. I have a very special name for my memoirs: The Graveyards of the Sabine. An excerpt from them has already been published in The Gulf Coast Journal of Arts and Literature, the literary magazine of the the University of Houston's Creative Writing Program. This autobiographical essay was first published in the January, 1995 Winter Edition. The completion of this work is my most persistent dream. In October 2004, I published a non-fiction piece called Magnificat, in Defining Moments, a literary publication of the Plymouth Writing Group at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. My goal for this next year is to get more of my poetry published. I have also produced four curriculum units as a fellow of the Houston Teachers Institute. Four of my poems are published in the Summer edition of English in Texas.

If you're reading this, then you're enrolled in AP English Literature and Composition, English III or IV Magnet, AP American Literature or AP Language and Composition. In these classes, the emphasis is on literary study and writing. If you're here, then there are some things you need to know about what's important. I want you to believe, as I truly believe, that the purpose of literature -- novels, stories, poetry, drama, is not only to communicate information (not this), but to help you live a more fully realized life, to help you appreciate the beauty, the ebb and flow of time and life, the power of your own written voice, and a love of philosophy. This class is about Literary Art, which is another way of talking about the "art" of living well. Don't you like to talk about life? I do. Over a cup of coffee, or my Cajun-Creole gumbo, or a good book like the Psalms of David or Isaiah in the Old Testament or the gospel of Mathew in the New Testament. But on any given day, I am also likely to read an excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita or Lao Tzu.

Literary Study in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century has been challenged and indeed transformed by critical knowledges from various quarters, knowledges that have called into question the ways of thinking about meaning, language, reading, writing, literature, culture...and because of this the boundaries of English as a discipline have been redrawn. What has happened over the past twenty to thirty years is what is called the history of postmodernity. Broadly understood, postmodernism is the theory behind the social changes that have been global in scope, among them the growth of multinational corporations, the emergence of a digital economy, the rise of consumer culture, the flexible reorganization of the exploitation of women and poor people, particularly in third world countries by first world countries, the replacement of colonial empires with new forms of imperialism, and the more recent end of the Cold War, and the New Age terrorism of September 11, 2001. In studying postmodern knowledges, we will situate our studies of the humanities within this historical frame and confront the differences among several critical re-understandings of concepts (among them -- meaning, difference, subjectivity, the relation between culture and society, milieu and history). We will examine texts both in the time they were written, and the time in which they were set. We will also deconstruct texts and examine them for what was not included in the discourse either because of history or the failure of consciousness. These ideas are best accessed and elucidated through the writings of author and professor, David Richter, whose ideas I have relied upon extensively in teaching these courses.

This class website is my creative way of getting you excited about English, keeping you up to date on assignments, and providing you with valuable online resources. Because a class site should be engaging, I'll present information that makes the subject interesting and fun, such as brain teasers or polls about current events. Of course, I'll want to include plenty of links so students can explore a wealth of ideas on the web. I would like to include my rubrics for grading here. So this site will be continuously UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

I also want you to give me useful links to include here as we develop this web site into a useful resource for years to come.

The website to access our first published literary magazine, Epiphanies is: iuniverse.com/bookstore/epiphanies

Perhaps we will see one or two plays this year as extra-curricular activities. In past years, classes have seen the ALLEY Theatre's production of Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, and the Ensemble Theatre's production of Crowns. Smaller student groups saw the Wortham Center musical Peter Pan and the ALLEY Theatre's Productions of Underpants and Glengarry Glen Ross. When possible, these activities will be scheduled on a Friday or Saturday evening. Your feedback about the kinds of activities you would like to do is most welcome.

Would you like to take a trip to the Texas Renaissance Festival for a day this fall, or perhaps to Dickens On the Strand in December? If so, talk to your parents. It can be done. It has been done. We will need many willing chapherones. Parents are invited!

Are you a Writer? The Scholastic Writing Contest is coming up in early fall. Start mining your journals for poetry, short stories and essays. AP Scholars or Creative Minds must create art. It's just not enough to analyze it well, although analysis, especially literary analysis, is a rather esoteric art form. Ask any professional critic!

Please give me a one and a half week window for grading your essays. It takes time to read closely and to provide you with useful and meaningful responses. I will use this page to notify you about changes in assignments and due dates.

Respond to what you read by writing editorials and sending letters to the editor. Use what you have learned in class, what you have read in the news magazines, novels, and what you have discussed in class to make a real difference in your world. Most people do not know the names of their legislators. Do you?

Summer Reading Exams will begin as soon as classes begin and will count 30% of your Cycle 1 grade.

What else will you read?

For AP seniors, expect to read the following novels this semester: In the Fall, you will read Beowulf, Grendel, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Le Morte d' Arthur, excepts from Milton's Paradise Lost I & II, and Sophie's World. Next Spring you will read Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl, and Beloved, by Toni Morrison. Also expect to read John Donne's Metaphysical Poetry and many Shakespearean Sonnets.

For AP juniors, expect to read The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter, and A Raisin in the Sun this Fall. In the Spring, you will read The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, and Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

Please note: These are not the only selections you will read. If you are an AP Scholar, I expect you to keep up with the assigned reading, to be prepared for in-depth discussion, to complete all assignments, to read independently and to consider meeting deadlines a part of your honor code. Much of what you will receive from this classroom experience depends on you. If you are just along for the ride or the glory, you won't find either here. Like most things that matter in life, much sweat is a given; for something extraordinary to happen with your learning, you must give it blood, sweat and tears. Ultimately, you may pass the course, you may even do very well, but what you really learn is not something I can discern in 90 minutes two or three times a week for nine months. The experience may create a new life in you, but it will also require of you a lifetime of nurturing...

What have your experiences with the literature taught you about the world? Now to what use will you put this knowledge? Are you wiser and nobler. Did it make you a truth seeker or a soothsayer? Are these new truths a source of wonder? Discover Plato's Ring of Gyges? How about the Myth of Err? Ever wonder what makes a true friend? Read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Want more knowledge of justice? Read Plato's Politics or The Republic.

"Glory be to God for dappled things..." Gerard Manley Hopkins -- priest and poet. By this, I mean each and every one of you! So did Hopkins.

Meet the Challenge! Define the

following words:Anastrophe, Apostrophe, Anaphora, Littotes, Synecdoche, Metonomy, and Rhetorical Tropes. Try asyndeton to speed up the pace and rhythm of your writing; try polysyndeton to slow it down a bit.

Provide examples of each one.

Seniors: Don't forget Tone, Diction, Imagery, Figurative Language (metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, analogy and symbolism), Syntax, Rhetorical Purpose and MEANING. These devices are useless unless they help you understand the main idea.

If you are junior, these words may be new to you, but you will learn these and many more this school year, and because you will take the AP Language exam at the end of your junior year and the AP Literature exam at the end of your senior year, you cannot afford to forget anything at all. Really? Yes I mean it. Forget nothing!

Questions?

Question #1: What can an introductory participial phrase do for your writing? In order to convey meaning?

#2 How about a gerund phrase, an adverb phrase and an appositive all together?

#3. What about infinitives? To what end are they useful?

Assignment #2: Answer the above referenced questions and define all terms and create your own examples by the end of the third week of school. This assignment must be typed neatly and turned in with the proper MLA heading.

ASSIGNMENT NUMBER # 3: For all students who read the website, you can earn extra credit after July 31st by sending me an autobiographical essay (two pages 10 pt. Arial) similar to the one I have written at the very top of this page. Tell me what brings you joy and why you read books. What? You don't like to read? Then why are you here? Are you hoping to discover something new about yourself and your life through literature? You most certainly will, but the course is not designed for the faint of heart, pardon my cliches; rather, it is for those in search of a little space in their classroom experience -- time to read and read and write and write, and still struggle to do something astonishing, just for themselves. What would that be? The opportunity to learn how to learn, and enjoy the journey for a spell. And although I wish I could say that there will be not tests, contests, deadlines, and what could be considered a somewhat frantic pace, I cannot.

We will have so little time to accomplish so much. And I'm just a still small voice who can do little without your will in this BRAND NEW AND NOVEL APPROACH TO SOME GOOD, OLD STUFF...

Please make sure you peruse the entire website. I'm making new recommendations for books to read for fun this summer, music to learn for life, and poetry to read for the spirit.

So after you scroll down to the picture, make sure you visit the other pages and this one again as well because I do like to revise and improvise.

A Little Improvisation here...

"Don't forget!: the art and beauty in life and literature are all in the details. Pay attention to the way Mexican Heather spreads low to the ground, flowering abundantly in mauves and lavenders. Not everything, nor everyone, reaches the heights. Some of us just have to blossom while we're earth bound. Contrast that to the Texas Live Oak. Made for this gumbo soil, it reaches for heaven, regardless of whether tis watered well, and such vegetation cannot, like those birches, well sung by the New Englanders, ever hope to bend in snow or ice, but instead must endure the floods and storms of our coastal lowlands, without even a tropical blush to its name. No, the oak is just tall and green, a canopy from the heat and for that Mexican flower, its shelter and nurturing parent, guarding what's not so tall, nor focused on the stars...and alas, there are those of us who fall somewhere in between the ground cover and the canopies. We grow because we must and blossom when nurtured well. We are the gardener's delight -- we gardenias and hollys, purple sages, and azaleas, plumerias and sago palms --our edges rough hewn and sometimes soft, sometimes, prickly, ofttimes flowering like Conferderate jasmine over an arbor when it's too hot for even the heartiest bouganvilla to grow.

Which tropical treasure are you?

Are you a sea urchin? Name your totem. Mine is the dolphin and the deer. Native Americans believed that totems were their spirit guides, ones they could call on whenever they needed help on this earthly plane. Many other pagan, tribal groups have similar beliefs.

But it is still wonderful that we can find expression of our best and worst selves in the animals we connect with the most. Ever wonder what that means? Ask me and I might tell you.

Scroll down.

Getting closer!

And closer.

Walt Whitman said to look for him under your boot soles... Emily Dickenson claimed she was Nobody and asked, Who are you?

Perhaps these lines have told you something about this course. Keep reading. Perhaps you'll learn more.

Lucinda Matlock called us degenerate sons and daughters, who did not know that it "takes life to love life." She knew, like most of us who have spent half a century or more on Earth, that the secret is in sauce, so to speak. She meant that sauce is substance, and that's exactly where we have to ground ourselves, because the sorrow is inevitable, part of the plan. So, are you a physical being with a spirit, or are you a spirtual being with an ephemeral, organic existence?

You decide! But here I am now in the flesh. This picture will tell you something. In this new age, we are all becoming more visual learners, but my question is this: Will this picture tell you anything truly important, or if it tells you anything at all, is that some thing enough?

Still reading? Good! That's the point!

Way to Go! Don't give up! I'm down here somewhere, buried and still.

Just one more turn and I should be here in just a minute!

This is a picture of me at fifty. I'm almost fifty-two now, and since December 12th, 2005, I am also a grandmother. My grandson is Damien Dominic Espree. He will call me Granny. He is the first grandchild and the first son of my only son, Jared Hilary Espree, who is also a high school English teacher.

My daughter is an accounting student and a Texas Longhorn. She will graduate in 2007 and go to graduate school and/or work for Price Waterhouse Coopers. I am also a Longhorn and a Houston Cougar. My son is also a Longhorn. I hope you're still reading.

Soon I will add many more pictures for you to see, but first, I want to see if you actually read all of this. It will tell me more about you than even you can imagine right now.

What should a good book do well?

Keep you in suspense, of course, or

at least,

Keep

You

Reading!

And reading,

and reading

and reading, and reading, and reading.

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A poet once said that life will ultimately teach us how to be most totally alone...sans friends, sans teeth, sans sight, sans touch, sans hair, pure spirit, ommmmmm, like the water in the river, plural, collective, total, sans persona, sans loneliness.... Another writer suggested that once this happens, we will be most loved, and perhaps a little more REAL, except to those who don't truly understand.

Another writer thought the best way to say goodbye, was to say it long before departure.

But like most who write to live, I don't ever want to say goodbye, not to earth or to anyone on it. Never did either. That's why I write. It's a way to survive death. Comprend?

Here, I might put a weekly brain teaser, for example:

What is negative capability?

Answer: Coined by Keats and also referred to as aesthetic distance, "Negative Capability," refers to the total objectivity of a writer wherein her view and judgments are withheld in her account of human experience. Just like it seems, however, negatively capability has spiritual overtones. It suggests paradox and reversals...

For example, in a picture, thinning hair might mean baldness in men or cancer in women. It could be a fashion statement, or not. In my case, probably so once upon a time...However, today I wear my hair longer and actually prefer to wear it that way when I can manage it -- always did actually. I say all this to urge students to never, ever, take anything for granted about a person. Given the exigencies and ironies of human nature, assumptions are almost always conditionally certain -- to be wrong! Likewise, if you are reading a person or a story, you may add up the facts and still not know anything at all. After all, what do we ever really know about anything? Or anyone? Ask God. He is the master of negative capability and also has a wonderful sense of humor!

You may reach me by e-mail at either mespree@houstonisd.org or Espree4@aol.com

Mail questions or comments to 303 Haymarket Lane, Houston Texas 77015

I love to hear from former students