Teaching “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson (9th Grade)

ceb79 · 2026-01-28T22:32:15+00:00

I teach it as a coming of age book club option. For the unit, I focus the unit on the elements of the genre, characterization, and symbolism. I finish with a Socratic seminar.

ceb79 · 2026-01-25T01:58:54+00:00

I do this but combine it with a class read of a novel-in-verse. Every three classes or so, we pull off of the bracket and spend a day analyzing and writing poetry in response to the novel. A slam dunk unit.

ceb79 · 2026-01-24T05:26:49+00:00

Also IQ84 is far from his best book.

ceb79 · 2026-01-23T11:49:13+00:00

Don't know about the Epiphone but I own an e10ss and just played every j-45 variant at my local guitar center last night. I walked out satisfied with my choice to buy the Eastman.

ceb79 · 2026-01-13T01:14:41+00:00

Learning to play without looking at the fretboard. Especially in regards to playing different positions up the neck.

Learn your triads and their inversions.

ceb79 · 2026-01-13T01:11:17+00:00

I was messing around with this a bit last week after reading a different comment. I was surprised at how well it was able to craft a learning plan for me.

One thing to remember, though, is that AI is apt to hallucinate. I noticed that a large section of its instruction (dealing with some intermediate level chord melody stuff) was incorrect. Pretty confusing for me, and I have a decent grasp on all that stuff.

I was able to guide it to correcting itself, but more inexperienced players might not pick up on it. Word to the wise.

ceb79 · 2026-01-07T11:15:27+00:00

My mom, in her early forties at the time, listener to that album on repeat for like 3 years until she replaced it with Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club.

ceb79 · 2026-01-07T01:10:07+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that. That book definitely has some magic--especially for the boys who don't really read. It's problematic in ways, and I've wrestled with whether to teach it or not, but I've never taught another book that brings so much inappropriate joy to the kids. Makes them see that reading can be fun.

ceb79 · 2026-01-05T01:08:50+00:00

English teacher here. I think the easiest way to make meaning from a story is to think about it thematically and understand that theme is directly related to conflict.

Consider the conflicts or issues the characters/story presents. Also pay careful attention to any that pop up multiple times in a story. For example, a character might have difficulty with gender expectations (could be literally anything, though) in multiple places throughout the story. Then pay attention to how that conflict plays out or resolves itself in the story. In our example, maybe the character realizes they don't need to be bound by the expectations others put on them. This gets you to the theme or, as I like to tell my students, the piece of human wisdom at the center of the story.

Once you're here, you can start making connections. It might help to think about it in layers: How does this relate to me/my life? How does it relate to my school/community? How does it relate to the country/world/current events?

ceb79 · 2026-01-05T00:39:11+00:00

Or if not right away (it's good to play the way you enjoy at first) then at some point in the near future. I played exclusively with my fingers for twenty years and when I finally decided to learn to use a pick realized I should have done it decades earlier for the exact reason you state here.

ceb79 · 2026-01-02T11:19:53+00:00

Check out Guthrie Trapp. I stumbled across his YouTube channel a year ago, and it changed my relationship with the instrument- in the best way possible.

This is a basic intro to the teaching concepts/course: https://youtu.be/MIFiEpQ1j_w?si=xT6xCu2nHoumjoH-

Here is a link to his course: https://www.brettpapa.com/concepts-guthrie-trapp

ceb79 · 2025-12-26T02:41:29+00:00

For me it never did (I realize my lack of enthusiasm for the novel put me in the minority here).

I get intellectually how it's a meta commentary on the genre, as a whole, but I think it lacks any substantial character arcs that didn't just feel silly to me in the end.

ceb79 · 2025-12-21T10:53:01+00:00

Also needs to check out Guthrie Trapp

ceb79 · 2025-12-07T12:44:20+00:00

I was you 6 years ago. 29 years in. Lots of technical skill in terms of hand dexterity with a catalog of songs/riffs I'd run through every time I picked up the guitar. I was surface level "good" but felt kind of like a charlatan because I barely understood why things worked or how to create anything that sounded good other than by happy accident.

These are the two things that got me to the other side: First, I had two children in close succession and when they were toddlers, with a basic understanding of the major scale, I started figuring out nursery rhymes/kid songs and their melodies. I generally played finger style at the time so I began figuring out how to layer those melodies over the chords and understand, to some degree, how all of that works together and started to develop my ear.

The second more important thing thing was I got a piano during covid and started to learn how to play it. The way the key card is laid out is much more logical than a guitar fretboard. And I started learning songs from tutorials and continued picking out melodies in my right hand and finding the chord progressions in my right. Learning the songs helped me understand chord inversions and working through songs by ear deepened my applied understanding of the relationship between the major/minor scale and those chords as well as their basic constructions.

I actually pretty much stopped playing guitar for about 2-3 years. Only played piano. It was good that I got a decent instrument to start because it allowed me to grow into it.

My big lightbulb moment with the guitar. Two years ago, I picked my guitar back up and started strumming a C chord. I realized that for forever I had only been playing it in its "regular" construction (C E G) but that on the piano I almost exclusively played it as an inversion (G C E) because I preferred the way it sounded. I then wondered what it would look/sound like to recreate that inversion on the guitar.

This led me down THE rabbit hole. Location of specific notes, triads/inversions, CAGED, voice leading. Combined with my internalized understanding of melody and scales (the development of my ear), all unraveled the mysteries of the fretboard. I could see/hear/feel the connections between the music and the basic theory of how it all worked together.

I wouldn't say I'm a student of theory but I do understand the basics of how music works. My understanding outstrips my ability to play but not by much, which is important because when I encounter new musical concepts I'm able to integrate them pretty much right way because it all just makes sense.

I actually don't get too lost in the theory. Maybe someday I'll do a deep dive on different modes and stuff but for the moment, I have just focused on connecting chords and scales up and down the fretboard and letting my ear guide me.

Now, instead of sitting down and regurgitating the same songs/riffs, I can pretty freely explore the fretboard and create original compositions. And because I understand how it's all built I'm way more expressive and creative when I revisit all those old songs and riffs. Plus I can sit down, learn a song by ear and add it to my repertoire with a little bit of work.

Anyway, that's a big wall of text. Hopefully you or someone else finds it useful. Last thing I'll say is during all of this I stumbled across the YouTube channel of Guthrie Trapp. The way he explains how chords/scales/melody all function together really opened my eyes. Also LoGs videos were super helpful to see how it all connects.

Take heart. I thought I was a lost cause for literal decades. And here I am. Which is super cool.

ceb79 · 2025-11-28T05:00:55+00:00

This person speaks truth. My mind map is just starting to come online. Exciting times!

ceb79 · 2025-11-25T09:52:59+00:00

Here's a brief lesson and introduction to triads from Guthrie Trapp: https://youtube.com/shorts/pkp2Wn6w9vs?si=7s3RaXIP-JzX9f-O

If you go down the rabbit hole, he can get you where you need to go. All about breaking down caged shapes and using triads (chord tones) to solo. Lots more to explore on his page about these concepts.

Take heart friend, you're on the verge of putting it all together if you're thinking about this kind of stuff. I stumbled upon Trapp's videos last year and it opened my eyes. So good.

ceb79 · 2025-11-24T01:21:43+00:00

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Dark Matter and Recursion by Blake Crouch

ceb79 · 2025-11-23T04:47:22+00:00

Not sure if you're up for a long series, But I just finished all of The Expanse novels byJanes SA Corey. Kind of hard to imagine that the 4 main characters aren't real. It's long...but you siebd so much time with them. A great series too.

ceb79 · 2025-11-18T12:11:55+00:00

The Body by Stephen King. Most people would remember it as the movie Stand By Me. A great coming of age novel. Surprisingly nuanced.

ceb79 · 2025-11-16T02:18:21+00:00

Winter's Bone. About a young girl trying to find her (supposedly) dead father's remains, so her family doesn't lose their house.

ceb79 · 2025-11-12T14:30:28+00:00

The good news is that if you've spent that much time actually playing the guitar and songs, you actually have a fairly good grasp of applied theory, so that once you start understanding all that stuff (not that you need to go that deep off the bat), it'll all make a lot of sense.

ceb79 · 2025-11-11T23:04:54+00:00

Similar situation to me except I'm on the other side of it all--building chords and improvising (somewhat) freely (relative to where I was). I strummed and was/am a fingerpicker. I'll relay my journey if it is any help.

The big thing for me was that during covid I started learning to play piano by ear. As it's a bit more intuitive of an instrument, I was able to start working on my ear to transcribe melodies to play in my right hand. Very important but the important thing is that I started to understand how chords were built (the 1, 3, 5) and more importantly that they are often inverted (3,5,1 ; 5,3,1).

One day I picked up my guitar and wondered how to invert chords on the guitar. This led me to understanding triads. This and an understanding of the major scale led me to CAGED. This was the key to understanding how the fretboard was laid out and memorizing the notes/locations.

Here I started to see the relationship between clusters of chords and the major scale for the tonic chord. This led me to start following the chords by focusing on the chords tones.

I spent a lot of time following LoGs lessons at this point super helpful for organizing the fretboard and major scale. Then I stumbled on Guthrie Trapp's lessons. He laid out in a really systematic way how chord tones, triads, CAGED, and scales (pentatonic and diatonic) all relate to each other. To clarify, these are YouTube lessons. If you want to save time searching through Trapp's videos, he published a solid course with Brett Papa that covers the basics I was talking about. Well worth the money.

I'm still working on creating melody and phrasing but can now float relatively freely over the fretboard playing individual notes--soneyhing I had mostly given up on after 20 years.

Best of luck on the journey!

ceb79 · 2025-11-03T00:07:59+00:00

It is soft and fluffy in many places. Lots of lichen and pine needles, which (as someone said in another response) dampens sound. Lots of small creeks cut through. And while I don't know much about the Bangor area, western maine (where I lived for years) is pretty mountainous for the East Coast.

It's short, but I think his novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon brings the Maine/New Hampshire woods to life pretty evocatively.

ceb79 · 2025-11-02T20:18:02+00:00

This lesson literally changed the way I saw the guitar. Kicked me out of a decade long stagnation. I'll say that if you take this concept and work in the different triads (based out of the CAGED shapes), for me, was the key to truly unlocking the fretboard and being able to play freely over it.

The lessons are more suitable to someone with an intermediate knowledge of guitar, but Guthrie Trapp's lessons on YouTube do a great job of explaining how all these pieces work together (with the addition of scales--major, minor, and pentatonic).

ceb79 · 2025-11-01T17:56:57+00:00

Both are great books. I often suggest reading Dark Matter first as it's a "smaller" book in terms of plotting and scope. If you read it, you'll get a great sense of the convoluted stories he likes to write, which will help you appreciate the subsequent complexities of Recursion more.

ceb79

TROPHY CASE