To introduce our unit on negotiable instruments, I first defined the term "negotiable instrument" and explained that these instruments are freely transferrable to other holders. We then explored the elements of a negotiable instrument: 1. an unconditional promise 2. to pay a sum certain 3. " to the order of" the payee 4. at a definite time or on demand , and 5. signed by the maker. I discussed how negotiability played a role in the banking/foreclosure crisis of 2008.
Session Minutes
45
Minutes Student Attended
20
Lesson Comments
Nina was late today accounting for the 20 minutes attended.
During our first sessions, we studied how Walt Whitman influenced the style and diction of Emily Dickinson. I further placed Emily Dickinson in the historic context of America's Great Awakening , an evangelical type movement, and we examined the influence of religion on Dickinson's poetry, specifically her amorphous view on immortality and the possibility of an afterlife. Nina did well in identifying the personification of death in "I could not stop for Death" and the point of view of the speaker -who is deceased. Likewise, Nina did well in recognizing Dickinson's suggestion in other poems that death is a mundane event with no theological significance. We next studied Housman's famous poem "To an Athlete Dying Young" and had an engaging discussion on what happens to sports and entertainment celebrities once their lifespan far exceeds the lives of their reputation and they are no longer treated as American royalty. During our next(3rd) session, we studied Yeats and his pessimistic view of history and the import of the famous phrase"slouching toward Bethlehem" from the poem"Second Coming." We noted the irony in the poem's title which anticipates a second coming of Christ ,not world chaos. We then worked on edits and rewriting Nina's essay on "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
During today's Spanish class, we continued working on conversational Spanish. We dedicated the first part of the class to talking about current events, then we practiced some listening and comprehension, and finally, we finished the class with the reading of some news articles.
By comparing Victorian era poetry with the American poetry of Walt Whitman we were able to explore both the American and Victorian zeitgeist in similar eras. After I discussed how Victorian society faced a crisis of faith due to advances in science and technology, we found this loss faith evidenced explicitly in Arnold's "Dover Beach" in the metaphor of a receding sea of faith that once enveloped England. We further identified the speaker, the identity of an off stage listener, and the type of poem, lyric. While Browning's "Last Duchess" does not address a loss of faith, it does portray in a dramatic monologue a pretentious noble who objectifies women. We studied how the poet reveals the inner psychology of the speaker ,including the speaker's unregenerate confession that he ordered the death of his first wife who dared exert her own will ,although perhaps flirtatiously . We then shifted to Walt Whitman 's free verse that elevates the common American and his role in a democracy comparing it to an impassioned religious song. We discussed how form - a single sentence poem-mirrors content as each individual laborer "sings" his own song yet produces a harmonious unified "carol" . We discussed this view of American and American democracy as idealized, idyllic and optimistic by contrast to the Victorian poets.
By examining the numerous homework hypotheticals, we examined the fiduciary duties of both a trustee and personal representative with respect to managing estate assets, the disposition of estate assets by the laws of intestacy if a will is invalidated, how to prove lack of testamentary capacity, and last , the legal effect of precatory language in a will . Nina does very well applying studied legal principles to fact patterns and further discussing her perspective on how these cases should be resolved.
