At the beginning of our class, I gave Will a few minutes to review his vocabulary index cards, telling him that we would be playing vocabulary pictionary. Will had some trouble with the meaning of the words censure, laud, equivocate, and capricious. With extra review, these words seemed to stick. After this brief review, we played pictionary by drawing pictures and guessing which vocabulary words corresponded with the depictions. We had a lot of fun with this, and I sensed that Will's retention of these words was strengthened by this fun review. Next, Will and I delved into Objective pronouns. Will found out when to use objective pronouns and named a few of them. After our grammar and vocabulary lesson, Will and I reviewed the history of comics, and I asked Will some questions about the documentary that we watched a few days ago, and was very surprised at his recall. We will begin Watchmen as soon as we get it.

* Listening: Michel Sardou.
* Reading: Administration 3.
* Reading: Arrestation a la hache.
* Vocabulary: Sports.

We read over the assignment together and began our research on line. Will did a title slide and began a biography/early life slide. We had a discussion on Power Point presentations and whether it was more effective to put brief "main ideas" on the slides or pack as much of the presentation as possible into the slides. We finished up with two complete slides.

Willl and I collaborated on reading, summarizing, and discussing the events of the Haitian, Mexican, and Bolivian revolutions. We discussed Napoleon's role in the destabilization of the New Spain colony, and we reviewed the early and colonial history of Latin America prior to Independence.

We spent most of the session reviewing the quadratic formula homework problems In the time remaking, we completed 5-6 similar polygon problems.

Today's session began with a breakthrough. For the first time, Will wore glasses, saying, with understated sarcasm, that he thought this would improve his contributions to our intellectual discussions! He also struck a pose, glasses in hand, stating, "This is my best look." It is highly gratifying that Will's level of trust in, and comfort with, me has reached the point where he can let his hair down in this way. Clearly, he is enjoying this class. He engaged actively in discussion of substantive topics, including the canal era, the growth of railroads, and other technological developments; here he mentioned a 19th-century gun collection he and his father had seen at the Society of the Four Arts. We spent considerable time on gender issues, including work and life in factories (especially in the New England textile industry) and the "cult of domesticity." We closed with a discussion of the increase in class stratification. Will only needed one session break today.

We continued working problems from the text.

Quiz # 4.

Today's session was the best to date. I started by returning Will's graded Chapter 9 quiz (30/30) and went over it with him, prasing him on his outstanding performance. He made the perceptive point that one of his essay responses had been rather brief because there was only so much material in the book chapter on the subject matter of the question. Yes, exactly! That means he did the reading and absorbed it! For me, this was very gratifying. I could tell that Will was proud of himself, as he had a right to be. Next, I informed him that I had resigned from the school and would be teaching him only for the next three weeks, unless Judie replaces me sooner. But I said that we should make these next three weeks the best yet in our class. He replied that he was sure they would be. Thereafter, we commenced consideration of Chapter 10. We focused on the mid-nineteenth-century waves of immigration, primarily of Irish, Germans, English, and other northern Europeans, with the Irish outnumbering the Germans two-to-one. Name changes as part of the process of assimilation was raised, and Will made a solid contribution on this issue. As luck would have it, one of Will's other teachers, Walt Breede, stuck his head in and added substantively to our discussion by describing the name change of one of his ancestors. Finally, we discussed the nativist reaction against immigrants, including the formation of the American Party, popularly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Will readily drew the connection to the anti-immigrant animus among some Americans in today's world. A superb session.

Today's session was a problem drill from the textbook. We worked a number of problems in which we identified corresponding angles and sides and used the ratios of corresponding sides to determine if two polygons are similar.