Analysis Of Michael Ondaatje s Running Of The Family Essay

â€Å"When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.† (Keeler, Dietter, Groening, Cohen, 2002) My highschool English department was lackluster. It featured four full time teachers, who divided themselves between ELA 10-2 to 35 IB. Between the students, there was an ongoing joke that none of them were actually on the payroll, because half the time they wouldn’t be physically in a classroom, instead could be found wandering about aimlessly. I could never understand why they were all heralded as paragons in their field. They were never there. We once spent 3 days discussing the purpose of trees in Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family. From a student perspective there seemed to be very little organized planning, and most of it was student directed. Through, from a pre-service teacher perspective, I understand the absence of planning was probably due to us being in an IB advanced class, and part of curriculum design. I also realize now that it is impossible to plan every day out meticulously. There has to be some room for error, or rather room for relaxation. Plan ning is the heart of teaching (Milner, Milner, and Mitchell, 2012, p.426), but is a constantly changing process. There needs to be structure within the classroom, yet it has to be carefully moderated. There is going to be an indefinite amount of the uncertain and the unexpected. Planning a lesson is like doing a mad-libs. You make the general story, an overall standardized outline, and thenShow MoreRelatedSummary Of The Family Notebook 2051 Words   |  9 PagesWeiner 9/14/2016 2B Running in The Family Notebook Assignment Section 1 – Chapter Summaries Prologue: Drought Since December – shows the author getting used to the climate of Ceylon because of how much it differs from where he came from. †¢ Intense heat †¢ Reminiscing of when he used to be in Ceylon Asian Rumors: Michael longs for a return to Asia. This section expresses his feelings for Ceylon and how important the place is to him. Asia – analyzes and dreams about Asia during Michael Ondaatje’s farewell