"A kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time..."

In the first stave of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Scrooge's nephew says "But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time."

"[Christmas is the] only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seemed by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle [Scrooge], though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that ithas done my good, and will do me good; and I say, "God bless it!"

Today, I introduced 57 eighth grade students to A Christmas Carol. The most they could remember from vague cultural references as a crabby old man ("like the grinch!") and ghosts - but none mentioned the moral of the story or the change that Scrooge undergoes.

Clark has graciously invited to join One August Dei as a blogger. I recently graduated from Biola University and am now teaching English Language Arts to 137 eighth graders at a charter school in South Los Angeles. 99% of my students are free/reduced lunch and many of them have never been outside Los Angeles. The world in which they live is small: not by choice, but often a result of the zip code where they were born. I am part of a national non-profit organization that aims to end inequality in education in our nation, focusing on placing recent college graduates in high-need, low-income urban and rural schools. A Christmas Carol is one small unit of a larger, year-long goal I have to widen my students view of the world. Over the next few weeks, I hope to add a unique perspective on A Christmas Carol: brought to you by a first year teacher and his 137 eighth grade students in South Los Angeles.