Midterm Break Interp
“Mid-Term Break”
Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break” is an extremely tear-jerking poem. The story begins and ends in a very depressing manner, while in between we are treated to a very vivid and blunt view of life and how it can all come to an abrupt end. While “Mid-Term Break” does use death to grab at the reader’s heart strings, the story is most likely a description of life in Heaney’s native Northern Ireland, not Heaney’s life, but a very general view of life in Northern Ireland, how it can all come to a screeching halt at the hands of others and for no apparent reason. The warring in Northern Ireland has cost a lot of lives and due to the staggering amount of those who have passed for their cause, it is easy to see it in mere numbers and not recognize the level of loss. This serves as a sort of reminder that these are people, not statistics, and through its vivid details of the child’s death, the story gives us a clearer picture of the suffering suffered by families at the structure of the rules they are forced to live by as the struggle goes on around them.
As the story opens, we are given the mood, almost entirely, in the second line. It is important to notice how Heaney uses assonance and alliteration here to emphasize the funeral sound of the bells and the feeling of time dragging by. “I sat all morning . . . counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home,” (Heaney 1-3) You get the sense of time slowly dragging by as the narrator sits in the hospital, waiting and waiting and waiting. This is due to the beginning of the stanza talking about how the narrator “sat all morning”and then it is two o’ clock in line three to show that hours have passed as he waited. It could easily be interpreted that this represents the waiting that whichever faction the author is sympathetic to in the conflict of Northern Ireland, is now going through as its members die and suffer. The waiting symbolizes the torture that those, still alive, are dealing with as their loved ones die.
The second stanza begins with the image of Heaney’s father “crying”. (Heaney 4) The father, “Big Jim Evans,”(Heaney 6) lends an image of powerful, strong man of few words, simply due to how he comments that the father “had always taken funerals in stride” (Heaney 5). This shows that Big Jim Evans is usually a source of...
... middle of paper ...
...ust have felt. There is an element of shock for the reader reading it for the first time also, when they discover who has died, and that he was a mere four years old. A description of an innocent, as children are generally portrayed as innocent and with a sense of blind faith. The death could either be that of a bystander who happened to be caught in crossfire or the infamous bombs that are used in the Northern Ireland conflict, but more than likely, its meaning to show that every casualty brings about a further setback to the conflict, and the belief is the true casualty. The death is what is in that box, and despite how long the conflict has raged, it is shown here as a child, to perhaps articulate that the belief of that faction is still in its early stages and that if more do not take up the cause, the belief will die along with those on the battlefield.
To call “Mid-Term Break” a story of the death of a four year old is selling short the conflict presently going on in Heaney’s Northern Ireland. Though, he may not reside there now, its far reaching implications on those who once resided there are unimaginable. A very sad piece about a very controversial and heated conflict.
According to writer Vanessa St Gerard from The Education Digest, a traditional school year is defined as “large blocks of instruction with inter-spread week-long breaks, all culminating with a long summer break” (2007). This structure is most familiar to Americans today, however the new alternative schedule presents a variance in the time allocated for breaks throughout the school year. “During a modified school year, instruction periods typically are broken up into 45-or-60-day sessions with each of these being divided by breaks lasting three to four weeks” (St Gerard, 2007). In the alternative calendar, schools would still break for a summer session, but in most cases the break would consist of about five weeks rather than eight. While the calendars might differ in session times, they would both meet the federally mandated 180 days of ins...
Attending a year round school will help students retain the information they are taught with greater ease due to the shortness in breaks between times they attend school. An Indianapolis fourth-grade school teacher says, “In this calendar, my goodness, (it takes) two weeks at most.”, referring to the six weeks it normally takes to review the previous year’s lesson to get the students up to speed from the summer break (Johnson). If you are to add twenty days to t...
There are many advantages to year round schooling. The two major advantages for year round schooling is the elimination or reduction in learning loss during summer breaks and improvement of student achievement. Winter, also stated other advantages such as attendance in school, reduction in drop out rate, student attitudes, and teacher attitudes. Less absenteeism by both teachers and students.The students attitudes were more positive to school and learni...
Palmer, E. A., and A. E. Bemis. "Research Spotlight on Year-Round Education." Rss. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014.
There are various models of YRS that can be implemented, all of which are reconfigurations of the traditional, nine-month calendar. In some areas these models are known as alternative or modified calendars (Shields & Oberg, 2000) and they all have unique characteristics. Because of theses differences, school systems should spend some time analyzing which model will be best for their particular school; educators may find that some models work better than others depending on the school. Estimates on the exact number of year round schedules vary, although it has been estimated that at least 50 different scheduling patterns exist (Palmer & Bemis, 1999). The most common alternatives include the single track calendar and the multi-track calendar.
Barber, R Jerry. “Year-Round Schooling Really Works.” The Education Digest. Web. 1 Apr. 2014 “
Chittom, Lynn-noreKlassen, Jeff. "Year-Round School: An Overview." Points Of View: Year-Round School (2013): 1. Points of View Reference Center. Web. 19 May 2014.
There is particular consideration given to the political climate in this story. It is incorporated with social and ethnic concerns that are prevalent. The story also addresses prejudice and the theme of ethnic stereotyping through his character development. O'Connor does not present a work that is riddled with Irish slurs or ethnic approximations. Instead, he attempts to provide an account that is both informative and accurate.
Throughout time education has been considered a process that every so often must be improved. The education quality in the U.S. has declined over the years and people have been looking for a way to make improvements. A more recent proposal has been to go from a traditional nine-month schedule to an all year program. Supporters of year round school claim it gives the student a better education. However, the prospect of year round school is not beneficial to the taxpayers pocket, to the education a student receives, or to the people involved with the district.
Year-round school, also known as a “balanced calendar”, is a new idea that is being brought up all over the United States. When most people hear the term “year-round school” they often think that school will literally be all year. In reality, year-round school is still the 180 days that a nine-month school year would be. The 180 days are stretched out through all 12 months of the year, and student get frequent breaks throughout the year. Schools that decide to use a balanced calendar have the option of how many days are spent in school and how many days will be spend on break. The most common schedule used is 45 days in school 15 days on break. There are also two types on year-round schooling systems. Single-track is when all the students are placed in the same schedule. They all attend school on the same days, and they all get the same days off. Multi-tracking is when the students are placed sub-sets. In an article that discusses the overview of year-round school they explain multi-tracking, “…the student body is divided into three of four subsets. The four sub-sets rotate vacation time, so that three sets of students attend school during a given term”(Chittom).
... It is estimated over these five horrifying years, that around two million Irish died. One million deaths are attributed to starvation while another million is attributed to immigration and sickness. It has taken many years for the Irish to recover the loss of 25% of their population, many of these deaths being children and the elderly. This led to an immense age gap in the general population. The Irish have also been to slow to recover from the emotional and political toll that the famine had on Ireland’s people. To remember and learn from past mistakes, the Irish built an Irish Potato Famine Memorial in Dublin. It has grotesque statues of starving people walking down the Custom House Quay carrying what little belongings they had left. This is a haunting reminder of what hunger and greed can do to a country and how it’s influence can spread across the entire world.
In “The Dead,” James Joyce presents the Irish as a people so overwhelmed with times past and people gone that they cannot count themselves among the living. Rather, their preoccupation with the past and lack of faith in the present ensures that they are more dead than they are alive. The story, which takes place at a holiday party, explores the paralyzed condition of the lifeless revelers in relation to the political and cultural stagnation of Ireland. Gabriel Conroy, the story’s main character, differs from his countrymen in that he recognizes the hold that the past has on Irish nationalists and tries to free himself from this living death by shedding his Gaelic roots and embracing Anglican thinking. However, he is not able to escape, and thus Joyce creates a juxtaposition between old and new, dead and alive, and Irish and Anglican within Gabriel. His struggle, as well as the broader struggle within Irish society of accommodating inevitable English influence with traditional Gaelic customs is perpetuated by symbols of snow and shadow, Gabriel’s relationship with his wife, and the epiphany that allows him to rise above it all in a profound and poignant dissertation on Ireland in the time of England.
In today’s competitive world where organizations looking for high profitability and market share, consumers have very important role. Companies are looking for capture consumers in order to get larger market share. For this reason organization developed a number of techniques and tools. One of such tools is consumer behavior which has been come from economic theory. Consumer behavior is mainly studying the factors and situations that can affect purchase decisions of consumers. Consumer behavior is being very important discipline of management sciences which help out to understand of customers’ decision making.
Throughout many of his poems, W.B Yeats portrayed important aspects of Ireland’s history especially around the 1900’s when Ireland was fighting for independence. During this time, Ireland was going through an agonizing time of struggle. The Employers’ Federation decided to lock out their workers in order to break their resistance. By the end of September, 25,000 workers were said to have been affected. Although the employers’ actions were widely condemned, they refused to consider negotiation or compromise with the Union. His readers are able to see how Yeats reflects the political, cultural, and societal atmosphere in Ireland during the early 1900’s. The poems September 1913 and Easter 1916 both reflect the political, cultural, and societal atmospheres that were found in Ireland around the 1900’s.
I believe Classroom Management is the main component in the educational setting. I believe if students are in a safe environment, then learning can take place. This doesn’t mean punishing behavior problems but rather a combination of setting the tone in a class, preventing behavior problems with interesting and engaging curriculums and effectively including all students in the classroom so that their needs are met. Having the right environment for all students to learn is my major goal of implementing good classroom management--without it the students would not be able to learn.