The Ocean in Seventeen Syllables

This week, in Literature of California, we have begun reading John Steinbeck's literary classic, Cannery Row. Set in Monterey during the great depression, Cannery Row is as much about the ocean as it is about the people that reside on Steinbeck's fictional street. You cannot talk about California, it seems, without mentioning the ocean. With over 1,100 miles of coastline, California is literally defined by the sea.

For this week's blog post, I want students to take a creative approach to their relationship with California's beaches. Please write a haiku (your standard 5/7/5 approach) that you feel captures your relationship to California's coastline. Once you write your haiku, choose an image to go along with it and then write a short paragraph explaining the meaning of your haiku.

Here's mine:

the smell hits you first

PCH, my windows down

the heart swells, i breathe

While I've been visiting the beaches of California my whole life, I never truly lived "at the beach" until I started working for Sage Hill over a decade ago and immediately moved to Belmont Shore, directly across the street from the ocean. Every day, when I would come home from work, no matter what sort of day I had, I would be struck by the smell of the beach whenever I opened my car door. In that moment, my shoulders would relax, my worries would lift a little, and I would simply breathe. The smell of the beach is a sensory connection to my past; some of my happiest memories take place in and around the ocean, so each time I opened that car door or lowered my windows, I was transported back to a time of fun and relaxation. This is my California beach experience.

The "Picture Perfect" State

Welcome to my blog! My name is Greg McCandless and I'm an English teacher at the Sage Hill School in Newport Coast, California. This year, I am teaching a senior English elective course called "Literature of California". Over the course of the year, we are going to be tackling the question of what it means to be "of California" through novels, short stories, poetry, film, and other mediums in a quest to better understand the rich and diverse state that we live in.

Over the summer, my students were asked to read the novel The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar as well as some short critical pieces by David Wyatt and Wallace Stegner. They also were able to pick a "California" film to watch (including LA Confidential, The Maltese Falcon, Milk, and LA Story). We then spent the first week of school discussing these texts and setting thematic goals for ourselves as we work out what the definition we currently have for "California" is and how that might evolve as the year progresses.

This week, students were asked to create a visual metaphor that represents their current definition of California and the results were really fascinating, everything from collage to sculpture to an animated flip-book.

In addition to our ongoing reading, I will be asking students to regularly write a weekly blog, in which we will discuss and explore some of the ideas that we talk about in class in more depth. You will soon be able to see a list of all of my students' blogs here on my blog homepage and I encourage folks to come back and check out some of the great work my students are doing.

For this week's blog post, I want to riff on the idea that "one picture is worth a thousand words". I want my students to choose a picture (either a personal photo or one they find on their own) that they feels captures their "California". They will upload the picture and then not only introduce themselves to their readers, but also explain why this picture best captures their ideas about the State we live in.

Here is my picture:

This is a picture of me taken at Newport Beach sometime when I was around five or six years old (so likely around 1982 or 1983). I chose this picture to represent "my California" because it captures every really great memory I have from growing up in California. I lived about forty-five minutes from the coast but we went there often as a family and usually rented a house in Newport every summer for a week or two. I've always felt particularly drawn to the ocean and I think that is mostly because I spent so many happy times there as a child. To me, California is a place of freedom and endless possibility- which is captured in the perspective of this photo as the ocean seems to seamlessly blur into the blue-gray skies behind me. It is also a place of warmth and carefree attitudes; it is a state that values individuality and creativity. It is my home.