Resources for the Stressed & Families

We're all in this together!

There's a lot of concern and anxiety surrounding the coronavirus outbreak. If you or your family needs help, or if you would like to help those in need, some of these resources may help:

In addition to the CDC Foundation launching a crowdfunding campaign to expand the agency's public health response to the coronavirus, there are many other local organizations and government agencies working to help individuals and businesses:

• The New York State Department of Health has also set up a hotline to answer all your questions about the coronavirus at 1-888-364-3065.
• Additionally, if you need to speak with a mental health professional, NYS has set up a hotline at 1-844-863-9314.
• For any city residents in need of food or require help getting food delivered, visit nyc.gov/getfood

SCHOOLS & CHILD CARE

• As schools across New York City and state start to close, parents/guardians can get help with child care using the Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies website. There are 34 CCRRs available in New York State. Here's their website. For Rochester, you can find help here.
• See if you're eligible for Child Care Subsidy Program. Child care subsidies can help parents pay for some or all of the cost of child care services.
• The Rochester Teacher's Association has resources for parents/students. You can find help here as well.
• The Rochester City School District has information as well on their website.
• For the most recent information for families needing resources or help with food/health care, etc., please refer to the Superintendent's (for now) letter.
• And, of course, the City of Rochester has many resources as well.

UNEMPLOYMENT & FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE

• New York state has waived the 7-Day waiting period for Unemployment Insurance benefits for people who are out of work due to COVID-19 closures or quarantines. Click here to learn more about how to file a UI claim.

REPORTING HATE CRIMES AND BIAS-BASED INCIDENTS

• Amid a rise in reported harassment and verbal/physical assaults (especially of Asian Americans) as coronavirus spread, New York Attorney General Letitia James launched a hotline to report hate crimes and bias-based incidents. You can email civil.rights@ag.ny.gov, or call 1-800-771-7755.

Stay well and seek help if you need it!

MP4: Short Story Markets & The Publishing World

This marking period we will be covering the publishing industry, while we also continue learning about writing markets--how to write in a particular genre and get your work published.

Most of the assignments will be weekly assignments (like Ms. Gamzon's class), but I will be trying to contact you daily through email, this blog, and our Google Classroom. Please make sure you are checking your email addresses. The RCSD wants us to contact you daily with a continuity of instruction.

I am available M-F all day practically through email. I will get back to you within 24 hours of you sending me an email (usually a question or concern). If you need to speak to me in person, please send me an email requesting a ZOOM meeting.

Keep reading!--there's a lot of reading you should be doing to supplement your writing skills.  

HP Lovecraft; Advice About Writing Horror Stories

All work for MP3, up to March 13 must be in today (or email me about an extension if you need one). Otherwise, I need to start closing my MP3 grade book. Thanks!

Welcome to Marking Period 4! While our closure has certainly done a number on our progress, it is the expectation that you continue with your classes (including assignments). We know that we will not be returning to the physical classroom until after May 15, so any assignments here will ultimately be required of you by the end of the marking period. Please make sure you work on these assignments/activities periodically to avoid having a raft of work to complete at the very end of the academic year.

As always, please email me, ask for a Zoom meeting with me if you need one, and keep in touch. I am available throughout the week (daily) and will get back to you within 24 hours if I receive your email or contact. Weekend responses may be a little longer. I have a life too.

Today, let me introduce you to H.P. Lovecraft. We'll continue to examine his work into next week as well. Here's a start.

"My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature." -- H.P. Lovecraft 

The great American horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft wrote a little book called Supernatural Horror in Literature in 1927 and an essay entitled: "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction". He also continued to train other horror writers of the time, as well as influence new horror writers of today.

He wrote: "The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint...of that most terrible conception of the human brain–a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space."

In other words, horror writing is not just writing about blood and guts or by revealing the monster. It's all about tone/mood--the atmosphere of dread. Your protagonist is up against something that is utterly unknown or foreign--something unbelievable, or something odd or out of place in our normal, everyday lives.

To this end, the monster in horror stories is often a metaphor made real. A person suffering from cancer might be a protagonist who is being hunted by an amorphous, malignant mass--or a teenager who is tempted to take drugs, might be accosted later by a roomful of zombies. Cancer = monster, the drugs = zombies. Many horror stories work on this level of metaphor.

So--if you want to write a horror story, you're going to need to write with an effective tone and use diction (specific word choice) to create a specific mood for the reader.

H.P. Lovecraft describes his writing process: "As to how I write a story—there is no one way. Each one of my tales has a different history. Once or twice I have literally written out a dream, but usually, I start with a mood or idea or image which I wish to express, and revolve it in my mind until I can think of a good way of embodying it in some chain of dramatic occurrences capable of being recorded in concrete terms. I tend to run through a mental list of the basic conditions or situations best adapted to such a mood or idea or image, and then begin to speculate on logical and naturally motivated explanations of the given mood or idea or image in terms of the basic condition or situation chosen."

Let's take a look. "The Color Out of Space" by HP Lovecraft. This was recently (again) turned into a movie. Here's a few clips of some of the films inspired by this story...

• Die Monster Die!, 1965
• The Curse, 1987
• The Color Out of Space, 2014
• Color Out of Space, 2020

Here are more resources if you'd like to expand your idea of cosmic horror & H.P. Lovecraft:

• The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft
• Lovecraft's short stories online (free) at Dagonbytes
• The HP Lovecraft Historical Society
• The HP Literary Podcast

Reminder: End of Marking Period Coming Up!

Class:

Again, I hope that you and your family are safe and healthy. This is just to remind you all of a few logistical details about our course this marking period.

1: Your assignments/activities are still due. The expectation from the RCSD is that you continue your coursework. While I haven't required too much so that you can progress and pass your academic classes, your writing is important. Most of our missing assignments were due BEFORE the closure of schools. These assignments count. Please spend the next week completing them if you haven't turned the work in yet.

2: I will not be collecting your journal (obviously), but I am grading your blog posts. Please make sure you complete the required blog posts. See this blog or Google Classroom for details.

3: Your Stephen King short story draft is due tomorrow. Please make sure you complete that by the end of next week (April 17). It's worth a grade... see our Google Classroom for more details.

4: You should have finished "On Writing" by Stephen King by this time. If you haven't, you're missing a lot of helpful and good advice about "writing for publication." If you don't have your copy that I gave you in physical form, there is a PDF copy of the book on our Google Classroom. You can find it there.

5: Stay well, but also remember that your teachers are trying to contact you daily (mostly through your student email accounts). Please make sure you are checking your district email regularly.

6: If you need to contact me, please do so. I am available 24/7 through email. You can also request a Zoom meeting with me if you need to talk to me directly. See the posts on Zoom and my email address if you need it.

Remember to check your Google Classroom for required assignments/activities and resources! Stay in touch!

My Email

Some people are mistyping my email then wondering why I'm not receiving your work. Here, again, is my actual email:

bradley.craddock@rcsdk12.org

or

1299861@rcsd121.org


NOT: bradley.craddock@rcsd121.org! No, no, NO!

If I do not respond to an email within 24 hours during the week (Monday through Friday), please drop me a comment on our blog (this one) or one from our Google Classroom and I'll see what the problem might be.

Stephen King Short Stories

Since I cannot hand you physical copies of some of King's stories, here is a link to find some of his stories online:

• 14 Free Short Stories by Stephen King

Please check the Google Classroom for the assignment that goes with reading one of these short stories!

You should have finished "On Writing" by now. If you have not (copies of the book can be found in our Google Classroom if you lost your physical copy!), please aim to finish this by the end of this week.

Take care and stay in touch!

Hold on there: Zooming might need to stop!

You might have heard that there have been some strange issues with Zoom as of late. Here's an article to peruse before you use...

"A Must for Millions, Zoom Has a Dark Side--And an FBI Warning" (NPR, Shannon Bond, April 3)

Check in with each other; Hold a Writer's Workshop!

Just in case you don't know how to set up or host a Zoom meeting or join one, here's the info you might need...

You can use a Zoom meeting just as easily to workshop your writing during our school closure. You don't even need me to do it! Here's the info:

How Do I Host A Video Meeting?

1. Signing In

Go to http://zoom.us and click on Sign In.
You can use the "e-mail" and "password" that you have created, or use your Google (Gmail or Google App) or Facebook account to sign in with.

Note: If you do not have a current Zoom account, please click on Sign Up Free to create a new one.

2. Hosting a Meeting

If you do NOT have the Zoom app installed, go to zoom.us and select "Host a Meeting" to start the installation. If you DO have the App installed, see below (#3).
Open your Zoom app on your desktop and click Sign In.

Log in using the E-mail and password that you have created, or with Google(Gmail), Facebook, or Login with SSO. Click the downward arrow and select Start with video, then click New Meeting to start an instant meeting.

3. Join a meeting using one of these methods:

• Click Join a Meeting if you want to join without signing in.
• Sign in to Zoom then click Join.
• 
• Enter the meeting ID number and name.
• If you're signed in, change your name if you don't want your default name to appear.
• If you're not signed in, enter a display name.
• Select if you would like to connect audio and/or video and click Join.

That's pretty much all you need to do. Check-in with your friends! Discuss your writing. Have fun and stay safe!

As always, if you have a question or concern please email me or drop a comment on our Blog or Google Classroom site. If you need to talk with me through Zoom, please send me a request. Take care!