...Right from the start of the short story “The Lesson”, written by Toni Cade Bambara, one could notice the high tension that Sylvia and Miss.Moore have. It is made clear from the start that Sylvia is already a troubled young lady that is at a constant war with herself. Building up to this experience Sylvia is pushed over the limits when she finds out that not only Miss.Moore moves into the neighborhood but is also going to take the children's summer away. Sylvia seems to not like Miss.Moore because she is scared that Miss.Moore will take her spot and or show the kids that Sylvia is not all that she seems to be. In the beginning of the story, it is evident that Sylvia seems to have an attitude problem with other people. Sylvia says, “back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right” (Bambara #).One could notice that Sylvia say me and Sugar instead of the saying Sugar and I. Which shows that Sylvia has this demeanor of everything has to be around her. Or it could be taken that Sylvia does not care about school and she does not pay attention in school. Maybe that is why Sylvia has such a hatred for Miss.Moore. However it is clear that Sylvia...
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...Katrina Nicholes-Shults Mrs. Livingston English 1102/S.E.1.3 February 6, 2014 Toni Cade Bambara’s The Lesson: The Impact of Poverty on Education Toni Cade Bambara’s short story The Lesson told in first person by a character named Sylvia. Sylvia is a poor student who resides in the ghetto of New York with her friends and family. The story begins in the summertime in New York, where the children are out of school, playing and having fun; but when a new neighbor Miss Moore move in, things change. Miss Moore is an educated African American woman, who embarks on an educational journey with the children. She realizes that the children lack experience and knowledge of a world outside of poverty, so she takes them on a trip outside their element. According to Marchino’s critical analysis, the goal is that they “realize wealth is unfairly and unequally distributed (2)”. In doing so, Miss Moore have the children figuring cab fare, tips, prices of toys, evaluating unnecessary spending, and diversity. Sylvia recalls her youth by stating “‘back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right’” (Bambara 385). According to Sylvia, community elders did not know anything, but that she had all the answers. She appears to be an intelligent, smart mouth and disrespectful youth because of her tone throughout the story. Her foul language throughout the story appears distasteful and unwarranted. However, to someone who understands...
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...Cade Renicker HK 208 Fitness Plan Transitional Period: The transitional period is the time for an athlete that starts at the end of the season following the teams or athletes last competition. During this time an athlete will typically use the time to recover and rest. While resting, the athlete will regain strength and his/her muscles will have built back up within the first week or so. Light workout would be expected to stay in shape, as well as not totally falling off some sort of eating schedule or plan. The athlete may begin some sort of cross training program to add a variety to training. However cross training should no longer be in the athletes workout plan prior to preseason because it is not necessarily sport specific. Preparatory Period: The preparatory season is the official off season for the athlete. For the first several weeks, the athlete will be in some sort of an endurance phase. Meaning whatever workouts they are participating in, they should aim to do low intensity and high volume. So for instance in the weight room they should be doing low weight with a higher amount of reps. Doing so allows for development of endurance base. Following the endurance phase should come the strength phase. This phase is a time where in the weight room the athlete would begin to add weight and lower the repetitions. This phase probably would not consist of as much cardio as the endurance phase depending on the sport and/or position. The third phase of the preparatory period...
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...¨ Johnny Cade was last and least. If you can picture a little dark puppy that has been kicked too many times and is lost in the crowd of strangers, you'll have Johnny¨ (pg 11 S.E Hinton). The outsiders take place in Tulsa,OK in the mid 1060´s. There are two groups of teenagers, who are the greasers who are the lower class and the socs who are the upper class that constantly battle for turf, tittle, and life. All created by S.E Hinton who is the author . The character Johnny Cade is Suicidal, Quiet, and Loveable and I am about to tell you how he's all of these three things. First of all, Johnny was very Quiet around people. Even Ponyboy Curtis said ¨ I have quite a rep for being Quiet, almost as Quiet as Johnny¨ (pg 34 S.E Hinton). This shows that Johnny was Quiet. Heres another example that Johnny was Quiet. ¨… I knew Johnny wouldn't open his mouth unless he was forced to¨ (pg 13 S.E Hinton). This also shows that Jonny was Quiet. Johnny was quiet because Johnny had a hard home life so he learned to never talk unless talked to, but not only did he have a hard home life he was in the gang with the greasers so he also had a time and a place to be able to feel loved by the gang when he never had that at home....
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...Vo 1 Vo 2 Steven Vo Hensley Honors English 11/ Second Period 27 January 2017 The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson, is about the author Toni Cade Bambara and her past experiences growing up in Harlem, New York. The Lesson takes place on a regular day in Harlem, in the 1960's. The story starts off with a woman named Miss Moore. Sylvia is narrating the whole story and she sets the tone as being sarcastic and bitter. Sugar is Sylvia's? cousin. Miss Moore does not have a first name and is described as very spooky and weird. The kids are Sylvia, Sugar, Big Butt, Fat Butt, Flyboy, Junebug, and Mercedes. The parents of the children would make them as presentable as possible so they can travel with Mrs. Moore and take them to a educational...
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...Athalia Mclean Professor Thomas English 150 11 March 2016 Overcoming life Growing up we all has our childhood struggles that we aren't in crony too of. Although things are out of our hands we have the power to change them. For some this change is so imperative they can't but attacks it head on. In “The House on Mango Street “ by Sandra Cisneros and “The Lesson “ by Tori Cade Bambara both characters are made aware of their social status. Despite both being bothered by it one decides to take it initiative, while the other accepts it. In “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara Sylvia was challenged by Mrs. Moore when she took them on a field trip to F.O.A Schwarz and introduced them to life outside of their neighborhood. The children were not used to this this type of environment to they felt out of place. When they arrived to a popular toy store Sylvia was afraid to go inside, while the other children Boldly step past her. As they embark upon the pricey merchandise they question how people can afford these items. Bambara writes “ Who are these people that spend that much for clowns and 1,000 for toy sail boats? What kind of work do they do and how do they live and how come we ain't in on it ?” (335) In that moment the thought triggers in Sylvia mind, why are these people able to buy such expensive things and why are we not on that level. She started to become aware of the social economic Hierarchy, and the imbalance of wealth being spread amount people. This...
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...The two prompts for Intervention #4 that I have chosen are: 2. What is the “lesson” in “The Lesson”? 4. Find examples of foreshadowing in "A Good Man is Hard to Find." What is the “lesson” in “The Lesson”? I believe that lesson in the story "The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara is of social inequality and the lack of quality education for children living in the inner city. This short story is told in the first person by a young black girl growing up in Harlem. The lesson unfolds as the young children growing up in poverty are exposed to life lessons by an educator Miss Moore. Miss Moore creates an environment to help the children discover and succeed in learning some very important issues about their immediate world around them. Miss Moore’s actual...
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...English 111 September 18th 2011 The Hard Truth The short story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara is a story that brings to light the lesson of social standings in America. It also shows you how one person can help change the lives of the children in a community. The story is set in the slums of a larger city. The characters in this story are a group of young, uneducated children originally from the south. The children are taken under wing by an older women with a higher education named Miss Moore. In the story Miss Moore takes the children on a trip into New York city where she tries to show them how unfair our society can be, teaching the children lessons for life such as math and grammar. These lessons however are only there to lead up to the larger picture of her lesson for the day. During the trip that Miss Moore and the children took you begin to understand and get a feeling for how the narrator, Sylvia, felt about where she lived and who she was. Sylvia started out the story not understand or appreciating who Miss Moore was and what Miss Moore was doing for her and the rest of her family. She made fun of Miss Moore with her cousins because Miss Moore spoke proper and dressed differently than the other people whom lived around her. To Sylvia and even her cousins Miss Moore was a person that they disliked for reasons they didn't understand. She was different than the rest of the people in their lives. And to young children, that is reason enough for them to dislike...
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...The next day before I left for school, by a stroke of sheer dumb-luck, I learned that my mama had plans to drive all the way over to Elmira, to the law offices of Schlizmayer & Brown so she could sign some paperwork about her inheritance. I had already known by that point that my Step Daddy Cade would also not be home for most of the day, too. He had to take his new truck back to the Ford dealership to have a clicking noise in one of its wheel wells investigated. If everything played out right. I figured I might be the only one home later on when I came home from school. And, if that were the case, then hopefully there would be a message from the school attendance office on the answering machine that I could just erase before any chance of my parents having...
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...Interpretation of Significance Human behavior flows from desire, emotion, and knowledge. The Narrator in Toni Cade Bambara’s short story is a girl named Sylvia. Sylvia is a young girl who is African American. In the story, she seems to be angry but doesn’t know why she is so angry and has yet to connect it with being African American. To say she is slow on the uptake would be a bit absurd, Sylvia shows throughout the story that she is rather intelligent despite her young age. In the lesson, Sylvia learns something during a very important day in her life. “The Lesson” takes place on a regular day in Harlem, around the 60’s. The narrator Sylvia, and kids from the neighborhood visit a toy store in a different part of the city. Miss Moore, their chaperone is an educated black woman that frequently takes the kids in the neighborhood on educational outings. Sylvia is clear that she would rather be doing anything else other than going on the trip to the toy store. The toy store is a very unusual place for a field trip, but Miss Moore wanted to make a point. During the outing the children were shocked to see a $480 price tag on a paperweight. They didn't know what it was, Miss Moore had to explain to them that 'It's to weigh paper down so that the paper won’t scatter and make your desk untidy”. Meanwhile, Sylvia, ridicules the other kids and...
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...and social class with Caucasians and African Americans. African Americans have been through a rough past, for the most part they are generally looked down upon, and are said to be of lower class. They are the same people as you and I, but not in everyone’s eyes. In “The Lesson”, by Toni Cade Bambara, Miss Moore takes on the roll as the children’s teacher, or in other words their instructor. The one thing Miss Moore wanted out of all of it, was to teach the kids a lesson. She wanted the children to know that they need to be goal oriented and work hard in everything that they do, and that education will lead you to success no matter who you are, or where you come from. She wanted them to know that the race they were wasn’t going to change who they would be in the future, or lower their chances of success, because you can do anything when you work hard and set your mind to something....
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...In the short story, “The Lesson”, by Toni Cade Bambara, she shows that Sugar shows that she easily understands the point of Miss Moore’s lesson, but it does not affect her in a meaningful way. After the day full of activities, most importantly the trip to F.A.O Schwarz, the kids have a discussion with Miss Moore about their experience and thoughts about the store. Sugar talks about income and money, and her opinion about both. She says, “I think… that this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?”. This shows that Sugar understands the reason that Miss Moore took them to the stores and to a different part of town. The value of money was very different between where Sugar...
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...Self-revelation can come to someone when they least expect it. When someone gets exposed, they begin to see the world around them differently. In a world of billions of people, some shared similar experiences. “A&P,” by John Updike is of a young man named Sammy, who works at an A&P grocery store and three young ladies who seem, upper class, intrigued him to venture outside of working at A&P. “The Lesson,” by Toni Cade Bambara is about a young girl named Sylvia, she is assertive in her neighborhood but when she was taking on a trip to an upscale toy store on Fifth Avenue she was timid, and left with a lot to think about at the end of the trip.“A&P” and "The Lesson" They both have a contemptuous male and female character who have a low socioeconomic...
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...Moreover, language plays a key role in identifying an individual’s background but so does their economic wealth. "The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara is a story about one African-American girl's struggle with her growing awareness of economic inequality. Not knowing where her teacher Miss Moore was taking her she grew more and more impatient, to later find out she’s in a high class toy store. Here, Sylvia acts as if she’s uninterested in what’s around her but at the same time knows everything that’s going on, for example, “Then we check out that we on Fifth Avenue and everybody dressed up in stockings. One lady in a fur coat, hot as it is. White folks crazy.” (Bambara pg.305) From the tone of her voice one can already tell she knows the difference...
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...In the short story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, Miss Moore is moving into an apartment in the same block as Sylvia. Miss Moore is unlike any other African American in the neighborhood because she always dresses so formal. She is volunteering to take Sylvia and her cousin Sugar to educational events for their benefit. A few days before Christmas, Miss Moore takes the children on a field trip and she starts off by talking about how much things cost, what their parents could earn, and the unequal division of wealth in the United States. The children see so many expensive, yet valuable items outside of F.A.O such as: an expensive paperweight, a microscope, and a sailboat that costs a lot of money. They begin to wonder why the sailboat costs way more then their own homes, but Sylvia feels uncomfortable in the store. Her uncomfortable feeling reminds her of the time when she made a noise in the Catholic...
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