• Welcome to Mrs. Porretta-Baker's site
    Dates to Remember:
    MLK Holiday - January 18
    Regents Week! January 23-29!
    Click HERE for the 2015-2016 school calendar.
     
    Class assignments can be found on GOOGLE CLASSROOM.
     
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    This website is for the work I do as an educator.  I teach 11th grade English Regents, Journalism, and AP Language and Composition. This is my 12th year in the Rochester City School District, and I am currently teaching at World of Inquiry School.

    My Thinking on Education:

    Summer Read

    Students, are thoughtful, unique, and forever changing – spinners in a spinning world.  By providing students with new ideas, with divergent perspectives, with a place to sing their voice and dance their pen – it is my belief that they will learn to be aware and conscious of who they are, in order to make significant, positive contributions to their school and community. By nurturing creative, questioning, principled, and motivated young people, I believe they will enliven, enrich, and energize every place they inhabit. It is not my intention to produce students who all think alike – I want to encourage profound thoughts, inspired writing, and global citizenship.


    “me, we” – Muhammed Ali 
    Other thoughts...
    Students become good writers when they read many models to help them understand what it means to write well. They need to experience writing in a way that helps them "feel the power of words, the effects of considered expression, the breadth of available words, the rich potential in thoughtful use of language." Tracy McClure
     
     
     
     Please contact me at gina.porretta-baker@rcsdk12.org ,or call 325-6170 ext. 1116 if you have any questions or if you just want to share a new word! Thank you!
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    Homage to Amiri Baraka  and Maya Angelou
     
    "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song."maya
    "Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination FULL OF HOPE."
    Maya Angelou (Poet, Educator, Author, Playwright, Activist, Historian, Producer, Director, Actor....



    Wise I     Amiri Baraka


    WHYS (Nobody Knows
    The Trouble I Seen)
    traditional

    If you ever find
    yourself, some where
    lost and surrounded
    by enemies
    who won't let you
    speak in your own language
    who destroy your statues
    & instruments, who ban
    your omm bomm ba boom
    then you are in trouble
    deep trouble
    they ban your
    own boom ba boom
    you in deep deep
    trouble

    humph!

    probably take you several hundred years
    to get
    out!

     

     

     

     

     

     
     
                                                                               
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