The Sun, reading response.

Taylor Mali’s poem “What Teachers Make, or Objection Overruled, or If things don't work out, you can always go to law school, ” was very rhetorical in its delivery because it was an attempt to persuade. However, the method he uses was from an interesting perspective. In the beginning, he had negative connotations toward teachers, he criticized them, saying that they are just students that couldn’t make it elsewhere. He then brings us in to how much he makes via a second person inquiry, and then the rant starts. With his gravel-truck voice, and flawless posture, red-in-the-face, he breaks down just what he does in his job. Mali explicates on just how he makes those kids work. And by explicating this information, he really gives his audience a feeling of what exactly these kids do. He convinces you that he works hard! Yet, he does not merely present the fact that he works hard, he explains why he does it, which brings us to the very end of the poem. And that’s the part in which he answers the second person in the poem to the inquiry of what he makes, stating
“You want to know what I make?
I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).”
Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?”

So he sides with his antagonist in the beginning of this poem. He laughs and repeats jokes made about teachers. He explains both sides. But this is a prose, and in a prose whether written, in our heads, or spoken, is an issue; it has two sides. In order to present an idea to someone, we must present both sides, because if we don’t we are not giving the audience the full picture, we are fearing that we may fail in persuading them, and most importantly, we give up the fight to beat something. Like our class handout said, you must accept the possibility that you may not succeed in order to achieve something. You have to know what you are up against, because it is silly to fear what you can not avoid. And when we are trying to persuade someone something through writing or any form of presentation, even speech, the event or situation that we describe is alive in those waves and it is strong. If you are strong about it, you must be able to face the challenges that go with it and that is what Taylor Mali does in his poem.

My Accidental Jihad by Krista Bremer
From an Islamic point of View, Jihad means strife. It means an integrity-driven motive to accomplish. This story starts out with her resenting him, but turns around at the end. It reminds me of Mali’s poem in the way that it has a central message and that is that teachers work hard. In this short story “My Accidental Jihad,” the central message is the same and translates to the benefits of self-discipline. The opposing sides of her husband’s Islam practice or fasting for Ramadan is criticized from the beginning, but in the end, the husband had the last laugh. The husband had the “last laugh” at the end because he appreciated the food he had, he indulged it, and was getting something out of the whole situation, when his wife, did not, she was busy recklessly completing chores. But her whole point was whining about how she couldn’t indulge in anything with her husband, so her negative outlook on it was wrong in the end and she was laughed at, just like the audience that laughed at Mali’s jokes about teachers in the beginning and got the rude awakening of his enthusiasm for teaching and the finger at the end. This is a great example of presenting both sides to an issue, and holding strong to one side or the other will bring conflict as the opposing side emerges. Mali’s poem was a great way to show how to present both sides, but Bremer’s story, is a great representation of how we will face up against things in our strife but the virtue of fighting for your place in line pays off because characters, events, and settings were acting this out in the story.