1. Why did you miss the metaphor in Tom Johnson's post, or, if you "hit the nail on the head", why do you think you understood the metaphor and why do you think that others in the class missed the metaphor?
I think that the metaphor could be missed if the reader was taking the story literally, but for me it was sort of obvious that he wasn't really talking about pencils. For one thing, pencils aren't expensive, so why would the teacher need to get the parents to sign legal waivers for them to be taken home? Another, how is a student going to join the "Pen Pal network" with just a pencil? Like I said, to me it was sort of obvious we weren't really talking about a pencil here, but I guess if someone was just reading through it quickly they could miss the point.
2. What metaphors have you encountered since I asked you to create a log of them?
Some examples I've heard of metaphors:
Heart of gold
Walking through the darkness to get to the light
Raining cats and dogs
the light of my life
Apple of my eye
3. What other things can we do as educators to help our students to understand and to use metaphors?
I think assignments like this one are good ways to make students consider metaphors. I had never given them much thought until now, but they are really every where. Those in my list above are ones that I've heard today alone, and only the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. Metaphors are all around us whether we realize it or not, so bringing that to students' awareness is a good step to getting them to use them (they probably do it already without realizing it anyway, right?).
4. Why do we use metaphors?
Metaphors are about creativity, saying what you want to say in a way that is not necessarily obvious. If Mr. Johnson had not posted his metaphor, if he had just said outright what he was trying to say, would we still be talking about it?
Probably not.
When you have to think about things they tend to stick a little better than if you just read through it quickly. I know that I actually remembered reading this post, out of a sea of posts from the semester in this and other classes, because I read it twice - first when I thought was reading about the literal pencil and got caught halfway going "wait a second..." then I went back to reread.
Metaphors are there to make us think.
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