We're rounding up the year here (3 more days!) but we've done a lot of fun stuff this past month and by golly we worked hard right up until Friday. (Okay fine... up until Wednesday...) Now it's time to party.
Seniors: Our last book of the year was Speak by Laurie Halse Andersen. The book is about a girl who is raped at a party and doesn't tell anyone about it. She struggles with the burden by herself for a year, pushing out all people from her life. The content is a bit heavy, but students like it because it is an easy reading level and it's set in high school- so they can relate to it. I like it because it brings awareness to a topic that is sensitive, but important to be aware of. It's the perfect book to end the year with. I can only expect those seniors to do so much for me by the time May hits. If I tried to crack Othello or Hamlet on them this time of a year, you better believe there'd be a revolt.
At one part of the book the narrator gives "Ten Lies they tell you about High School." You know, stuff like "We will win the football championship this year" and "You will be able to finish your homework in class." The kids loved it so I had them write their own "Ten Lies they tell you..." Those kids are pretty dang clever. They did every variation of it, "Ten Lies they tell you about professional sports." "Ten Lies they tell you about driving." "Ten Lies your boyfriend tells you..." etc.
We also watched the Jeff Bliss video on Youtube. If you haven't seen it, it's a high school kid going off on his teacher for not teaching the class. I asked students if they agreed with what the kid said, how he said it, and what they saw as problems in our country's educational system- why we allow teachers like this. It led to a fantastic discussion and allowed students to better understand the complexities of our educational system. It's not as easy to measure a teacher's performance or value as they may think it is. Problems in education are complex and answers are not as black and white as you might think, and I wanted them to be able to see that. (Did you watch this video? What did you think of it?!?)
Juniors: We read some great excerpts from The Things They Carried. If you haven't read this book, I strongly encourage you to. It's one of my favorite books ever and I love re reading it every year. The book is based on Tim O'Brien's experience in the Vietnam War and is one of the best "war books" I have ever read. He states that in order to believe a war story you have to feel it with your stomach. If you say "War is Hell" you don't feel that with your stomach- it's too general. You have to hear and read the graphic details to understand the gruesomeness of war. He is an absolutely fantastic writer and really allows you to understand the issues in the war. This was the first year teaching it that I didn't have parents complaining about the content (intense language and some graphic violent scenes)- I suppose our little area is becoming more open minded?
Sophomores: We've been doing a unit on short stories and the students all had to write their own 2-3 page short story. Those tikes really ran with that assignment. It was like they'd been waiting all year for me to assign them a short story... almost every single student wrote more than the required length and some students wrote over 10 pages. I tell you what, you give the students an assignment they like and they'll surprise the crap out of you.
We also read some short stories together. One of my favorites is "The Fat Girl" by Andre Dubus. Basically the girl is fat her whole life, but then during college goes on a diet and loses enormous amounts of weight. She then meets a man and gets married. After her marriage she regains the weight and refuses to lose it. The husband is frustrated and doesn't want to touch her. This story gave us one of the best discussions I've had with my sophomores. I asked them if you blamed the husband for not wanting to touch the wife. Or was it the wife's fault for basically tricking him by pretending she was "Skinny" and then going back to her old ways? The kids were about half and half and some of them were fighting pretty hard... one girl was adamant that the husband was a total douchebag and should love the wife no matter her physical state. Others said it was the wife's fault for marrying him when she was skinny... that she had essentially tricked him into marrying her and then expected him to still love her when she completely let go. It was interesting to talk about how big of a role appearances and physical state play in a marriage. When I have students really riled up about a topic, yelling at each other like crazy, and raising their hands high begging me to call on them- well, we've had some success.
It definitely is tough to keep kids focused and concentrated the last two weeks of school- all of our minds are somewhere else. I'm interested- what did your teachers do those last couple of weeks of school? Did you get any work done or was it just movie heaven?
