Casey’s Edublog.

So I’ve already purged the initial stages of excitement. Time for something a bit more formal.

Possibilities…

Mythology

• This seems the most obvious of all, and would probably be the easiest to slap together. Some digging online has revealed the possible pitfalls that I often forget when I’m away from a classroom–mostly that students have attention spans of goldfish, fear of long novels, and may need a little more help than I’d initially expect with comprehension.
  Initially I was thinking that I’d let students choose one of the innumerable mythological characters from the text and have them do a mini-research–explain who the person was/is, where they hail from, and an example of a typical story (or a story that fits their character as Gaiman portrays it).
  NOW, I’m thinking that it might be a good intro project, so that they all have a little bit of a base in mythology before we read the novel. Instead of using the novel as a starter for mythology, I could use mythology as a starter for the novel–perhaps go over the idea of archetypes and then mix that into the project required for their figure. I’d have to furnish the list and maybe even give them a day to dig around on the internets to get a feel for one they like if they can’t decide on a whim (it surprises me how many won’t do that…), but after that it’d be all them. I could even do the webquesty thing and find different sites that have info on the mythic figures (not the characters) and guide them in their searching. This, of course, would help narrow the searching for stories (although I have a good store of them in tangible form right now) and that might be pretty useful. Woot. Possible webquest just invented… perhaps to be formulated in the coming days of boredom.

Story-telling

• Okay, so this has the obvious relation to the mythology but I was thinking of it more as including the Coming to America portions (which, according to a grown-up blogger who actually taught this, are often skipped over or reluctantly read) and other little interludes. I was also thinking of this in relation to ‘A Larger Memory’ by Takaki–it’s sort of an experiment in recognizing the multitude of stories that make America what it is. In this case, it’s the stories that brought people here (and that people brought with them–ie myths), and you can see the way in which past stories have shaped the worlds that these characters live in. It’s the same for us, and sometimes (almost always, I’d wager) it goes completely unnoticed.
  It’d be a cool little project for students to either find a story from their own history, or find one that resonates with them in some way (the second being the harder of the two). Of course, it could also be a matter of creating their own stories… Their own “Coming to Miss Krall’s Classroom” kind of interlude. It wouldn’t have to be scholastic (in fact, I wouldn’t really want it to be, if given the choice), and it has the possibility of being one of those really powerful things where kids are not just asked to examine their own place in the world (and how they got there), but given the opportunity to define themselves outloud without the fear of being told they’re off base. (I’m not sure that makes sense outside of my own experience, but I think there are kids out there–a few I’ve had the pleasure of teaching–who would understand what that means). It’d be a challenging project–creating your story, and perhaps having to tell it to the class or at least one other person–but I think it’d be a great opportunity not just to explore their own powers of story-telling but the way story-telling shapes history AND future.

Identity

• Okay, so the last leads into this one and, indeed, the personal identity wasn’t something I’d really thought of before so this is now getting split
  Cultural Identity–kids could look at their own roots and see how geography or culture has played a role. This, of course, kind of sucks because sometimes kids don’t feel like they have anything to play on here, and sometimes they really don’t (not everyone knows where they came from). But I guess if I explained the whole scope of “cultural identity” and included things like musical subcultures and whatnot (actually, musical subcultures would be an interesting project in itself in this respect.. the crossroads of economics, geography, culture, history… but that’s a bit heady for most high school students)
  Complexity of identity–this is more of a philosophical thing. It’s more of a challenge to define yourself and then a discussion of whether or not it’s possible. Questions about whether or not you can really define America–Is Wednesday right when he says it isn’t the same country? Is it possible and/or can it ever be possible? How has it changed in the past? Is it different than other countries–Is it easier to say (from an outsider’s perspective) that that’s so -insert country-? Is that why Gaiman (who isn’t American) was able to write this? Why would he use America as the setting?
  Obviously, I’ve thought of identity more as a discussion than an actual project/assessment.
  Even leading on with questions about how what Gaiman has done reshapes the identity of mythology in a modern context (obviously, that’s a little intellectual speak, but if I had time, I could break it down a little more)…

I don’t know. The more I think about it, the more I think that the unit kind of forms itself–I mean it just did, didn’t it? It starts out with the more concrete–the mythology, the archetypes, the research–and then moves a little deeper –the literary devices (a tie-in), the impact of stories, the creation– and then gets super heady –analysis and introspection–. It would be an insanely long unit, but when you think about it, there’s really two units tied in with a more generic (although wonderful) “let’s read and discuss this awesome book” unit (which could even include discussions about whether or not I should even be allowed to teach them this book, and whether or not anyone should be allowed to decide what they can/”should” read).

It just seems so awesome

I definitely don’t think my 10th graders would go for all of that… I mean, I probably could have conned them into it, but they would have given up and I would have had to constantly reorganize everything until it was Frankensteined out of control (not that that’s always a bad thing…). But I think, generally, that it would work better with seniors or maybe juniors. The car crowd.

And I’m not sure it’d lend itself to a conventional final assessment… No big test tying the themes into the book, but maybe a reading journal of some sort could come in handy here. Pain in the ass for me, but more useful to them and easier than trying to get them to spew theory out on a test one afternoon (although my 10th graders were better at that than most would give them credit for). I guess it could be a longer sort of analytical paper–pick one thing and tie it up nicely for teacher. Give them a long time to mull it over, talk it over, write it over and over.

(In terms of Work Sample BS, the preassessment would have to be some sort of random questions, I think, about possibilities for things or knowledge of things, or the power of things?… No idea. It’s kind of there… and might be useful even without having to make the monster. Something to revisit at the end.)

Now all I need is a classroom. And a free curriculum.

It’d be an interesting experiment, I think… even if it flopped. It’s got too much possibility not to try.
Is this where I sound like the “young, idealistic” teacher instead of the cynic? Perhaps the excitement wasn’t completely purged before I started this…