Cindy is Seeping into my Classroom Beyond Book Club

This evening I received the following e-mail from one of my students:

"We should discuss this in class. I feel like we don't get enough oportunity in school to talk about political stuff. Thinking can really get kids thinking and off their butt. It did for me. Also, here's the usury thing.
Cheers,
[Rebecca's Student]
( I can't wait to go to class on monday! ;)"

The "this" he refers to is a pre-reading assignment I ask the students to complete before we read The Merchant of Venice. Students are asked to use an on-line debt calculator that allows them to plug in varying amounts of debt, interest rates, and type of payment to determine how long it takes to pay off credit card debt. This helps the idea of usury (charging interest on a loan) make a bit more sense to the students who for the most part are ignorant about most financial matters.

His comment, "I feel like we don't get enough opportunity in school to talk about political stuff. Thinking can really get kids thinking and off their butt" comes directly from a conversation he (and his book club) had with Cindy. He has repeatedly told me that my class is his favorite class because it makes him think.

I think it is interesting that he has interpreted credit card debt as "political stuff," but I also thought that it was validation for Cindy's research. Students want to be invited into conversations about topics that matter in the "real world."

Cheers to Cindy!

Thinking Inside a Pumpkin

As you can see, the Mapping the Territory of Your Text Project was a success!

OK, maybe the picture of a funky looking pumpkin with random objects attached isn't obvious proof at first glance, but trust me it was a success. (I still have a few presentations to go on Monday, but the early results are exciting--as my bold claim indicates.) While this picture doesn't do their work justice, it does give you an indication of the complexity of their thinking. These students explored the issues raised by their text, Feed, in discussing how to create this "map" and also discussed what symbols to use in heated brainstorming/debate sessions. Several of the members of this group tend to be quite and reserved in class, but were animated and forceful during their planning discussions. The creativity they displayed, as well as the investment in this project, was impressive and almost unparalleled in my history of conducting book clubs.

It may appear that the pumpkin was convenient simply because it is Halloween season (other students raised this challenge during the presentation), yet these students used the pumpkin for a specific reason. It was meant to represent the world of and the heads of the characters in the book. The world of the novel is polluted to the point of having orange oceans, so the flesh of the pumpkin and the nuclear waste symbol carved in the pumpkin are both significant. Inside the pumpkin is a remote control to signify that both individuals and the world of the novel are controlled by the outside influence of the "feed." I could go on and on explaining the symbols they used on their map (most symbols are layered in their meaning and they went well beyond the suggested 8-10 icons on the assignment sheet), but I won't...

I will say that I am excited by this project for several reasons:

1. The pumpkin group clearly was able to think "outside the box," but other groups were also able to expand/stretch their thinking through this process. Previous assignments did not seem to allow this to happen quite so easily or so consistently.

2. Students for the first time have been able to articulate more about how and why they made a connection or didn't make a connection with a text. (Interesting note: at times groups claim they didn't connect, but their statements indicate that they did have a link. Yet another idea to explore!)

3. The presentations on this project seemed to be more of an invitation to the audience to consider exploring the other texts because the groups gave a much more thorough overview of not only the events of the novel, but also the issues raised by the novel than they have with previous assignments.

I am looking forward to digesting more about this process and seeing what other insights spring from the pumpkin.