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Other creative ideas...
My main community partner from my CFE, Mr. Adams, introduced me to the Humument form, created by Tom Phillips.
The Humument blends fine arts and found poetry.
Mr. Adams is an art teacher at an independent school, who shares my enthusiasm for connecting text and image. He created a lesson plan using the Humument form, and I have seen the enthusiastic response to the form, even outside of art-focused classrooms.
This is a Humument that I completed using a photocopied page from my Macbeth text.
It reads:
like a rat without a tail
I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.
the calamitous
voyage
Sailing in sieves
dangerous agents
with female desire
control the wind
cannot escape
the winds's ferocity
cursed
As a book-lover and English specialist, it should be no surprise that I have made the most of my curriculum courses at UBC.
I have long felt that for teachers to be effective, they need to be actively practicing the skills they teach. For me, this means being an avid reader of many different kinds of texts, keeping in mind the understanding I have gained of the values of multiliteracies. If I am to keep my practice relevant and engaging, I need to be plugged-in to pop culture and fluent in its common literacies, so that I can incorporate those ways of meaning making into classroom activities and projects. It also means continuing to practice as a writer, and also - given my fine arts background and the benefits of relating text and image - continuing to practice as a creative artist.
Through my curriculum courses, I have experimented with many different kinds of texts and different types of literacies. I have experienced first-hand the value that this broader understanding of literature provides. I have also come to better understand the value of representing diverse backgrounds and cultures into my classroom materialts, as we are all more likely to connect with stories that resonate with our own in some way.
Sweet 16
For one assignment, I chose to pick out a pivotal point in my life – a point strongly tied to a major world event – to show my feelings and reactions, both then and now. I used the opportunity to reflect on how having my sixteenth birthday on 9/11 has shaped me as a person.
My rationale behind the choice of graphic novel is because of how adaptable the project would be to using in my future classes. I was also influenced by the amazing capability of graphic novels to tell a convincing story in a way that is accessible to more readers than a traditional text.
I feel as though the piece I created is an amazing record of the personal impact of a major historic moment, and as all of my students will be too young to have a first-hand memory, it might help them to have a greater appreciation of the impact of that day, even on those not directly connected to it by family, location, or nationality.
The resulting graphic novel is not meant to suggest that I am always sad or always thinking about 9/11. It is simply a part of who I am in a way that most others have not experienced.
My hope is that this piece could serve as an inspiration and exemplar for my future students, and help to encourage them to take risks in their creative expression and storytelling.
In the fall of 2013, I was taking a course which focused on creative writing and techniques for getting students to write. One of the assignments involved publishing writing of our own. I chose to do this is the form of excerpts of my poetry hand-written onto multi-coloured balloons.
The choice of balloons was inspired by one point where I was taking a big bunch of balloons (21, to be exact) to give to my friend for her birthday. I noticed that people would light up when they saw them.
This project shared my poetry with people walking downtown on Black Friday, and brought a little childlike joy in the chilly weather.
This is a 4-page graphic novel I created as a project in my Adolescent Literature course. It was inspired by Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and by the successes I had during my practicum in incorporating graphic novels into my teaching practice.
This is a 4-page graphic novel I created as a project in my Adolescent Literature course. It was inspired by Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and by the successes I had during my practicum in incorporating graphic novels into my teaching practice.
