Mrs. Hurt hearts seniors.

We get to do so much cool stuff in this class!!! We’ve barely finished the first quarter and already we’ve written a group poem, an essay on our favorite singer, an essay on our favorite musician, an essay on September 11th and made fictional newspapers.

Our group poem was an amazing lesson on “the writing process.” In an hour and a half we went through all of the stages, together as a class. The girls chose the topic: butterflies. We brainstormed descriptive words, action words, and phrases that would explain to Helen Keller what a butterfly is like. (Last year we read about Helen Keller together.) They each wrote a line to contribute to the poem.

While we were writing butterflies flew into the room. It silenced a room full of teenage girls. And me. (That's saying something.) Then, as if to say "this isn't just a coincidence" another butterfly fluttered in and puttered around the room. It was breathtaking and beautiful and one of my favorite Peace Corps memories.

The essays they wrote about September 11th were pretty incredible, too. These girls were all 8 years old on 9/11, so most of them don’t really remember it. But one of the girls was in Guam because her mother is in the military, and it was really interesting to read about the experience from her perspective. Another one of the girls was in school with a lot of Americans in Saipan, so most of her classmates were affected and the day left an imprint in her mind. The two Chinese girls in my class had never ever heard of September 11th until we talked about it for this essay. Not even a little bit. They literally had NO idea. I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised about that, but it's just such a HUGE part of our social memory that an existence without that knowledge is almost incomprehensible to me. It was pretty amazing to watch them take in the new information, react to it, and roll it all around in their minds.

Then, I was completely blown away by their newspaper projects. It was kind of a last minute decision to make them do this project. Really, I just wanted a group project that let each person write something, and then each one could focus on a single part of the writing process. One editor, one proofreader, one final-copy layout-artist, etc. So we had three newspapers, each with their own theme: Teen Tabloid, World Tymz, and The Bethania Newsfeed. Clever! Teen Tabloid photoshopped their faces into pictures with celebrities. Bethania Newsfeed took their own photographs. And World Tymz was fully, gorgeously illustrated. I really wasn’t prepared for this onslaught of creativity! Who knew they had that in them?!?

Next up …

A Senior Portfolio: College application, Cover letter and Resume, Personal Statement
Scientific Research Papers (in preparation for their Spring science fair projects)
A Screenplay (they’ll film and edit in their Computer class next semester)