A Few Final Notes

Well, I think we should declare the class a success. Students completed and presented their final projects. They wrote beautiful, though somewhat sad, final essays on how significant spaces and places have affected their lives. We wrapped up discussions and reshelved the books.

What started as a lovely idea for a class during a rainy walk in New York City in November, 2007 blossomed into a solid, organized, and culturally relevant class to teach comprehension, collaboration, reflection, discussion, leadership, personal resiliency, and writing skills.

The bibliography for the student independent choice novel assignment also started with that walk in November, 2007 and grew to a lengthy, culturally-inclusive list of works throughout the first half of 2008. All of my students drew from that list throughout the last year (not just for this course). From the first day of school this September, I was recommending the titles to students and teachers, alike. I think it was worth the unpaid curriculum development time and half of my yearly classroom budget to see the right books in the right students' hands. (If you want the bibliography, contact me at my school district email. Sorry, I don't publish curriculum handouts online as others do not always respect the intellectual property of teachers.)

I have some shifting of units to do for next year. The class fits best in an academic quarter that has the highest number of face days with students. Yet, very few students had difficulty staying on top of the reading or doing homework for the class. I am very proud of their efforts.

Thank you to all who participated and supported the course, especially Anna Moss, our school librarian, and parents who made it possible to gather copies of the books on my list. Although it was a very expensive course to develop, it will survive in the curriculum lineup for years to come.

Independent Choice Novels

Students chose to read and reflect on the following books for their final unit of the course:

Dairy Queen -- Catherine Gilbert Murdock
The Burn Journals -- Brent Runyon
Homeless Bird -- Gloria Whelan
Deadline -- Chris Crutcher
Story of a Girl -- Sara Zarr
Sweethearts -- Sara Zarr
How I Live Now -- Meg Rosoff
Caucasia -- Danzy Senna
Right Behind You -- Gail Giles
Touching Snow -- M. Sindy Felin
Into the Wild -- Jon Krakauer
Sold -- Patricia McCormick