Spring is Puddle-Wonderful

Hey everybody! The last nine weeks are here already and I can hardly believe it.
Ending on a very literary note, the students wrapped up their third quarter familiarizing themselves with a slew of American poets ranging from Carl Sandburg to Gwendolyn Brooks.
The unit culminated in one writing assignment (an annotated bibliography) and a creative project, which will be due this Thursday/Friday. Check with your kid and make sure they got their paper in as it will be the first big grade in STI for this final quarter.

Before we begin our big Vietnam war unit, students will be reading Persepolis, a graphic novel by the Iranian artist and author Marjan Satrapi. This unit, a collaborative effort between myself and Deidre Hoff, the AP History teacher, coincides with the screening of the film version at the Salina Arts Center. Persepolis the film (based on the graphic novel) will be playing at the Arts Cinema from March 28th through April 3rd.

Graphic novels, which are a hybrid between a traditional novel and a comic book, can teach students how to be critical visual consumers. Not only are the students decoding how images create meanings (just like words) but students are also exploring how coming of age in Iran compares to their own experience as teenagers in the United States. Rebellion, identity, and peer pressure, it turns out, resonate across the globe.