Combat Paper Project

So for the culmination of this unit, students worked on something called a "Combat Paper Project."  I learned about the Combat Paper Project from a professional development workshop I attended last spring.  What the organization does is sets up a forum for soldiers to process their experiences from war, and literally transform them into art.  Soldiers shred their actual uniforms, turn them into pulp, and then create paper and artwork from that pulp.  It's about re-purposing that pain.  This had a clear connection to the text we were reading, The Things They Carried, in which Tim O'Brien highlights the importance of writing for him, about how it allowed him to literally separate himself from certain experiences.  What my students did to connect the book to the project was write about a painful experience (or draw, whatever), or just something they needed to get off their chest, and then they shredded it.  We worked with the art department to learn paper-making techniques, and went through a very similar process as members of the Combat Paper Project.  Seldom have I seen my students so engaged in an endeavor.  I made a blog detailing both what they did as well as sharing some images.  Please feel free to check it out:

http://ourcombatpaperproject2012.blogspot.com/

So happy about everything that's happening in this particular class.  Thank you guys for reading!  :)

   

Researching War

So, I just wanted to share an update of what my classes ending up doing with their study of The Things They Carried.  First off, I want to share that one of the reasons I am so passionate about this unit is that my best friend is a veteran of the Iraq war, and he is being deployed to Afghanistan this coming spring.  He has shared some of his experiences with me, and while before hearing about this, I knew war was "bad," I never before really thought about how bad.  There's a passage from The Things They Carried where Tim O'Brien writes about his feelings about war before he went which I can completely relate to:  "[My anti-war thoughts] were almost entirely an intellectual activity.  I brought some energy to it, of course, but it was the energy that accompanies almost any abstract endeavor; I felt no personal danger; I felt no sense of an impending crisis in my life.  Stupidly, with a kind of smug removal that I can't begin to fathom, I assumed that the problems of killing and dying did not fall within my special province."  While reading and preparing for class, this quotation really resonated with me.  Most of my students are "anti-war" -- I mean, who's pro-war?  But it's a distant kind of anti-war... there's nothing personal, nothing invested about it.  So I was wondering what I could do to change that.  The best thing I came up with was education.  So, that's where their writing assignment came from.

My students were tasked with basically proving that the problems Tim O'Brien and his fictional comrades faced in the Vietnam War are not too different from the issues faced by current soldiers.  Together, we brainstormed things O'Brien is concerned with in his book -- people's motivations for joining a war, psychological impact of committing murder, training people to be killers, desensitization to violence, the difficult transition back into home life, finding a job and purpose upon returning to civilian life, the prevalence of suicide in veterans, amongst other things.  I told students that the point of the paper was to learn about the reality of war -- if we are going to send young men and women to such a thing, we have an obligation to know what it is we are sending them to.  I feel so passionately about this... if people were more aware of the reality of war, I believe they would be less willing to support it.  I know there's some truth to that, since talking with my friend Mario and hearing what he saw (and seeing it, too) truly changed my life.  No one should have to go through what he did, and I'm trying to do my small part to encourage that change in the world.

As an extension, I think I'm going to ask the kids to write some sort of piece researching what they can DO about the issue they chose to write about.  They can research organizations who are helping ameliorate the issue, then just write a reflection about what they've learned.  Yep, I think that's going to be the goal.

Here is a link to the assignment in case anyone wants to check it out.  Thank you again for your continued support! :)

Link to Researching War Assignment

The Things They Carried

So last week I started my unit on The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien (link on Amazon).  It's an awesome book, and the kids are always really into it... so my challenge this year was to make this unit more purposeful.  To give it a real clear objective.... Right now, I've decided that it's about students understanding the real experience of soldiers, and knowing that if they are going to support a war, they need to understand what exactly it is they are supporting.

The stories deal primarily with, as the title says, the things soldiers carry, both physically, emotionally, and mentally.  It becomes quickly apparent that the intangible weights are far heavier than the tangible ones, and many soldiers come home with lasting effects of the soldier's lifestyle.  While the book is about Vietnam, I want students to see that this is not a unique experience, and we have soldiers today dealing with the very same issues as Tim O'Brien's characters.  I think for their final assessment, they are going to be asked to write a paper proving that very idea -- that the issues O'Brien are concerned with are not unique to Vietnam, but are still issues to combat veterans today.

After seeing the success of using a documentary in the forgiveness unit, I'd like to use another film for this unit.  Two I have watched are Soldiers of Conscience, which is about soldiers struggling with the question to kill or not to kill, and This is Where We Take Our Stand, a documentary by Iraq Veterans Against the War about their desire to share their experiences via the 2008 Winter Soldier hearings.  I need to really pin down the goal of showing a film, and decide where to go from there....

I also want there to be some application piece -- something the kids DO with what they learn.  That's currently my big question mark...

Anyway, that's where I am at the moment.  I hope you are all well :)

Hugs,
    Laura

Forgiveness & Restorative Justice lesson success

Hello, friends!  So I wanted to share an update on my recent unit.  I wrote a few weeks ago about my students' engagement with the topic of revenge and justice -- this got me wanted to stick with the topic and explore it further.  So, after reading a play and seeing one character consumed with revenge and another resigning to a fate he didn't deserve (and forgiving his offenders), I turned the topic to forgiveness.  We read two works by MLK -- "Loving Your Enemies," a sermon on forgiveness, and we read an excerpt from "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence."  I asked the kids to write a response to the pieces and to connect the readings to the text we were studying in class.  The kids had some really thoughtful, reflective things to say.  Some reflective thinking about conflict resolution started!

Next, we had a guest speaker come in to talk about restorative justice (http://www.c4rj.com/).  We watched a clip from the film "Burning Bridges," which is a documentary following a restorative justice process after a group of teenagers burn down a bridge in a small community in PA.  We debriefed afterwards, and students all concluded that "this can't be used with real crimes, crimes with real victims."  This was kind of where I wanted them to be.... and so we then watched the documentary "A Long Night's Journey Into Day," which documents South Africa's use of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in order to heal the wounds caused by apartheid.  After each segment of the film, students shared their reactions.  They were pretty inspired by people's ability to forgive others for some of the most heinous crimes imaginable.  They watched mothers and fathers of murder victims hug the person who murdered their child.  They also saw families of murder victims who did not forgive the offender, and reflected on that burden.  The film also humanized many of those who committed atrocities, which resonated with the kids as well.  They saw that these people were people, not monsters, and it was pretty powerful to watch.

So for their assessment, students had two options:  a personal narrative reflecting on an experience related to forgiveness, or write a persuasive essay arguing that restorative justice should be used in a given situation (could be current events, a school issue, American history -- anything related to a community they're a part of).  The students really got into these pieces, and wrote some beautiful work.  They cared about what they were writing about, and I really just feel good about the unit.... awesome, awesome.

I'm going to try to attach the documents from this unit in the comments box, so you can access them if you'd like.  Thanks for your continued support :)

Big hugs,
   Laura

Ahimsa Conference in CA -- See Tazeen present! :)

Hi friends!  Many of you are aware of this conference, but just in case some do not know yet, I wanted to share some details.

Dr. Tara Sethia, who runs the Ahimsa Institute which many of the participants in the India program attended last summer, is offering a conference the first week in November called "Ahimsa and Sustainable Happiness."  It is from November 2-4, and I can personally speak for how amazing Tara's work is.  She's so passionate and thoughtful about this topic, and so I am confident this will be useful in enhancing our practice and our understanding of ahimsa and its relationship with happiness.

Our friend Tazeen is presenting (yay!!) and Meghan Hausdorf and I are planning on going, and Dr. Sethia is offering scholarships to help pay for the experience.  If you want more information, feel free to ask!

Miss you all,

    Laura

Revenge vs. Justice lesson

Hi, all!  So I feel like I'm a logical person to start this off, and after an awesome lesson last week, I was looking forward to sharing :)

So my kids are reading an awesome play called The Visit by Fredreich Durrenmatt, which deals with a scorned woman wanting revenge on a town that exiled her 45 years ago.  This led to a discussion with my seniors of the difference between justice and revenge.  For HW, they had to share their thoughts on the difference between justice and revenge, and then respond to two articles about the death of Osama Bin Laden, explaining whether they thought his murder was a matter of revenge or justice.

The next day in class, the students came up with wonderfully insightful lists of qualities of justice and revenge -- it was clear the two were completely different concepts, though the kids said that we often commit acts of revenge and call them justice (like the woman in the play).  However, when asked to apply their definitions to Bin Laden, they were really uncomfortable calling that act vengeance.  They were determined for it to be "right," and they felt like "right" had to be "just."  It was a really awesome discussion...

Anyway, to extend that, next week I'm having people from Communities for Restorative Justice come to my classes to talk to them about restorative justice practices (http://www.c4rj.com/).  I'm hoping it will be an interesting introduction to an alternate way of restoring community.

I want my kids, then, to do some kind of personal writing piece around this topic.  Maybe thinking about a time they were hurt, and how they responded?  I don't know, but I'm thinking maybe one of you all have an idea :)

Anyway, I hope all is well... I hope we can use this blog to keep in touch and share thoughts/ideas!!

xoxo,
   Laura