Making Non-fiction Live in Your Area

College Composition reads Unbroken for their first book. In the past, I tried connecting Louie’s story of God’s resilience in his life to someone from today. It didn’t work. I tried it twice and failed. So this year I’m trying to bring in the “real people” part by letting them soak in stories about Veterans from Sioux County from WWII.  We began with my storytelling about my Dad, followed by Larry Wielenga’s stories about his father and father-in-law. The next day we met Jim Schaap at the Orange City Cemetery where he told us stories of his mother-in-laws finance who died on D-Day and his father-in-law’s brothers story and how he died state side. He also told more stories of veterans  who lived past the war. The next class period we met at the Sioux County Historical Museum. There Arlo Van Beek walked us through the Veteran, WWII, section of the museum. On Friday, we visited Northwestern College so see their display of Ralph Mouw. All of this soaking up information hopefully will give them a curious mind to dig deeper into Louie’s story but also to know that they have some incredible stories in Northwest Iowa too. From our week of soaking, the seniors will be assigned the following paper, bringing in the real people part of TfT.  

Find a WWII Veteran from Siouxland and research his story. You will need at least one source, but better yet would be 2-3 sources. If he has family in this area yet, interviewing them might be a great source too. Between Sioux Center Library, books, NWC library and museum information, we should be able to find a person for the job. Dig deep. Let this be a work of honor for this person. The end result should be 2-3 pages, DS, MLA with a works cited page. You will need to come up with a thesis for your person. If you can connect to the Unbroken story, do. If not, that it OK too. I will grade the final draft, but I will also give a copy of your work to the Sioux Center Library and the Sioux County Historical Museum.  

Handing over the final project also fits into the TfT element of a higher audience. 

Making It Visible

One elements of TFT I'm trying to be very intentional about is making things visible. Not only will this be something I can add to throughout the year, but something that will be before us all year, reminding us of this driving force. Our school's storyline is about planting seeds this year, so one side of my room refers to that storyline. My overall deep hope for the students in my room is the hope that we can always be great communicators that help build communities. My learning targets sit by my door on clip boards. My storyline for my room is a bulletin board that we will add information to throughout the year (for some reason that pictures did not get here). So here's to making things visible this year and making these things a part of our lessons, conversations and activities.

#knowthestory

This year in my classroom, my storyline is #knowthestory. A storyline is suppose to "drip" with the teacher selecting it, so the idea of "story" in my room fits the drip.  My hope is to build community in my room, town and world as we learn more about God's story and the impact of that in our lives, to learn about others stories and what we can learn from them, and what we learn about our own stories and how that helps us grow. My hope is to bring that storyline to life on this blog through pictures and the activities we do. I will also be including other Teaching for Transformation ideas on the blog to hopefully be a springboard for ideas for other teachers.