Curriculum ideas

Some thoughts I'm tossing around in regards to eventually teaching composition, despite my lack of classroom experience.

Open class by reading selections from or all of Persepolis. Use this to introduce cultural difference and power structures.

• Marjane feels confined in Iran, but liberated in France. Yet, in France she has to give up part of herself.
• Anzuldua and Borderlands
  
• Have students brainstorm, freewrite, explore their own borderlands (perhaps journal?)
• Have students create a project (any kind, writing, comic, find some good genres)

Evaluation of sources

• Choose some controversial social issues and have students research perspectives on these issues.
• What do these perspectives leave out? How can their ideas be better developed?
• What points of view are valued, which are undervalued?
• "Blaming the victim" selections

Application

• research a local issue (Marshall, Huntington, own hometown)
• gather perspectives from news sources, community leaders, and individuals
• global research: does this issue occur elsewhere? why/why not? How have other communities dealt with this
• How might "borderlands" be at play in this issue?
• write a "white paper" on findings and conclusions

Creative reinterpretation

• another open-genre project: explore the issue from your white paper and apply it to your personal experience
• perhaps project should reflect a solution or why a solution is unattainable?
• alternate areas of exploration?