(click on image to see up close)
This year I am teaching World Literature and I really wanted to come up with a theme so that I could cast a vision of what the broad scope of the year will look like. So I came up with a metaphor: “Literature is a door that allows you to travel into: nations, cultures, time, and people’s lives, experiences, hearts and minds. The first bulletin board in orange is in my classroom. I put some flags from around the world and also names of countries and a couple of dates that are from the books we’ll be reading this year. The second bulletin board is outside my door and it reads: “Like to travel?” and has enlarged postcards from different areas in the world. The outside door is purposed to make the student go, “hmm…what’s that mean?” Of course, they will soon discover the connection when they see the metaphor on the bulletin board inside and as we talk about it together on the first day of school. Soon after, we will begin to “tour” around the world starting in Brooklyn with a Jewish boy, moving on to 1948 South Africa just a couple of years before apartheid came into full blown legislation, then to ancient Rome and Greece to endure hopeless tragedies, and ending in Auschiwtz during the Holocaust. Oh, and also many poets in there from the far corners of the earth!
Well, if you can’t tell, I really enjoyed creating this theme and am happy with the way the boards turned out. Hopefully I can endow my students with some of my excitement!
