Welcome to our English Language Arts classroom in Gwinn, Michigan. Our high school is tucked in the pines in the beautiful and remote Upper Peninsula.
My students are quirky, fun, and high energy.
I teach 10th through 12th graders whose interests range from playing sports to participating in drama camp to showing farm animals at the county fair. I love to nurture a passion for reading and writing and to help students develop their voices. These teenagers have a lot to say to the world!
Also, I have a science background, and I try to incorporate STEM lessons in my ELA classes when possible.
My Project
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publishing of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The novel, about a doctor who creates a monster, remains relevant today as we face ethical dilemmas in genetic engineering, stem cell research, animal to human transplants, etc. I would like to create a unit for my Honors English students -- the class is mostly girls -- where they will research and debate topics regarding ethics, science, and technology.
In addition to Frankenstein, we will read Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Henrietta was a poor, black tobacco farmer and mother, and her cells -- now known as HeLa cells -- were taken without her knowledge in 1951. These cells were sent to researchers around the world and have been used for curing polio, gene mapping, cloning, and more.
A documentary that I would like to tie in with this unit is Three Identical Strangers. It examines triplets who were separated at birth, a secret study, and controversies over ethics.
These resources, along with a variety of online research materials, will help my students explore what it means to be human.
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