This project began with four seniors in high school, the word spread, and middle school submitted their entries (61 in total). During the poetry unit in British Literature, students had to create their own poem using poetic elements I instructed them to use (page 3 of the book).  

They coupled that with a major social issue that they consider important to address. What was interesting throughout this process, students turned their own experiences and cultural worldview as a microcosm to larger issues. I truly became a facilitator while maintaining the authority by providing feedback that would help them write about traumatic experience using poetic rhetoric that would make the reader connect to the writing no matter their background or experience. 

I wanted to move away from the traditional book report format and incorporate the fact that students were always on TIK TOK, Instagram, Facebook, and/or gaming. I was always redirecting my classes to focus on the lesson because of their need to check these systems during school hours. Hence, if I could not beat them, I joined them!

With this in mind, I used Canva in order to encourage students to create a layout for their book reports that included film/videos/text while adhering to the learning outcomes of characterization, plot, author's background, summarizing, paraphrasing, and etcetera. 

In the school, the Media program was a big hit with the students. Students were always trying to create something with iMovie. Hence, I went interdisciplinary and combined my efforts with the Media/Film teacher to have students create a documentary-style assignment where they research what they thought "FREEDOM" was. I asked them to talk to their families, friends, or other teachers willing to participate t in their project to explain their perspective on what freedom is. 

Please note that the school is religious, so there are many references to the Bible.