Reflections on the Module

In an interview at the end of April, Lynn reflected on the growth she saw in her class.
“Some of what was surprising is just that something, frankly, as silly as a little cartoon character, Serf Thomas and Serf Anne, could have such a huge impact. Just having students thinking through how an everyday person, not someone in the book, not a famous person, but an everyday person is affected in their real life was huge. I’m surprised by how much that has just changed everything. We still refer back to the class poster, even now that we have moved on, in the unit on Islam, where we have had to rewind time and are in a different part of the world, we refer to that poster and they get it right away. The idea that religion impacts a whole society is not a foreign idea to them. It’s not just a poster. It’s the fact that my kids created it, that it was a class effort My students have really grasped the historical contexts more than they have ever before because we were slowing down and using primary sources.
I feel like, especially in the Enlightenment unit, it was this really nice balance of students feeling like they were doing a lot of work– so much reading and thinking and getting it down. The way that it was set up, they got to know all of these Enlightenment thinkers and recognize their ideas and were able to Talk to the Text and kind of get to the bottom of really some hard texts and really actually understand. In all of my previous years, the kids have looked at me like, ‘Tell me what I’m supposed to write ‘cause I don’t know. I don’t understand this Thomas Hobbes guy. I don’t understand what this says.’ They would be waiting with their pens for me to give them the answer. Instead, this year, they were able to grasp the concepts. They felt empowered, they felt smart, they felt like they were doing a lot of work and that they had something to say. By the end, they were feeling successful. They walked away every day knowing what was happening that day in class, knowing who the Enlightenment thinkers were and what their ideas were–not closing the book and feeling confused, but understanding.”