Catherine D. Yates
This unit is for high school Arts, English and Creative Writing teachers interested in a writing- and discussion-centered semester-long scrapbook project. The unit is manageable, not expensive to facilitate. The experience of teaching this unit is immersive, a hands-on learning model which is student-centered. The goal is to create a virtual or handheld scrapbook, telling the local story of the class community, and to share it with a national audience. The learning activities are based in community-sharing, influenced by the art historian Jules Prown and the weaver Anni Albers. It includes inclusive and playful pedagogy, studying the Romanov family albums and Nancy Rolfe’s scrapbooks at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and getting to know objects at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. While curating material objects for the scrapbook, students will analyze and explore the lives of the objects they choose. They will write descriptions of their objects. Relationships will be built through deep, academically investigative processes. Students will edit a short blackout poem, based on Prown’s method of investigation, summarized in his words: “an entire cultural universe is in the object waiting to be discovered”. Other activities include constructing a mini eulogy through word and images, and practicing writing.
(Developed for Creative Writing, grades 11-12, and English Language Arts, grades 9-12; recommended for Creative Writing, English, Language Arts, and Social Studies, grades 9-12)
