I watched a documentary this weekend called "Sir! No Sir!" It's about the GI anti-war movement, and I kept thinking of "On the Rainy River" chapter about O'Brien's inaction, whereas the doc was all about actions soldiers took. There's a whole bunch of clips from it on youtube, including a 12 minute trailer that gives a good synopsis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDk6Qal2DCI Give it a watch. I liked it a lot, and think maybe portions of it could be used in class to expand the portrait of the Vietnam soldier and the times.
Aaaaaaaand documentaries are just about the best things ever. Ever.
Any other texts you would want to bring into the classroom to use with "The Things They Carried?"
What "essential questions" do you think you would explore with this book? How would you frame the study of TTTC?
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I'm at work right now, but later I'll have to look back at my plans from when I taught TTTC last year.
ReplyDeleteI framed the book with discussions on fiction, telling the truth, and also the history of Vietnam. I remember opening the book with the question, "what war did the USA loose?" None of the students could answer because in history classes the Vietnam war is glazed over due to the humiliation America felt afterward - it's not really talked about in the text books. We connected this untruth in history books to the "lies" that O'brien tells in his stories. The students really got into the Vietnam aspect of the book though and we actually talked a lot about history of the war, Americans' thoughts on the war, soldiers experiences, and also the affects the war had on the soldiers afterward (we talked about that mostly after reading Bowker's story). We also talked about story telling, especially when something significant effects your life.
I remember a fun activity that we did was watching a 5 minute clip of Rambo. Before I started the clip I gave each student a character they needed to focus on. We watched the film twice and then they had to write the part of the story from the characters' perspective they were assigned. I was shocked at the amazing stories students' wrote! After we were done writing in class for a couple days, some students shared their stories out loud. We then talked about the fact that we all watched the same movie, but all of our stories were different. We had a good time with it, ended up with some fantastic stories, and it really drove my point home!
I just started reading the NCTE book so I'm hoping to get newer ideas in my head about how to teach the book and possibly revise some old ideas to make them better! :)
In the Hemmingway book The Sun Also Rises there is a quote that always made me think to the displacement of Vietnam soldiers, who were fighting for a country that was rebelling against the war. It was by Gertrude Stein something about being a lost generation, which was the theme for the book..I'll see if I can find it..
ReplyDeleteThe quote by Gertrude Stein: I don't know if it's anything we could use but it rings of the after war.. back home..what do we do now kind of feeling. Does anyone know what quote I'm talking about..I'm blanking out.. If so let me know.
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