Beginning Research with Satrapi's Persepolis

Starting Persepolis tomorrow.

Beyond reading it and using it as part of our 'Coming of Age in an Unjust Society' curriculum -- this year, we're connecting it to Fahrenheit 451 and emphasizing the governmental suppression of books/information (along with the students reading a commonly banned book in the U.S.) -- we also use the text as a jumping off point for research.

Much of my teaching career has been spent without a librarian, and so my formative years as a teacher were spent without doing much research. And my own generation -- graduating from high school in 1995 -- seemed to be int he middle between using books and using the internet, and I never did much research on databases or things like that in college. In other words, I don't know how to do it very well, at least in an academic setting. That, plus not having a librarian for the first five or six years of my career, got me set in my ways.

The last couple of years, though, I've been tentatively trying it, and got pretty excited about having the students -- in their international literary circles unit -- form their own research question and do a little bit of database research last year. This year, we have a new librarian who is a good friend of mine, and today, along with another 9th grade teacher, we discussed our goals for this particular research assignment.

Last year, with Persepolis, we did a cool, but very unwieldy and confusing, research assignment on antiquated computers. Most of our computers are still antiquated, but we'd like to tighten up the assignment while still making it as authentic as possible. At our students' 9th grade skill level, their computer literacy is not great. They can text really well, but research on databases, or even on websites other than wikipedia? Not so much.

So we discussed our goals for the assignment. Is it researching - forming a research question, seeking sources, even when there's going to be confusion and maybe even failure in finding information, etc.? Or is it reading and evaluating sources (which fall under the "informational texts" umbrella that the system is really gung-ho about this year)? Or a little bit of both? And, then, when they find some information that helps them illuminate the text, what do they do with it? Powerpoint for the rest of the students? Something else?

So many decisions, and we haven't made them yet. Lots swimming around in my head and I think I need the weekend to let it stir around...

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I'm also supporting the other Baltimore Education bloggers who are also blogging every day this month. Check out their blogs!:

http://survivingthesystem.blogspot.com/

http://bmoreschools.org/

http://www.thesmallesttwine.blogspot.com/

http://nyates314.wordpress.com/