I've had the book on my shelf, and I wanted to model the ways an educator can bring additional texts to a learning environment, asking students an essential question of "Why nature? Why human nature? And what responsibility do we have to both?"
My hypothesis is that the curriculum of reading will enhance reading strategies across content areas in middle and secondary schools. I do this across all my classes, actually.
I learned much earlier in life that starlings were brought to the U.S. by a man who missed his European friends. I became more interested when seeing murmurations across the years, wondering what the natural reason was for such flight. The theory is for being a more massive entity when flying together, to fight off predators, but also for feeding on insects also in flight. They are stronger when en-masse.
The class also watched a brief documentary on Jamestown, Pennsylvania, and the 1889 flood that devastated towns, killing many. The historical question is how humans use technological advances to improve their lifestyle, but the curiosity that comes when they fail. Who is responsible? What are we to do? How can we use our humanity to make the world better for more, rather than for less?
Flooded: Requiem for Johnstown offers a cross-disciplinary read across content areas and gives us a common ground to discuss literacy, history, the responsibility we have to students, and best practices for adolescent instruction. We are Starlings gave me a way to bring forward the behaviors of other creatures in nature as they, too, work to prolong life for future generations. Life, after all, is a constant movement to propagate itself.
As for humans, we've come a long, long, way...but that doesn't mean we'll NOT attempt new ways to make history repeat itself.
