-Taken from a personal blog of Tara Fry, Banbury's teacher for 9 years-
My students are my source of inspiration. There is no denying that. And, as the years go on, I find they come up with more and more ideas, pushing me to adapt my teaching style and to consider things that I hadn’t previously.
A prime example of this came last spring, when many of us were eagerly awaiting the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron. One of my high school boys decided that AoU would be the perfect field trip for us – like the one we’d previously done for the first Hunger Games movie. Now, I could have taken the easy route and denied his request, but, instead, I told him to convince me. The next day, I found a 1-paged typed essay on my desk, explaining how AoU connected with the Social 20-1 curriculum. It was a brilliant essay, full of carefully crafted arguments and plenty of supporting details. No, we didn’t end up going to AoU as a field trip, since I couldn`t justify taking everyone to a movie that only really worked for one grade level, but I did create The Avengers Initiative – a series of assignments that cover half of the Social 20-1 curriculum and one third of the English 20-1 curriculum. The assignments are designed to directly connect with concepts and skills students a required to know and have as a result of the course, but are approached through movies and characters they are naturally drawn to and excited about.
Read the full article by Tara Fry in her personal blog here : https://theselfdirectedteacher.wordpress.com/
