Two songs & seven poems.  I try to make everything that we do in our class have lots and lots of connections.  These poems (and songs) not only give us practice in analyzing poetry - but they also give a way to connect with the prose that it is to follow.  As per usual, the class is broken  up into groups - since there are only seven poems - groups may be as big as 4 students - they get into their groups, read through the poem - interpret it - and then report back to us (after reading the poem aloud for us) what they came up with.  For the songs, we will listen and I will ask some questions or point things out as we listen.  Finally, the poem and song titles can be found on their bookmarks that they keep in their books as they read - a constant reminder of what we did and the connections that are out there.

As I've mentioned before, this course used to be World Literature / Journalism.  In Our Time was the perfect book as it was written by an author who did both (Literature and Journalism).  Originally I tied a beautiful article by Ernie Pyle into this group work.  When the course became solely World Literature, the emphasis shifted away from Journalism.  And yet...  The idea of fiction and nonfiction being two absolutes is often rooted in students' (and some adults as well) minds.  This very short story from "In Our Time" accompanied by an article that Hemingway wrote for the Toronto Daily Star - on the exact same incident (Greek refugees in Turkey) gives students the chance to see how closely fact can be to fiction.

What an incredible, powerful story.  I am a firm believer that literature - can, at its best - help us navigate the tough and painful times that will come in our own (and our students') lives.  This is one such story.  We begin the lesson (after the quiz) with a discrepant event (see my page on Class Discussion Methods).  I ask the students to tear off a corner of a sheet of  paper (about a 1/4 of a page).  Then they are to write down one word that describes the emotion they felt, as a reader, when they came to the part of the text where the death of young father is described.  After they write it - I then tell them to fold the paper in two so the word is hidden.  We then arrange ourselves in concentric circles - one person in the center of the room - three around that person - six or seven around that circle - etc. until we have four or five circles of students.  Next, everyone hands their slips of paper to the person in the center.  I then ask that person, in the center, to read - in their normal voice to read one of the words.  The next circle is instructed to repeat that word - only a little softer.  The next circle softer than that - until the last (outmost's) circle's utterance can barely be heard.  The effect is powerful and the perfect way to begin our discussion.

This is such a perfect follow-up to "Indian Camp" and our discussion about that story.  With that story, it is pretty unclear why the Doctor would take his very young son to such a potentially (and actually as it turns out) tragic medical procedure.  The story, "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" does a great job of explaining the "why".  As always (or at least I'd like to believe), I try to have the students find out that reason for themselves by doing a very close dive into the text of Hemingway's story - along with bringing in what we talked about with "Indian Camp".

There is a big leap in time - with Nick - between "The Dr. and the Dr.'s Wife" and this story.  He is a teenager - and if the last two stories were about the child, Nick and his parents - this story is about Nick starting to become an adult - and his first heartbreak.  Perhaps that's one of the reasons that this story - over the years that I taught it - won so many of my students over - not only to the story, but to Hemingway as a writer and this book in particular.  Often, students are working on other projects (Dante for instance) and to reduce the homework - we will read this story aloud in class - and then talk about it when we finish.  Students will have their copies of In Our Time in front of them or the printed out story (found below) and take notes.  Once again, proving that this book is much more than a collection of unrelated stories - this story is the foundation for what is to come next: "The End of Something".

There is a big leap in time - with Nick - between "The Dr. and the Dr.'s Wife" and this story.  He is a teenager - and if the last two stories were about the child, Nick and his parents - this story is about Nick starting to become an adult - and his first heartbreak.  Perhaps that's one of the reasons that this story - over the years that I taught it - won so many of my students over - not only to the story, but to Hemingway as a writer and this book in particular.  Often, students are working on other projects (Dante for instance) and to reduce the homework - we will read this story aloud in class - and then talk about it when we finish.  Students will have their copies of In Our Time in front of them or the printed out story (found below) and take notes.  Once again, proving that this book is much more than a collection of unrelated stories - this story is the foundation for what is to come next: "The End of Something".

 "Cat in the Rain" is an amazing story about a woman who is completely fed up with her husband's patronizing attitude.  It is told from her perspective - and I often hold it up as an example to those who claim that all of Hemingway's writing contains toxic masculinity.  This story certainly doesn't.   The story is short enough that it can be read aloud in class (by the students) and discussed after the reading.  I've also included a Group Work that I used once or twice when it was impossible for me to be in class.  This is the story that inspired the first-ever Illuminated Text.  After it was assigned, a student handed me a cd with the Illuminated Text (a Power Point animation) on it - and asked me to take a look at it.  It was amazing, and started a revolution in explicating text.

As a teacher, nothing was more exciting to me than when a student discovered or understood something on their own.  Hemingway's story, "Hills Like White Elephants", though not from In Our Time, gives students just such a chance.  I remember first reading this in college - and I didn't "get it" - and it had to be pointed out by a friend of mine.  But when I did see what was causing the underlying tension in the story - of course it all made wonderful sense.  The story is also perfect for illustrating what Hemingway calls the "Iceberg Theory" - the idea that by leaving major plot points OUT of a story - it helps create even more tension than if it had been said explicitly.  The partners read the story by themselves mark it up - then find a partner to complete the rest.  If they get stuck there are some very helpful quotes that they can get from the teacher.  

Now that students have done the ground work with Hemingway's "Iceberg Theory" with their last lesson on "Hills Like White Elephants" - AND they were told to watch for a similar omission in the story, "Out of Season" that they read for homework - it is time to see what they came up with - and how well the "Iceberg Theory" works.  For many years, I did this lesson as a teacher-led (ringmaster) discussion with questions and answers - however, given the explosive part of the plot that Hemingway kept hidden from the text - I thought it made sense (and for other reasons) to do this as a Vertext instead. 

For some reason (I may have been absent) this is designed (for the only year I taught it) as a Solo rather than Group Work.  However, it wouldn't take much to change it back again to Group Work.  In many ways, this story hearkens back to "The Three-Day Blow".  Two close male friends are talking about the turns their lives are taking.  In "The Three-Day Blow" it was a very young Nick - talking about the breakup with Margorie that we saw in "The End of Something".  In this story - it is an older Nick, whose wife Helen is having a child and he is not exactly sure how to deal with it (something that first popped up in "Out of Season" and perhaps "Hills Like White Elephants".  It really is wonderful - and the students appreciate it so much - how the stories are connected together in the subtlest of ways.

I begin the Group Work by saying "This is SO cool if you do this right..."  And I mean it - it is very cool and it is very different than anything the students do all year.  For starters - it's a Jigsaw Group Work.  The students will leave their groups after doing some initial close reading of the text - and they will compare what they came up with (each group member will be taking a different "aspect" of the story: its geography, style, Nick's interaction with living things, and chronology), and then go back to their original groups to share that new information.  By answering a few questions (that do some scaffolding) and applying their expertise on the text - they will - on their own - make a huge discovery about "Big Two-Hearted River". 

One of my favorite lessons all year - the class has just spent the previous class (lesson) doing a very close reading of Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River" in small groups (that are jigsawed) - and discovered ON THEIR OWN that the story is in fact "really" about a man (Hemingway, Nick, Harold Krebs) coming back, shell-shocked, from war - and relearning to do the things that he loved and found so easy before he left - the methodical, unadorned style of the write displays his needing to rewrite the "manual" of how to live again in the world.  Well - today's class completely undermines that interpretation of the story.  After going some of the more important lines from the text using a Vertext - we look at four alternate meanings behind "Big Two-Hearted River". 

 I very rarely lecture  - perhaps two or three times a year for each of my classes.   Because I am such an aficionado of Hemingway's life and his work, I wanted to share some of what I had learned with my students.  The lecture is divided into two parts - the first part covers his birth until the tragic loss of all of his early writing.  The second part picks up at that point and goes until the end of his life.  Though lecturing is zealotly frowned upon these days in teaching - I honestly believe that some of the best classes that I've ever experienced were lectures - talks by speakers who cared deeply and energetically about their subjects, and were able to make them come alive for their listeners.    I begin the lecture at Hemingways birth and end with his death in 1961.

The second part of the lecture (for this year anyway) picks up with the publication of his first novel, "In Our Time", and it ends with Hemingway's death in 1961.  We talk about his subsequent books, subsequent marriages and his battle with the public image of what he had become - and his place in 20th Century art.   His Nobel Prize acceptance is included in its entirety as well my own personal take on his life.  I combined  the presentation (found below) with a recording from class and made it into a video.

From the very beginning of this unit, the students, along with short stories of In Our Time also have been reading the short little vignettes (referred to as Inter-Chapters) that appear between each of the stories.  Now, before we finish the book (or between reading the two parts of "Big Two-Hearted River" - and as a great way to review what they have read - the students will pull  together these Inter-Chapters to see if they can find a relationship between the vignettes and the stories that come before and after them.  The students are given a worksheet and a full class period to work with a partner and see what they can come up with.  There are four short questions at the end of the worksheet.

 There are many reasons to give an exam - in this case it is not only to see if the students were processing what we did in class during this unit - but I also wanted to see how they studied - and indeed, if they had the proper notes to study, from what we did during the Hemingway biographical lecture.  As always, the exam is a critical thinking, multiple choice exam.  Because I know that the test won't take the entire period - I have some readings for the students as well - for things that we didn't cover: a high school story written by Hemingway (it's really bad - so it's great for the students own self-judgment of their own writing) and an article about the real Big Two-Hearted River and Hemingway's time on it.