Pullin' a Mary Poppins on 'em -

The Proclamation of 1763 isn’t sending my students into spasms of excitement. I wonder why?

I mean, the British were pretty clever. They came up with this plan after the French and Indian War, and basically what it said was that colonists could no longer cross over the Appalachian Mountains. Oh yeah, and all those folks that had already gone over – well, they needed to abandon their efforts and come on back east.

My kids didn’t get it. They didn’t get that the British were out to appease the Native Americans who had helped them win the war. They didn’t get that the British government wanted to keep colonists on the east coast to keep the trade and investments they had there running at max capacity. And they didn’t say that they (the British government – again) wanted to clear the area so that the fur trade their would be exclusively theirs.

Now, learn this, students.

Ain’t gonna happen.

OK, say you’ve got a store. A nice Mom & Pop. Family operation. It’s getting pretty big. But you’re low on the ladder, with nowhere to go. The kids will inherit the business, and you’ll be stuck stocking the shelves for the rest of your life. Do you want that?

Then another store looks into setting up in town. This store isn’t run by ‘the family’. You’ve got a chance to move and join the new store, climb the ladder maybe. Get into management yourself. You work hard, and no incompetent family heir is going to get in your way. Do you want that?

Now say the Mom & Pop hears about the new store coming, and the first thing they do is claim the land the new store wanted. They say they want ‘controlled’ development. They say they want to keep it 'forever wild'. But you know what they really want, right? Controlled profits.

So, let’s see. What's the British government up to? Who are they? They're the Mom & Pop. And who are the colonists? That's you, the guy stuck at the Mom & Pop, working with no way up. And what’s that Proclamation of 1763? That’s claiming the property of the new store, your opportunity. And why are they doing that? To keep the Mom & Pop profitable.

So what does this have to do with Mary Poppins?

Ah well...just a spoonful of analogy makes the content go down.

We’re Off to See the Wizard

The Ordinary World
This is what happened. I was happy with my own little I-Search project. I’d been doing it for years, and even though I never really solidify anything I teach, I was getting it down pretty good. In the past, my students had come up with really interesting questions, pursued the answers, and told good stories about their searches along the way. No two pieces were every the same, and students had learned to recognize the process of research, rather than just having their eye on the product.

Answering the Call
I could have stayed there, but my team teacher of English wasn’t satisfied. She wanted to turn the I-Search into a combined English and Social Studies writing project. She wanted to help them write creative non-fiction stories, whatever that was.

Refusal of the Call
Right. I just couldn’t get my head around it. Historical fiction, creative non-fiction, whatever. And she wanted me to do all the grunt work with them, the research. We tried to find some examples of what she was talking about.

Crossing the First Threshold
Then came the staff developer, who just happened to have taught with me 20 years ago, with something up his sleeve. The Hero’s Journey. Every good story, he said, follows the pattern of the Hero’s Journey. The story begins with an ordinary world (Kansas, let’s say) The Hero is somehow out of place, but it’s comfortable. (Dorothy – she lives with Auntie Em and Uncle Henry – but where are her parents?) The Call is Answered (She runs away with Toto), but then she chickens out (the peddler tells her to go back home). When the tornado strikes, there’s no going back. She ain’t in Kansas any more, folks (Crossing the First Threshold).

There’s more. Enemies, Allies, Trials, Mentors, Ordeals, Returning Home, Resurrection.

So that’s how we (my old friend the staff developer, my clever English cohort, and I) are presenting this writing project to the students. As in the Hero’s story, as in life, as in a combined writing project, they are on a journey, and can now identify the markings of trials and tribulations, dark caves and moments of confusion in their own research, because this is their journey.

Imagine a bunch of 7th graders whistling “We off to see the Wizard” on their way to do research in the library.