Mindy Wright

Teacher Applicant: Mindy Wright
Project Title: The Sci-Fi Zone
School: Lincoln Southwest High School
Grade: 11-12

Project Description:
This project was a nine-week course in science fiction literature taught twice this school year. Students read five books: H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Masterpieces: The Best of SF Short Stories of the Century. Students also viewed clips from 25 different films and television series, created projects using technology new to many of them, and participated in a weekly class online discussion board, as well as a weekly class forum. In the forum, students presented and discussed news articles, video, and online sites they found dealing with science fiction ideas, such as futuristic medical research, space exploration, global warming, robots, and advanced military/computer technology. Every Friday, students had the creative challenge of making recipes from The Star Wars Cookbook, or coming up with new recipes that fit their themes and allowing the class to taste test and evaluate their cooking skills. Students also played and critiqued old and new science fiction card games, board games, and video games, along with viewing a film that fit their theme for their Friday.

Learning Objectives:
My main objective was to engage students in the thoughtful process of learning about life and themselves by studying literature, working with their peers, and connecting with their community and the world. I also wanted to guide students in studying the genre of science fiction as a vehicle for social analysis, for developing responsibility for technological change, and for increasing awareness of the positive and negative possibilities regarding the future. Finally, because science fiction classes include such a diverse group of students, ranging from special needs to academically gifted, I hoped to use students’ interest in the genre and technology as a common bond to help them work together successfully, no matter the level at which they functioned in school.

Use of Cable Programs and/or Technology:
Cable TV provided access to a multitude of movies, TV series, author biographies, news programming, and special interest reports/shows that related so well to science fiction. I could offer my classes video clips to view/discuss/do activities over each day of our 45-day term. The popularity of science fiction related cable programming is clearly in demand across the nation since it was so readily available each week with everything from the Sci Fi Channel’s “The Twilight Zone” series to The History Channel’s program called “The Universe”. Following are many of the channels and programs we viewed during one or both terms of the course:

• Sci Fi Channel- “The Twilight Zone”, “Battlestar Galactica”, “Stargate”, “Firefly”, “Serenity”
• History Channel- “The Universe”, “UFO Files”
• NET1- “Nova”
• A&E- “Biography: H.G. Wells: Time Traveler”
• DISCH- “Rise of the Video Game”
• FX- “I, Robot”
• TNT- “Spiderman”
  
• AMC- “The Last Starfighter”
• TCM- “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”
• HALL- “Pandemic”, “Supernova”
• KXVO- “Star Trek”
• COM- “Spaceballs”
• BBC- “Life on Mars”
  
• NGC- “UFO’s, Seeing is Believing”
• WTBS- “Men in Black”
• OVATN- “Arthur C. Clarke: The Man Who Saw the Future”

Easy access to technology at Southwest also made it possible for students to experience using programs such as IMovie, Garage Band, IPhoto , Comic Life, and ITunes to create a special small group project after every novel we studied. For instance, students created a 19th Century English newspaper front page with breaking news regarding the Invisible Man for H.G. Wells’ novel The Invisible Man. They developed a robot and the advertising campaign to promote it for Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. Putting together all the details of a utopian society and allowing the rest of the class to experience it through a travel agency perspective helped student connections with Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End. Finally, sine they had been trying different science fiction games for eight Fridays, they got to create their own game that another group had to play over Robert A. Heinlein’s book, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Evaluate:
The course was definitely effective both terms as far as students engaging with text .Most students did an excellent job completing all five books, and several of these students have special needs (SPED). Clearly, the subject area and genre was literature with which all the students could and did engage. Some students did exceptionally well with the oral quizzes (more like reading checks) we did in class to check for reading completion. Other students connected well to our once a week “show and tell” about science fiction from the Internet, in a newspaper, or on special programming on Cable TV. I always had several volunteers to “go first’ on Forum days because students got excited about what they had found and were anxious to share. We all agreed that we learned a great deal about what was going on in the realms of science fiction as well as on the verge of the technology breakthroughs humanity is about to make worldwide! An interesting article that we found in the Kearny, Nebraska, Hub Newspaper was about a young man named Corey Reutlinger from Lexington, Nebraska, who has just published his first science fiction novel titled Virtual Knights. We ordered a copy through Barnes and Noble and Cory signed it for us. As a class we also emailed Robert Reed, Lincoln’s only winner of the HUGO Science Fiction Book Award (very prestigious!) for the best sci-fi book of the year. The Hugo is the zenith of awards for science fiction writers. So, Southwest students felt as if they were “at the center of the sci-fi universe” in October 2007, when the Hugo Awards were announced.

I believe students did an excellent job connecting with our community when we invited Mr. Barry Abrahams as a guest speaker to tell us about his extensive collections of science fiction first edition books, some worth six figures! We were amazed. Mr. Christianson, a science fiction aficionado, also joined us as a guest speaker to talk about the archetypes of the science fiction hero, and students had plenty of heroes in their science fiction experience to compare. Another community contributor was Kenny Smith, an assistant manager at the Game Shop at Southpointe Pavilions. Last summer, I approached Kenny with my idea about science fiction students in my classes having the opportunity to learn/play popular science fiction video/computer games for part of their class on Fridays. I wanted students to experience the games to better comprehend the aspects of their plots/characters/conflicts just as they would connect these same elements to the literature. Kenny brought X-boxes and brand new “just out” games such as Halo 3, which had kids across the nation lined up and sleeping outside of game stores to purchase the day it was first available in November 2007. The games were sold on Tuesday at midnight, and my students all had the opportunity to try it in class on Friday that week! Believe me, they felt privileged and were excited to get the controls in their hands! We all though Kenny was an exceptional community partner who certainly went out of his way to mentor students at Southwest High School.

In their personal and interactive study of science fiction, students created projects that also developed their social awareness regarding scientific experiments that are not monitored carefully enough. Students also developed a sense of responsibility for the misuse of technology, such as robots that are meant to be helpful but essentially threaten humanity’s ego. Furthermore, students discovered that a utopian society could actually mean the end of humanity, and lunar colony revolution might replicate values on which humanity stakes its ability to better itself. So far, this course has exceeded my expectations for students and proved that high expectations for ALL students at every academic level, including academically impaired and behaviorally challenged students, along with academically gifted and talented students can successfully be a part of every academic challenge and course.

Benefits:
Science Fiction Literature has never been taught in this way at Southwest before these two particular classes. First, students study “classic” science fiction writers such as Wells, Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein as a foundation of earlier novels that led the way for later writers. With a core foundation of study, students should be able to more readily gauge today and tomorrow’s quality science fiction. I hope my students will be lifelong readers/learners, and it’s possible that science fiction can be an enjoyable and positively influential experience they want to return to time and again. I also hope enrollment in the course will increase so more students can experience the science fiction genre in enough depth to build an appreciation for it. I believe science fiction is an interesting genre that can help students at every academic or behavior level to be successful with literacy.