Curriculum Review
Over the past summer, I read a ton of women’s writing from two large anthologies spanning centuries. Their works were meaningful on their own, but I left the class feeling unsure what I could do with this information. Going into English Education, I believe I can shape these writers into either units of study or a curriculum of sorts to practice lesson planning and curriculum development while reflecting on my previous work. For the original course, I completed a series of discussion posts/journal entries detailing my thoughts on specific works from women writers across the centuries. Looking back at these, I feel a lack of cohesion between authors, as they were meant to be discussed separately rather than compared. It feels somewhat disjointed, as there were no supplementary readings or requirements other than reading a few writers and writing (essentially) whatever we wanted about them. I believe the course provided me with a wide range of female writers throughout history, but lacked a focus. This is why I would like to reshape the authors I read: to give them a focus. I am seeking an in-depth look at the authors without feeling so rushed to get through these two anthologies. I want to know how I can translate my literary knowledge into the classroom. Meaning, I will likely need to incorporate components from many other classes (all education courses, my internship at the Telling Room, writing and literature courses, etc.) to synthesize these lessons.
I know I want to focus on the lesson planning project, but my backup is revisiting the book The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. I read this book in GWS 278: Women in the Modern World, and it detailed the lives of the women who fell victim to Jack the Ripper. I found the text to be greatly intriguing, and it left me with so much more to think about after reading it. I wrote an essay connecting two of the victims by what I believed marked their fatal “tipping points,” which I greatly enjoyed writing. If I were to take on this project, I would like to revisit and revise this essay to examine the other three women included in this story, as their perspectives were just as prominent as the two I initially chose. Expanding on the circumstances and ways the women were similar or dissimilar would be an interesting project, as it would better capture all five victims. I still think about this book, as it truly highlighted the misinformation on the case of Jack the Ripper. Rubenhold’s writing was so powerful that she did not even mention the killer much, rather focusing on the lives of the women. It is my dream to be able to write like she does. I believe it is important to include all the women in this project, since there were five instead of two.
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