now the work begins...[Bea posting for Brian]

The most exciting part of our entire Ireland adventure starts now. Now that we are back in session, we are able to share our travel experience with our students.
We have worked hard on designing lesson plans that bring the Irish experience to our landlocked kiddos. Our vertical team of English I, II, III and IV allows us to create a strand of projects, assessments, literary selections and videos that help a student build a well rounded awareness of cultural differences and similarities
Although our motivation for seeking this grant began as a literary pilgrimage, it became much more a method of forging connections between our teenagers and the young people we met abroad. The cards we passed out in Ireland have prompted so many emails and blogs that many of our students are now considering a pen pal program. What a fantastic way to open cross cultural connections.
In English I, Mrs. Piper will facilitate virtual field trips based on our experience. Her students will scrutinize our trip and learn how they may replicate our amazing experience. They will plan a budget, use travel guides and websites to figure out what attractions would most interest them, learn how to speak with travel agents and officials, work their way through a (mock) passport system, design an itinerary, figure out how to blog and photograph, scrapbook and film their trip so that they may record it for posterity.
In addition to a cool virtual field trip, Mrs. Piper’s student will also be introduced to Irish fiction via the novel, Dracula. She is planning on using our footage and souvenirs from both the Brahm Stoker museum and the Dracula museum to make the novel come to life (pun intended).
The Dracula novels will then be revisited as students travel from freshman year all the way through senior year. Each year they will use the novel to a different end. Dracula will fall victim to rhetorical analysis and countless papers on symbolism and author’s purpose. By the end of their senior year, students will truly understand that it takes a lot to kill Dracula
In sophomore and Junior English, I plan on walking students through a unit on how place and setting impact plot and character development... We will investigate the impact of Irish tradition on American authors of Irish heritage. We will seek to understand how living on The Emerald Isle would create a culture of sarcasm, wit and rugged individualism and why Irish culture in America has been the sustained with such fierce intensity. We will work on drawing parallels between Irish and American writers and how the struggles of humanity and the human condition are dramatically similar. It is my belief that the students will reach a greater understanding of the idea of how literature, or any other art form for that matter, helps us cope with human life under any conditions and teaches us the lessons of humanity.
This literary saga will culminate with the senior year. Mrs. Hoxie’s senior curriculum focuses on the British literary tradition. She will now be able to add an amazing new dimension to her course. Her students will trace the development of the English language and the linguistic impact of the Gaels on that development. Oscar Wilde and James Joyce will be regular visitors in her classroom as students turn their focus from simply the ingredients of Irish literature to the techniques of Irish writers. The complicated syntax of Joyce will serve as a fantastic vehicle for rhetorical analysis. Oscar Wilde’s wit and sarcasm will be evaluated for both its relevance and contribution to author’s purpose.
We will keep our cyberspace folks posted on our success and failures, and we would love to have any ideas and suggestions to extend our lessons!