8th grade English teacher Norah Doss has once again uniquely combined creativity with composition. Her students wrapped up their study of The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, a text which chronicles the journey of First Nations teens as they attempt to escape Canadian indigenous boarding schools, where their bone marrow is being harvested to cure a mysterious ailment which has inhibited people’s abilities to dream. Doss’ class was tasked with creating a “future museum,” with each student creating items from recycled materials that the protagonist of the novel, Frenchie, could find and use to help him survive. Each creation was accompanied by two pieces of writing – an “instructional manual” counseling Frenchie on how to use it, and one imagining how Frenchie would discover the item, written in Dimaline’s voice.
The project was inspired by Doss’ grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and she hopes to present the curriculum she is centering around The Marrow Thieves and other climate fiction works to national conferences and journals. Doss says the conference exposed her to “strategies and ideas for new and different ways of assessing skills” like grammar, syntax, word choice, and tone.
On assignment, I trekked down to the Middle School Reading Room late last week to explore the students’ projects displayed in the “Museum of the Future.” Students’ ideas ran the gamut, with water purifiers, wagons, cologne, and a roadside flare kit all on display in the library. So did her class’ experiences while working on the project. Larissa Jubay ‘28 said it was hardest “to mimic the author’s writing style into [my] creative narrative.” Callahan Camp ‘28 found the instructional manual to be the hardest, while Brett Andrews ‘28 struggled with making the wheels on his wagon stay on!
The Marrow Thieves generally received positive reviews, with many praising the amount of detail in Dimaline’s writing.
We can certainly look forward to more innovative displays like this from Doss and her classes in the future, and I, for one, look forward to seeing what they produce.
