This project has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.
Friendship and Identity in Literature, Film, and Adolescence:
A National Endowment for the Humanities Residential Institute for High School English Teachers
July 14-26, 2024, Boston University
Sample Schedule & Readings
Sample Schedule
Schedule subject to change.
Daily Schedule
| 8:30 AM | Coffee/Gather/Chat |
| 9:00 – 10:00 AM | Group Session |
| 10:00 – 10:15 AM | Break |
| 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM | Small group session or guest scholar presentation/visit |
| 12:00 – 1:00 PM | Lunch |
| 1:00 – 1:45 PM | Group session/follow up guest scholar and assigned readings |
| 1:45 – 2:00 PM | Break |
| 2:00 – 3:00 PM | Small group session; Unit/course curriculum design |
| 3:00 – 3:15 PM | Break |
| 3:15 – 4:30 PM | Consolidate in whole group; best practices and discoveries; Unit/course curriculum design |
| or 2:00 – 4:00 PM | Film screening and discussion |
Daily Schedule
8:30 AM
Coffee/gather/chat
9:00 – 10:00 AM
Group Session
10:00 – 10:15 AM
Break
10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Small group session or guest scholar presentation/visit
12:00 – 1:00 PM
Lunch
1:00 – 1:45 PM
Group session/follow up guest scholar and assigned readings
1:45 – 2:00 PM
Break
2:00 – 3:00 PM
Small group session; Unit/course curriculum design
3:00 – 3:15 PM
Break
3:15 – 4:30 PM
Consolidate in whole group; best practices and discoveries; Unit/course curriculum design
Or 2:00 – 4:30 PM
Film screening and discussion
Week One
Monday, July 15: Coming Together, Syllabus, Conceptual Frameworks, Your Friendship Inventories
Central Questions/Key Concepts
- How can we pool our collective knowledge and experience in service of our teaching, ourselves, our students?
- Friendship as a neglected area of study and a matter of survival
- Conceptual Frameworks at a glance.
- Cope’s concepts and categories
Please bring your friendship inventory answers and flash memoir
Group Session #1 – 9:00 – 10:00 AM
Introductions, Syllabus overview, Core principles and habits of mind
Group Session #2 – 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Cope, Inventories/Share work
Group Session #3 – 1:00 – 1:45 PM
Theoretical and Conceptual Primer
Group Session #4 – 2:00 – 3:00 PM
First Lesson Plan Challenge; Using your flex books and theorist/concept
Group Session #5 – 3:30 – 4:30 PM
Whole group consolidation/sharing; gleaning best practices
Tuesday, July 16: Attachment, Reciprocity, Belonging, Adversarial Intelligence
Central Questions/Key Concepts
- How can understanding our own high school self and friendship identities help our students?
- Belonging, Reciprocity, Adversity, and Attachment
- Literature as a safe, challenging, productive arena for inquiry
Group Session #1 – 9:00 – 10:00 AM
Small groups: Flash Memoirs and curation/collective anthology-poems
Group Session #2 – 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Slides, part II: Theoretical and Conceptual Primer, including Cope; forming planning groups
Group Session #3 – 1:00 – 1:45 PM
Discussion Roundtable: How could we use this to inform our practice?
Group Session #4 – 2:00 – 3:00 PM
Where the Wild Things Are screening (symbiosis v codependence?)
For Tomorrow
- Mon Ami Ta-Nahisi (Coates and Drumming/Glass; 19 minutes)
- Cathedral Carver
- Why I Am Not A Painter
- The Formidable Friendship of Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt (Dean, 2013)
- Optional: Turning Pain Into Art: How the poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell became each other’s tragic muses (O’Rourke, 2017)
Wednesday, July 17: Robert Pinsky, Creativity and Friendship, Maslow’s Hierarchy Revisited
Central Questions/Key Concepts
- Where the Wild Things Are
- Creation and Destruction within Friendships
- Creative Partnerships
Group Session #1 – 9:00 – 10:00 AM
Discussion: Maslow, Family Systems Theory, and Wild Things
Group Session #2 – 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Robert Pinsky: The Poetics of Friendship
Group Session #3 – 1:00 – 1:45 PM
Discussion: Robert’s Visit, Cathedral, TAL Episode
Group Session #4 – 2:00 – 5:00 PM
Field Trip: Museum of Fine Arts
For Tomorrow
- Middle School, Metamorphosis, Persephone’s Friends, Metamorphosis (Dietz, 2020)
- The Lonely Burden of Today’s Teenage Girls (Pipher and Gilliam, 2019)
- The Bees (Lorde, 1974)
Optional
Listen/read two below songs. Good examples of friends who compete for resources v. friends in your corner? (i.e. Aristotle’s “good”)
Thursday, July 18: Girls and Friendship, Consent, Scarcity of Resources
Central Questions/Key Concepts
- What would our ideal courses look like? What would you want?
- What’s different for girls?
- Consent and social media
- Guest: Abby Cohen
Group Session #1 – 9:00 – 10:00 AM
Discussion: readings
Group Session #2 – 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Guest: Abby Cohen: Consent, Social Media, Teen Girls, and Friendship
Group Session #3 – 1:00 – 1:45 PM
Small group to whole: on curricula. Case study: Auto-Ethnography project
Group Session #4 – 2:00 – 3:00 PM
Eighth Grade followed by debrief/discussion
For Tomorrow
Friday, July 19: Niobe Way, Boys, Vulnerability, Toxic Masculinity
Central Questions/Key Concepts
- Male friendships; male choices
- The cognitive dissonance of a culture
- Case study: Cope and Seth
Group Session #1 – 9:00 – 10:00 AM
Theory into practice discussion: Gatsby and Nick; Smith poem vs. Green
Group Session #2 – 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Guest: Dr. Niobe Way
Group Session #3 – 1:00 – 1:45 PM
Small group work; Dr. Way available for questions/integrating research
Group Session #4 – 2:00 – 3:00 PM
Screening and debrief/discussion: Moonlight
For Monday
- This is What is Means to Say Phoenix, Az (Alexie)
- Descriptors of Friendship Between Secondary Students with and without Autism or Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (Rossetti, 2015)
Weekend Movie Suggestions
- Francis Ha
- Almost Famous
- Stand by Me
- Booksmart
- Thelma and Louise
- Passing
- Wings of Desire
Week Two
Monday, July 22: Dr. Zach Rossetti: Friendships and Learning Differences
Central Questions/Key Concepts
- Applying theoretical frameworks to online friendships: What fits and what doesn’t?
- Navigating friendships with a learning difference/diagnosis
Please bring your friendship inventory answers and flash memoir
Group Session #1 – 9:00 – 10:00 AM
Self-reflection, Alexie
Group Session #2 – 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Dr. Rossetti
Group Session #3 – 1:00 – 1:45 PM
Small group/curriculum work
Group Session #4 – 2:00 – 3:00 PM
Case studies; Dr. Ellenwood on Loving Well curriculum
Group Session #5 – 3:30 – 4:30 PM
Whole group activity on foreword to Sula, 1973
For Tomorrow
Tuesday, July 23: Dr. Lashon Daley, Friendship Identity and Race; Intersectionality; Sula
Central Questions/Key Concepts
- Friendship identity and intersectionality in friendship
- Nel and Sula: noble adversaries?
Group Session #1 – 9:00 – 10:00 AM
New small groups- on readings
Group Session #2 – 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Dr. Lashon Daley
Group Session #3 – 1:00 – 1:45 PM
Whole group consolidation; reflection activity on Dr. Daley’s talk
Group Session #4 – 2:00 – 3:00 PM
Curriculum teams and presentation planning
For Tomorrow
Wednesday, July 24: Teacher Friendships: Allies in the Building…Curriculum Design
Central Questions/Key Concepts
- What would work in your teaching context?
- Planning for the ideal and curating from there.
Group Session #1 – 9:00 – 10:00 AM
Self-reflection, teacher friendships: Allies in the Building; Inventory questions
Group Session #2 – 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
St. Lucy’s, belonging, code-switching, conformity spectrum
Group Session #3 – 1:00 – 1:45 PM
Collective reading; schedule for presenting
Group Session #4 – 2:00 – 5:00 PM
Curriculum planning teams
Thursday, July 25: Curriculum Design
Group Session #1 – 9:00 – 10:00 AM
Whole group consolidation; continuing this work
Group Session #2 – 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Discussion/Questions; Harris on being a teacher-researcher
Group Session #3 – 1:00 – 1:45 PM
Curatorial sharing and advice between presenters
Group Session #4 – 2:00 – 3:00 PM
Curriculum planning teams
Friday, July 26: Final Day
Celebration/Presentations, Program Evaluation, Certificates, Carrying it Forward
“She recognized that that is how friendships begin: one person reveals a moment of strangeness, and the other person decides just to listen and not exploit it.”
— MEG WOLITZER,
THE INTERESTINGS
Reading List Excerpt
Full list provided to participants.
Provided to Participants in Advance
- Sula by Toni Morrison (2004; Vintage)
- Deep Human Connection by Stephen Cope (2019; Hay House)
- Passing (Larsen, 1929, 2021)
- Art by Yasmina Reza (1996; Faber & Faber)
- Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Såenz, 2014
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner, 2004)
Sample Selected Works During Institute
Partial list, subject to change.
- Accident, Mass. Ave. (McDonough, 2012)
- Son of Rambow (Jennings, 2007)
- Why are We Murdering the Beautiful Friendships of Boys? (Green, 2017)
- Friendship in Childhood and Adolescence (Erdley and Day, in Hojjat and Moyer (2017)
- Thelma and Louise (Scott, 1991)
- Friends with benefits: A precarious negotiation (Levine and Mongeau, 2010)
- The Lonely Burden of Today’s Teenage Girls (Pipher and Gilliam, 2019)
- The Bees (Lorde, 1974)
- Friendship and Social Media (Ledbetter in Hojjat and Moyer, 2017)
Institute Dates
July 14-26 2024
Location
Boston University
Equal Opportunity Statement
Endowment programs do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or age. For further information, write to the Equal Opportunity Officer, National Endowment for the Humanities, 400 7th Street, SW, Washington, DC 20024. TDD: 202-606-8282 (this is a special telephone device for the Deaf).
Disclaimer
Get in Touch
Questions? Reach out to Karen with the link below.