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

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

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

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).

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    Disclaimer

    Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed on this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

    Get in Touch

    Questions? Reach out to Karen with the link below.