One of my classes comprises high school students of Albanian, Bosniak, and Turkish ethnicities, and last night we had our first class since I returned from America (last week's attempts were stymied by independence celebrations and a power outtage). My intent with them for this semester is to improve their writing skills, so I thought I'd start with something managable: a poem. The structure of the poem is pretty simple:
noun
adjective adjective
gerund gerund gerund
short descriptive sentence about the noun
synonym
Our first go around, they all wrote a noun on a slip of paper, put the papers in a pile, and chose a noun to write about. Their selections were things like forest, table, door, and internet. On the second go around I gave them independence to write about. When that was finished, I asked them to write their poem from a Serbian point of view, which proved a bit more difficult, but they mostly accomplished the task with grace. The activity led to a discussion about independence and nationality and what it means to be part of an ethnic group. We didn't have much time to do anything more than scratch the surface, but, man...students expressed anger, mistrust, and vitriol.
From NPR:
Divisions Harden over Kosovo Independence
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