“The first present is going to be a mix tape. I just know that it should. I already have songs picked out and a theme. It’s called ‘One Winter.’” Charlie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 61
Contexts:
During our coursework students have been hard at work formally analyzing literature and employing terminology to explain, describe, and explore how various authors have considered adolescence or coming-of-age. Students have been working on mastering how to craft a literary argument by making claims and supporting those claims with concrete textual evidence.
• FS Learning Objectives 1, 2, 3, and 4
Formal writing and analysis are absolutely critical in an introductory literature class. However, it is also important to connect ourselves to the literary traditions we are exploring and engage with these authors, themes, and characters in more personal ways. To that end, students are going to approach our next assignment in a more personal way.
Assignment Description:
All students are going to create a “mix tape” or soundtrack of their own adolescence, much like Charlie creates in Stephen Chobosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower. (A mix tape is like a playlist, for students who didn’t come of age in the 1990s!)
The Goal:
Reflect on your own adolescence. Think about your friends and partners, teachers and coaches, and the experiences, both positive and negative, that shaped you. Then, select at least 10 (ten) songs that reflect your own coming of age. This is a creative endeavor, and no two tapes should be the same. Be creative. Engage with our course theme. Connect the complicated ideas about life and death, competition and rivalry, responsibility and freedom, first love, and first loss to what you have seen.
• These ten (10) songs can be ones that were actually popular at the time, or they may be ones that you as an adult associate with that time or explain something about that time/place/person/situation. The important point is that the songs represent you and communicate what you see as significant about your own coming of age.
• The mixed tapes will be created using PowerPoint or Google Slides, if students are more comfortable with that technology. Using this format will allow students to decorate their mixed tapes using images and personal pictures. Students will also need to embed links to YouTube, so I can listen to the songs, especially if I am unfamiliar with them. (When uploadding to Blackboard, I strongly recommend that students upload the assignment as a PDF, so that the format does not get skewed.)
• Each of the ten (10) songs should be on its own slide, although students could use more than one slide per song. ***The song title (in quotation marks) and the artist MUST be included on the slide.
• Additionally, students should explain how or why this song was chosen in five to seven (5-7) complete sentences. (Yes, full sentences, not merely bullet points.) Students should be clear and specific in their discussion about how the song relates to their own coming of age—and do not be shy about quoting specific lyrics, if appropriate, to clearly communicate the song’s relevance or importance to your life. Students can and should discuss the perspective issue I addressed above—was it popular at the time, or do you as an adult see this song as reflecting something you now see about that situation that you did not when you were young and experiencing it?
• The written material in the slides should be carefully edited for proper capitalization, clarity, and style. This is an English class, so make sure the writing makes sense to your audience, which is me. First-person I is acceptable and necessary, but students should avoid informal second-person ‘you.’
• Also, each slide should have at least one PERSONAL image. These images can be personal/family pictures or even ones found on Google—it depends on why or how the student is using them. (For example: I might include a picture of my daughter on a slide with the song “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars because it was popular when she first born and I used to sing it to her. Or, I might use an image of Monet’s water lilies on a slide with “I Don’t Want to Be” by Gavin DeGraw because I had that print hanging up in my first apartment—and that song was popular when I was a first year student at ISU myself!) Students are also welcome to draw or upload original artwork or approach some or all of the slides as collages—be creative. In the end, this is the key question: What would your mixed tape look like, if it reflected your adolescence?
DO NOT SIMPLY USE PICTURES OF THE ALBUM COVER AND/OR ARTIST. THE PICTURES SHOULD HAVE PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE.
• Students should have a title slide with a creative title and image/cover artwork and their name. Remember that the title is the first impression of the project, so be creative and engage your audience immediately with that first impression.
• Students should have a conclusion slide with a fully developed paragraph to wrap up this project. You are an adult now—how would you end the Mixed Tape? What have you learned? What would you tell your adolescent self? What are your biggest regrets? Most significant choices? Hopes for the future? <<These are just some ideas. Students should conclude the project how they think best based on what they have crafted.
• There will at least twelve (12) slides total—1 for each of the ten (10) required songs in addition to the creative title slide and the conclusion slide. There can certainly be more than that number of slides, but that is the minimum number to fulfill the assignment requirements.
• FS Learning Objectives 1 and 4