Wait, you tricked me--that wasn't LEARNING, it was fun!

I'm a firm believer in horizontal, all-inclusive learning. This is why I'm teaching The Hunger Games in a Composition class, why my students use Blogs, Wikis and YouTube throughout the semester, why my World Lit. students recognize Spoken Word and a Shakespearean sonnet, and why my ENG 100 students now know who Hans Christian Andersen is.

I was lucky enough to have parents who encouraged me to read, took me to the library, and bought me books when they could.  I have a lovely illustrated compilation of some of Hans Christian Andersen's best-known stories, so I knew that Disney's The Little Mermaid was stuff and nonsense even as a child.  My students, however, do not.

As their journal assignment this week (12-15 sentences), my ENG 100 class was to read a fairytale by Andersen, give a short summary, and indicate whether or not they had ever heard anything like it before.  Other than the Little Mermaid, none of my students recognized the tales they read--and some read "The Princess and the Pea"!  I wasn't shocked, but I was gratified that I had introduced them to something new.

While initially the students griped because the stories looked long to them, in the end, they all enjoyed the fairy tales they read.  They learned something new, realized that the fairy tales they thought they knew were rooted in stories that were much older and more sinister, and synthesized what they are learning about narrative in writing with classic literature.  And we all lived happily ever after...