Maggie Pomerleau

ENG 477
Dr. Sabine Klein
5/9/19

Final Reflection
There were many different events and changes that led up to the culmination of this

project. The project started with a question that I have had for a long time: why do we still teach

the classics? I quickly realized that this was quite easy to answer, and in no way would give me

the scope of the project that I wanted or needed. In turn, I came up with a different question: how

do we better teach the classics? Often times, students are turned off from reading by the manner

that it is taught in our schools. As a Secondary Education major, I’ve been taught that choice in

the classroom is vital in order to encourage students. As an English major, I’ve been taught that

classic literature is vital in teaching about the history of our society and how to analyze language.

I wanted this project to combine my two majors and help me in my future career. Students

should be able to have choice in the classroom, but they should also be required to read certain

classical texts. By coming up with a list of different kinds of adaptations of literature, I now have

a resource to give students choice, while also teaching them the books they should be reading.

They can have a choice of which adaptation they would like to read, watch, or listen to. This will

accompany the source text that all students will be reading. This combines aspects of both of my

majors into one capstone project.

Aside from the basic research question, my project has changed in other ways. Originally,

I wanted to make three lesson plans—one for each example text (The Great Gatsby, Heart of

Darkness, and Hamlet). I quickly realized that I did not have the time to do that, so I came up

with the more versatile idea of having a list of resources. This will be more useful for other

educators, and for myself in the future. Since I am publishing this project on a website, it is
available to a wider audience than just myself. Keeping this audience in mind, I wanted the

resources that I publish to be more versatile than just lesson plans. Lesson plans are very specific

and must be adapted to each classroom. Not only that, but having a premade lesson plan takes

away the autonomy of the teacher in their own classroom. The list of adaptations will be more

helpful and flexible than three different lesson plans would have been. Another way that this

project has changed is that it is much more research based than my original plan. This sounds

odd, since it is a research project, but with the lesson plans, I would only have to make a

rationale for each lesson. This would include one or two pieces of research for each lesson plan.

Instead, I found two or three resources for each book, and for each of these resources, I found at

least two or three pieces of research. This doubled the amount of research and reading that I had

to do—but it was worth it. All of the research that I found was interesting and will help me in my

future career.

For my English major, my concentration is “Teaching literature to young adults”. This

project directly correlates with this concentration, since it is about teaching classic literature to

young adults. I define young adults as high school aged students, which is the age that the texts

that I chose are typically taught at. By creating this project, this class has helped me find

resources to use in my future teaching career, which is just one more way that UMF has helped

prepare me for my life after college.