Pretty Cool - Teaching "Guaranteed" to 7th Grade

LongerRoad

I'm a 7th English teacher...kids have been taking state tests all week and I was looking for something "light" to do today. Every once and a while I have them do journal writes, where I'll throw out a topic and they'll write about it for 5 minutes or so. I never read the journals so they have the freedom to write (or not write) about anything they want.

Anyway, today I threw the lyrics to Guaranteed up on an overhead, played the song and then asked them to write about what they thought the song meant, what it is about, what it means to them, what a certain lyric means to them...anything. Wasn't sure how'd it fly but it's Friday and I've always looked for a way to force Pearl Jam/Vedder on them.

It was very cool. Kids were quiet during the song, most wrote for the full 5 minutes afterwards and then the rest of the (40 minutes or so) class, for 5 different classes, was spent discussing the song, the book/movie, why Chris did what he did, was it a good idea or not, what certain lyrics meant to them as 12-13 yr olds...they took it pretty seriously and I was really surprised how many of them interpruted the song "correctly" without knowing a thing about the story.

All and all, a VERY positive experience that I wanted to share. As an aside: I asked every class "who has ever heard of Pearl Jam/Eddie Vedder?" Exactly 4 kids out of 120 raised their hands.

And my favorite/least favorite part of the day was when one girl tried to argue with me that the Jonas Brothers could have done a much better job with the song. Ah, to be young and stupid!

Jason P

Did you send the little girl to detention for making such an outrageous statement???

norm

that's very cool....i liked teachers like you.....too bad you don't read the journals....it would be interesting to read their interpretations.....:)

pjtradeking

Very cool!!

LongerRoad

Jason P wrote:

Did you send the little girl to detention for making such an outrageous statement???

nah, I just locked her in a closet.

FrankieJ

I wish one my teachers did something like this! I would love it. A whole class about Pearl Jam songs.

Jesika537

That's awesome... and very encouraging to know that the youth of America are in good hands. I hope my son gets a teacher like you.

yoke

Thats great, it reminds me of 5th grade. My music teacher Mrs.Brown taught us about the Beatles for an entire marking period(3 months). We listened to each album and each song and discussed what we heard and what we thought it all meant. It was a real eye opener.

Honestly from that moment on I was a real fan of music in general. I mean I listened to stuff but I was never a huge fan of anything. She got me thinking and made me realize that there is meaning behind music.

Brez

I wish you were my 7th grade English teacher. Mine was a real narrow-minded bitch... just like 85% of the teachers there.

Drowned Out

Yes, I loved it when teachers incorporated music in to an asignment.

I had an old hippie teacher in HS....in one semester, we watched the entire Woodstock doc, and all of the Roots mini-series. He had us bring in old couches...so we'd all take a 'smoke break' before his class, then chill on couches and watch tv. It was awesome...and I learneded so much

jeffbr

LongerRoad wrote:

As an aside: I asked every class "who has ever heard of Pearl Jam/Eddie Vedder?" Exactly 4 kids out of 120 raised their hands.

Another example of bad parenting.

Yield98

I'm always talking about PJ in my high school social studies classes. Probably too much (if possible), because it is very common for students who don't know the answer to a question on a test to write "Pearl Jam". I just gave a test in Psychology...honestly had three different kids write "Pearl Jam" as an answer somewhere on their test. I always want to give the points, but...

walkunafraid

That's cool.

I used "Guaranteed" as part of my 11th grade unit on Transcendentalism. We tied the song to Thoreau's "Walden" and Emerson's "Self-Reliance," and discussed how the ideals of Transcendentalism continue to be reflected in aspects of society today.

We also talked about "Into the Wild" (sadly, not a single one of my 61 students have seen it!) and how Chris represented a modern-day Transcendentalist hero.

For the most part, my students "got" that the song was all about the importance of relying on one's instincts, of not giving in to the rules of society, and of finding answers through nature and the beauty of the world. They came up with a variety of deeper insights as well that helped me see the song in a new light.


I use music a lot with my classes. I try not to inundate them with Pearl Jam too much, so I balance things out as much as I can. Besides Eddie/PJ, we have listened to lots of Rage Against the Machine this year, as well as some Eminem, The Fugees, Death Cab, The Streets, Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, India.Arie, Tupac, The Decemberists, and a few others.

NOCODE#1

jeffbr wrote:

Another example of bad parenting.

what album is guaranteed on?