The Many Sides of Survival

When one hears the word “survival”, many things may come to mind.

• One might think of Darwin’s philosophy “Survival of the Fittest.”
• Or how might survive a zombie apocalypse.
• One could imagine the dystopian world of The Hunger Games or Divergent. 
• Or one might think of emotional survival – and the importance of mental health.
• One might think of how people in history may have survived The Great Depression or the Holocaust.
• Or, for high school students, they might think about what it means to survive high school (and all that entails).

Survival has many sides.  

In the last card-marking period of the school year, students will be examining the “DNA of survival”.

The essential questions for this unit are as follow:

• What elements exist within us for survival?
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  How do survivors adapt to cope with unforeseen circumstances and events?

• How can knowing the atrocities of the past serve as a caution for the future?

 

Survival is not only about loss and despair – it is also about hope; and as Andy Dufresne said in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

HW: On Tuesday, students will be asked to pick out a memoir or auto-biography for their SSR novel (more details to follow).