Class: Pre-AP English
Grade: High School
Subject: English Language Arts
School/Institution: Muskogee High School Muskogee, Ok

At our school we have students read The Five People You Meet in Heaven in 10th grade and Tuesdays with Morrie in 12th grade. I want to combine those two themes and talk about an incredible teacher students meet during the course of their high school years and readings of both books. Lisa Dotson is our pre-AP, AP Language and AP Literature teacher. Her culminating projects for both books take students into a deep dive of personal meaning making fomented by the words and themes in your writing. Just this week students presented their Five People projects – one was a birthday cake for Eddie, a “character cake,” so to speak. The slices had facts about Eddie and the people he meets in the novel. It was “iced” with cotton balls and you could pull out the pieces of the cake to investigate the characters. It would be a great project for other classes to replicate. Thank you to this awesome teacher who has touched the lives of her students and thank you, Mr. Albom, for giving us much to think about and be thankful for in both fiction and non-fiction reading!