In the Name of God Mini Lesson

This is an amazing read. Man alive. Paula Jolin is an absolutely wonderful author who truly captures audiences with her stunning story. I think there are a lot of teaching ideas that could go along with this book. This would be a book that I am interested in teaching. I think one idea would be to have a full on group discussion about defending one's belief. In this novel, we see that Nadia would just about go to the extreme of killing herself to defend religion. I think this opens a lot of doors with students. I think teachers could either discuss or have students respond to the following question in a journal type fashion: "what are some of your most valued beliefs, can you relate to Nadia at all, how far would you go to defend something you care about?" I think this text is one that students can read and be able to see the world a little differently. I think by writing a letter to the author on how this book changed them would be interesting to see students tackle. I think writing letters to authors is a great way to reach the community and give a writing piece meaning. By having students write to Jolin about what they thought about the book and how it changed them, would be a great tool of assessment. I also think that students would have a lot to say to the author after they finished reading this book. This easily could be a book that would cause some controversy in the classroom. However, I think if teachers preface the book by explaining that, yes the Middle East does have a very negative connotation attached to it right now. However, my hope is that this book will change your mind about some issues that you've heard of recently. I think this book would need a lot of preparation done before hand in order to teach it. However, I think this would be a book that students would remember, and I also think that we as teachers should be comfortable with teaching the uncomfortable.