Characters' and Their Secrets

I was catching up on some reading today and came across PostSecret while at Ms. Frizzle's. PostSecret apparently started as an art project where people could anonymously send in a postcard exposing some secret of theirs. The postcards on the blog are all incredibly powerful. The first visible one reads "Sometimes I want to run away from home. (I'm 38, married with a child.)"

The question for me became how to harness this power for a classroom application. I showed Karen, my fellow English-teaching partner in crime, the site. Ah, synergy. "What about," she considered, "making the secret safe? Students could create post cards for characters in the stories they are reading."

Yes. That is the connection I was looking for. Students inspired by visual and print art creating visual and print art while deepening their understanding of character and story.