Overview

This learning module is the transformation of a single, multi-session lesson plan within a full year curriculum that I designed in 2016 while lead teacher, educational consultant, and administrator at Newport Academy. This overview consequently will provide the following context:

Newport Academy: student population and pedagogical approach
The Full Year Curriculum: title, content, purpose, and history of execution
Original Lesson Plan: inspiration and relationship to course ideas and principles
This Learning Module: how it transforms the original lesson plan into further practice

Newport Academy: student population and pedagogical approach.

Newport Academy is a therapeutic day school providing a student-tailored education for young people 13-20 years of age, academically from middle school to early college, who are in recovery from any number of individual or co-occuring addictive behavior disorders (e.g., substance abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, etc.). All students are participants in one of Newport Healthcare's residential or intensive outpatient/partial hospitalization programs, which mandates the provision of education so that falling behind academically does not compound students' psychological and social stress. Newport Academy works with students and their families to develop an optimal academic track for each individual’s specific needs, while also focusing on raising self-esteem, improving executive function, and establishing healthy friendships. More specifically, Newport Academy provides:

An accredited curriculum nonetheless designed to fit the needs of each student
High staff-to-student ratio (1:5) for individualized attention and tutoring
Daily therapeutic groups and weekly individual therapy
SAT/ACT prep and college application support as appropriate
Twice-weekly drug testing and ongoing monitoring of other self-destructive behaviors

At Newport Academy students in recovery are not set apart from their peers; they are their peers, supported by faculty and staff in an environment of abstinence and acceptance. Consequently, Newport Academy's pedagogical approach is to guide teens and their families to:

Embrace and learn from setbacks
Boost resilience and tenacity
Engage in both mastery-based and inquiry-based learning
Learn self-advocacy
Improve critical thinking
Establish kind and supportive relationships with peers and staff

(Monroe, 2020).

The Full Year Curriculum: title, content, purpose, and history of execution.

This learning module and the original lesson plan on which it is based is from the full year curriculum "Laughing at Life: Exploring Existential Questions through (mostly) Funny Films", with the further subtitle "a curriculum of 14 viewing lesson plans with extensions for credit -- suitable for all students, adolescent to adult, but especially young people in recovery." The purpose of this curriculum was to provide alternative lessons in the humanities that would be more relevant, and therefore more engaging, for Newport Academy's student population, members of whom were often gifted, always well-resourced, but unfortunately dogged by issues that made engagement in standard activities difficult or even alienating. This is discussed in philosophical and practical detail in the appendices.

In terms of execution, some lesson plans, like the first one in the curriculum, were used in a non-graded, not-for-credit manner as part of a student's initial three day orientation to their program. As such, that lesson plan has been executed over a hundred times with groups of 1-4 students due to Newport Academy's rolling admissions. A few other lesson plans, this one included, were used dozens of times, usually with an individual student, as a frequent substitution for other (typically English Language Arts) course materials. The reason for this substitution is because these lesson plans were deemed to resonate with the replaced materials in terms of rigor, skill, and content requirements, but were more pertinent to our population and less "triggering" for the particular student to whom it was assigned.

Substitution was always with explicit authorization from Newport Academy's accrediting body (AdvancEd) for those students directly enrolled, or the permission of assigning institutions for those students enrolled elsewhere but in residence at Newport (I.e., many Newport students were seniors, already accepted to college, attending on referral from their elite public or private high school, which would remain their academic institution of record upon graduation).

The full curriculum has been instructed start to finish three times, as personalized instruction at the 7th grade, 12th grade, and college freshman level. These students participated with others for select lesson plans when they coincided with other students taking those same lessons under one of the other scenarios described above.

Finally, Newport instructors at other among their national locations have used these materials, although not in full, and typically more for SEL-oriented supplement without assigning the extensions for credit.

Although systematic analysis has never been performed, these materials, their instruction, and students' productions therefrom were almost uniformly and unanimously praised by students, their families, therapists on the clinical side of the program, and the outside educators who in some of the circumstances described above were the necessary recipients and reviewers of student work for ultimate (transfer) academic credit.^[1]

Original Lesson Plan: inspiration and relationship to course ideas and principles.

This lesson plan for the film Groundhog Day, although the second in the curriculum, due to its reputation as "one of the great philosophical films" and a "perfect guide to life" was always at the heart of what I hoped for this course, and over dozens of deliveries never failed to fulfill that promise.

In fact, over time, it became clear it was doing so in unintended ways.

More specifically, watching the movie with students -- this early in the curriculum facilitators always watched along, especially as there are 15 scene-specific "shout outs" that need to be provided during the film -- educational and clinical staff started to notice a pattern. As your review of the lesson plan will demonstrate, each of those shout outs signalled the main character's progression to the next stage in an existential crisis created by the main character magically repeating the same day -- Groundhog Day -- over and over again: e.g., disbelief, panic, determination, self-pity, hedonism, etc. What staff noticed is that, prior to a shout out, students would shift from baseline during the phase that we either knew, or would subsequently discover, most closely correlated with their own stage in recovery, itself certainly a form of existential crisis.

In other words, a student whose presentation was primarily self-pity would demonstrate heightened engagement during the film's presentation of that stage in the main character's existential crisis. This heightened engagement could be observed by the student's posture/body language, verbal comments during the communal watching experience, increased laughter or other emotionally appropriate responses to the film's action, etc. Those presentations of heightened engagement would then dissipate before the next phase in the main character's progress -- i.e., his progress into a phase the student had not yet been prepared to enter in their own life -- at which point the student would typically present for the remainder of the film what social workers call "off baseline" (i.e., an individual with flat affect would become animated or agitated and vice versa, a typically engaged student would disengage and vice versa, etc.).

Furthermore, this held true to the individual even during group viewing. That's what really tipped us off. What had previously seemed merely curious became clinically significant as we one day watched this reaction happen at different points in time for each of eight different students during what was an unusually large group viewing for our academic setting, along with realizations like "of course John Doe would resonate with hedonism right now, and the whole community has commented on Jane Doe's manipulative behavior, while Smith's affect has been undeniably one of ennui," and so on.

In summation, the film Groundhog Day -- even before the exercises we constructed around it -- had proven a potentially powerful, experiential (however vicarious) tool for students' reflective self-assessment in the context of social-emotional learning.

But maybe that's not surprising considering how this full year, fourteen lesson plan called "Laughing at Life" was inspired.

Basically, the summer of 2015 there were two young women among Newport Academy's small school environment at its Darien, CT location (maximum 20 students). Neither were coming from one of Newport's residential programs. One was an 8th grader who had missed most of her spring semester due to psychiatric hospitalization, but was conditionally accepted to an elite private boarding school in the region based upon her prior academic record, family's advocacy, and her satisfactory completion of multi-subject coursework at pre-matriculation. Her attendance at Newport was so that she could remain under clinical observation during the day and receive instructional assistance with that coursework. The other was a senior who had missed most of her spring semester due to a challenging period at a non-Newport rehabilitation center for substance abuse during which she refused any academic engagement. Based upon her prior academic record, family's advocacy, and her satisfactory completion by August 1 of abbreviated coursework across multiple subjects, her relatively local, prestigious public school was willing to send to her intended college a complete transcript reflecting graduation. For English Language Arts, each of these schools separately sent novels and related writing assignments, the plots for which centered around dysfunctional families in which the dramatic tension was resolved, in one case, by a father's suicide, and in the other, by a daughter's patricide. The counselors at both of these schools who forwarded the assignments were sufficiently aware of these students' circumstances to know that these were not appropriate works, but also unyielding in their requirement, claiming an inability to contact the assigning teachers during the summer holiday. Although we sought to expedite and ameliorate the assignments, both teaching and clinical staff noted the negative impact they were having directly on these two students, and, through their changed demeanor, the overall spirit of the student body.

Therefore, once these texts and their assignments were completed (on a Thursday), I decided something different needed to be provided for these two students to close out the week. Even though clinical and academic staff joined students in a fun outing every Friday afternoon after school, this alone seemed insufficient. I deemed that the students needed similar content -- i.e., literary, centered on family dynamics, and that dealt unflinchingly with challenges -- but which was uplifting, resolved positively, and, as such, was not a distraction from, but an actual alternative to the material and life view they had been forced to digest all week.

With this in mind, I remembered a colleague, the campus minister at another school I had helped launch, who reported frequently using the film Big Fish to work with students with troubling parent-child relationships. I also recalled a professor and Jesuit priest who had been my colleague at Fordham University, and who had written a book about finding spiritual meaning in unlikely secular, commercial spaces, including silly (in his case, Adam Sandler) movies. (Mossa, 2009).

Thus I thought of a couple open ended discussion questions, showed the film Big Fish,(which subsequently became the fifth film/lesson plan in the curriculum) and watched what happened. The two young women not only engaged with the film, but through the questions also engaged with each other -- which they had never done before -- in a fun yet meaningful manner. The fruitful direction in which they took the conversation prompted the initial notes, later research, and resultant lesson plan that became the structure for all future lesson plans in the final full year curriculum. Meanwhile, it completely changed the tenor of the week, not because these two students had repressed the texts and emotions they had been struggling with the prior four days, but because they had transmuted them, seeing that although conflict and difficulties are unavoidable in life, they do not always have to end like a Greek tragedy.

This Learning Module: how it transforms the original lesson plan into further practice.

As described above, Newport Academy's pedagogical approach is clearly not that of the traditional classroom, and is at least in principle aligned to many facets of "new learning" (Cope & Kalantzis, 2014), affordances that were were explicitly leveraged in the design and execution of the original version of this lesson plan (see Appendix II):

Montessorian mixed age classroom (Montessori, 1912).
Dewey-derived project based learning (Wikimedia Foundation, 2021)
Personalized, adaptive learning (Cope et al., 2015)
To varying degrees, albeit not in an exclusively e-learning environment, all seven affordances of collaborative/reflexive learning: ubiquity, active knowledge making, multimodal meaning, recursive feedback, collaborative intelligence, metacognition, and differentiation (Cope & Kalantzis, 2014)
To varying degrees, 19 of the 36 principles characeristic even of good online games that are drawn from learning design, specifically the principles of: attentive/active learning, semiotics, psychosocial moratorium, identity, self-knowledge, ongoing learning, regime of competence, multiple routes, text, intertextual, multimodal, incremental, discovery, transfer, cultural models about the world, cultural models about learning, distributed, dispersed, affinity group, and insider (Gee, 2003)

Adaptations for this learning module were largely to make this learning more ubiquitous, enabling peer collaboration to occur across wide geographies and asynchronously, which also means not necessarily in physical or temporal proximity with its facilitator.

In terms of assessment, the grading rubric (again, see Appendix II) was already aligned with the philosophy behind CGScholar's analytics as well as current theories on self-assessment, so this facet of the class was less changed than made more efficient by the use of technology. Note that, despite discreet assignments -- required comments and updates that often give explicit direction to guide expected peer collaboration and/or constructive criticism, as well as the larger work productions requested by administrative updates 5 and 7 -- this grading rubric really constitutes a method for continuous assessment that is highly reflective (i.e., akin, if not identical, to self-assessment; see Wilson, 2021), and, as such, is not separate from but an integral part of the student's learning process. In other words, prospective facilitators of this class should not look for a separate artifact that looks like traditional testing; the entire learning module is both instruction and assessment, which is appropriate: this course is not about the history of existential philosophy or film theory or anything else of the sort -- it's asking students to "commit philosophy". Therefore, as indicated in its original materials provided in Appendix II, by the necessity inherent to its materials and objecitve, "this course is rigorous with regard to evaluating a student's process and progress, but without emphasis on identifying any single set of 'right' answers ... [and in that context] a student should only be held accountable for their inherent capabilities and their realization."

Finally, and commensurate with that approach, significant work had to be done to chunk lessons into updates in a manner to ensure peers could both work at their own pace, but without getting so out of sync to frustrate some or require spoiler alerts for others. To also ensure engagement that would support those aims, the absence of in-person conversation and dynamics required increased incorporation of visual elements. Considerations for future transformation would be how to incorporate more of Gee's (2003) 36 principles of good learning design gleaned from online gaming, 17 of which were not identified as existing in the original lesson plan or the curriculum in which it resides.

Footnotes

^ Specifically, this course has been accepted for transfer credit in satisfaction of the following Common Core standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.1-10, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1-10, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.1-10.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Students will explore -- through pre- and post-viewing "discussion" of the movie Groundhog Day, including related essays, podcasts, and a modern French take on ancient Greek mythology -- the second of our Unit 1 (The Crisis of Existing) existential questions:

Does life have a purpose?

Update 1: Introducing our essential question and a groundhog

For the Student

Image 1. The Groundhog. (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2022).

The essential, existential question to keep in mind as we watch the film Groundhog Day is one about the crisis of existence. Yes, the fact that we exist, and know that there appears to have been a time when we didn't, and therefore can contemplate the idea that there may be some future time when we will not exist again, can cause some consternation.

Like, that sucks. Or, rephrased as as question: what's the point? Okay, I'll try to be a little more positive: Does life have a purpose?

That's the question we're going to explore for the next several sessions, not just through our movie, but through conversation, creating our own expressions, and hearing the thoughts of others through text and other forms of media. Keep this question in mind, as we'll discuss it once we're done with our film and its exploration. Our shared learning outcome is solely for you to be able to express an honest, well-thought out, and personal answer rooted in everything we're about to do for this one essential question. Here it is again, in case you missed it:

Does life have a purpose?

And yes, we're going to explore this question through the most exciting of animals -- must be, as it has it's own holiday -- the groundhog (see that fabulous photo above).

Right now you must be asking, "Of all the holiday movies I could watch, why one about a groundhog?"

I get it. Halloween yields classic horror films, many movies are set around the nostalgia and hope of New Year's Eve, religious holidays lend themselves to historical dramas based on the events they commemorate as well as a wealth of films that explore those holidays' modern meanings, and many national holidays lend themselves to biopics, war movies, and more.

But a holiday movie for a groundhog?

We're used to animal movies:

Image 2. (Warner Bros. Pictures, 1983)

Image 3. (Warner Bros. Pictures, 2000)

However, both of those films look more entertaining than anything about a groundhog.

But maybe that's the point. Consider this key quote from the movie we're about to see:

Phil: What if every day you woke up and it was exactly the same and nothing you did ever mattered?

Man in Bar: That about sums it up for me.

Yikes.

Well, if you know what Groundhog Day is, what did you expect? If you didn't already know, let the 3-minute vido below catch you up.

Media embedded February 28, 2022

VIDEO 1. Groundhog Day, Explained (Business Insider, 2018)

Here are the main takeaways:

A groundhog is a burrowing hibernator that generally comes somewhat out of hibernation around the beginning of February.
There is a folk tradition that if on February 2nd the groundhog promptly returns to its hole there will be 6 more weeks of winter (i.e., until the actual first day of spring on March 21st); if the groundhog stays out and about it is believed that spring will come early.
Many communities around the US have a “groundhog ritual”, but the most famous and semi-official of these takes place in a sleepy small town east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania called Punxsutawney; every February 2nd news organizations around the US report on the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction of whether we’ll see an early end to winter.

Thus Groundhog Day is a famous and highly followed “non-holiday” in the US: no one gets the day off from work, there are no public celebrations or parties to commemorate the event outside of Punxsutawney, and there are no greeting cards.

In other words, it’s precisely the type of holiday a cynical person like this movie’s main character -- Phil, who asked the man in the bar, "What if every day you woke up and it was exactly the same and nothing you did ever mattered?" -- would ridicule.

So, in this movie the “non-holiday” of Groundhog Day serves as a metaphor: just as the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil – if he had a human level of consciousness – might feel like he’s repeating the same relatively meaningless ritual year after year, this movie’s main character – a Pittsburgh weatherman also named Phil – is stuck in a job that he feels is beneath him, as proven by the fact that he’s being sent to what he considers a meaningless town to cover a meaningless event for the fourth year in a row.

Now let's go back to our "key quote" and start to lift the veil on our metaphor a little further:

Image 4. Why Groundhog Day IS exciting: our life (having meaning) depends on it. (Author, 2016).

Notice the blue line/arrow that connects our "key quote" from the top of the image above to further concepts all the way down the page. Without watching or looking up anything further about this movie, skim through all the concepts to be explored later (i.e., the boxes and brackets outlined in purple, the red and green lettering, the yellow box at bottom, etc.), then proceed to the 3 exercises below.

First, please create the following "comment" to this post: Using your phone or computer, record two videos and post them as "unlisted" videos on YouTube (i.e., they will not appear on your channel or public searches, but you may share the link directly to this class). VIDEO 1: Without knowing anything more than what we've just discussed, read Phil's sentence from the "key quote" above (What if every day you woke up and it was exactly the same and nothing you did ever mattered?), really acting it out as you think he will say it in the m. VIDEO 2: Do the same thing for the "man in the bar's" response (That about sums it up for me), again, really acting it out as you think it might appear in the movie. In other words, treat each of these videos as if you were auditioning for these parts in the movie, and you have only this one sentence to convince the director you're the person for the job. COPY & PASTE THE LINKS TO EACH OF YOUR VIDEOS IN YOUR COMMENT (nothing but those two links is required for this comment).

Second, please write an update^[1] to the following:

Pick one of your classmate's videos to watch.
Write how being asked by your classmate (through that video) "What if every day you woke up and it was exactly the same and nothing you did ever mattered" made you feel. Explain your answer. Please note, to explain your answer, you may have to talk about you and the background you bring to the hearing as much as you talk about your classmate's acting.
Write how and/or what you felt toward's your classmate's character when they answered "That about sums it up for me." Explain your answer. Again, please note that to explain your answer you may have to talk about yourself and the background you bring to the hearing as much as you talk about your classmate's acting.

Third, if you'd like to make your one required class presentation^[2] for Groundhog Day to be about what you wrote for this update, sign up here on the tab "Update 1". You would present at our next live session. You will have four more opportunities to sign up and present on future updates.

REMEMBER AS YOU WRITE: In this course, it is acceptable and encouraged to include personal experience. You may do so -- or choose not do so -- to whatever degree you feel comfortable. You may also choose -- and this will have no affect on your grade, positive or negative -- to discuss personal experiences brought up by these prompts with the course facilitator and/or school counseling staff instead of including them in your response. These conversations would be kept confidential.

Footnotes

^ For purposes of this course, an "update" is a 300-600 word response (or quantitatively and qualitatively equivalent effort if incorporating video/audio elements, which are encouraged). Furthermore, although still expressing personal thoughts on a subject, updates are expected to have those thoughts grounded in specific reference to the film and/or other class materials being explored. In other words, as with a "comment", there is no single absolute right answer that is expected; however, different from "comments", all answers must demonstrate what you have learned from the class (even if it's to express your total disagreement). The one thing that is not acceptable is providing a response that could have been provided even if you had never heard of this class or encountered any of its material.
^ For purposes of this course, a "presentation": (a) is only required once per lesson/film, but you may present more than once if the number of spots available are greater than the number of students taking the class; (b) is short (2 - 3 minutes), and isn't reading your update, but summarizing its main point(s) to then pose provocative thoughts or questions to your audience, which requires you to be ready to listen and respond to the conversation you create amongst your classmate(s) and/or class facilitator(s).

For the Facilitator

Groundhog Day - Harold Ramis' Greatest Legacy & A Perfect Guide to Life (Salon.com)

In preparation for this course, please:

Read the "review" attached above (actually, an article written upon the director's passing, two decades after the film's theatrical release).
Watch the film, available here on Amazon Prime and YouTube Rentals, as well as other streaming services.
Preview the entire facilitator and student content for this lesson.
If you wish to use more lessons from, or even the entirety of, the full year course from which this lesson is derived, additional context is available in the "Overview" and "Appendices" to this work where it appears in CGScholar.
Make certain students have been familiarized with and know how to use CGScholar, both conceptually and technically, prior to posting Update 1 and asking them to log into the course.
Make certain students know that there is an expectation that they read at least some of their classmates' comments and updates, and read a few of each group of classmates' updates with sufficient care and attention to provide a comment to at least one other person's update for that "session." The comment they provide should be meaningful to them (the commenter), to the recipient of their comment, and to the overall classroom "conversation" of which it is a part. If facilitating this course as part of a single student's personalized instruction, the facilitator should also write an update so the student can complete this exercise and benefit from the consequent "conversation".
Assess and provide the degree of guidance your students will need in order to write appropriate length, detail, tenor/courtesy, and depth of comments, updates, and comments on classmates' updates based on their age and experience (may need to be adjusted after they start submitting work).
Emphasize to students that there are no explicit right or wrong answers to any of the questions or prompts in this class, only those that are completed honestly, with honest effort, explicitly demonstrating an engagement with and reflection on all the material presented, and those that aren't (see also the grading rubric to the original full course, provided in Appendix II).
With regard to presentations, either eliminate the sign-up sheet if this is one-to-one instruction or groups so small that all students can present at each live session, or, if that is not the case, adjust the number of available spots on each tab accordingly to ensure that everyone has at least one opportunity to present and that there aren't too many slots causing you to run out of presenters before the last live session.
Have fun.

Update 2: Instinct, Habit, and Ritual

For the Student

Why Groundhog Day IS exciting: our life (having meaning) depends on it

In case you would like to view or print it out full size, our diagram from last session is attached above as a PDF, but also included again below as we continue our discussion building off the key quote at the heart of this movie.

Image 4 (reprise). Why Groundhog Day IS exciting: our life (having meaning) depends on it. (Author, 2016).

I know we skimmed this diagram before, but now let's turn our attention more specifically to the purple outlined words stemming from each of these Phils:

Phil the groundhog is following instinct, whereas
Phil the weatherman fears falling into habit.

Zoologists (those who study animals) and anthropologists (those who study humanity) respectively label instinct and habit as the foundation upon which rituals are built and sustained.

Please write a comment^[1] to the following: Define ritual in your own words.

Please write an update to the following: After thinking about the contents of the PDF above a little more and reflecting on both your and your classmates' definitions of ritual provided in the comments:

Give at least two examples of instinct/habit/ritual becoming “a rut of routines that blinds us to opportunity, depriving life of meaning beyond survival.”
Explain your examples (i.e., why you chose them, how they blind and deprive us).
Theorize why this aspect of instinct/habit/ritual has been historically/classically considered fundamentally "animal" in nature.
In addition to writing your own update, please also read and comment on the updates of at least 2 of your classmates.

Finally, if you'd like to make your one required class presentation for Groundhog Day to be about what you wrote for this update, sign up here on the tab "Update 2". You would present at our next live session. You will have three more opportunities to sign up and present on future updates.

Footnotes

^ For purposes of this course, a written "comment" is a 100-300 word response to a prompt that is generally rooted in personal opinion or reflection.

For the Facilitator

Post Administrative Update 2 after your first live session with student presentations on Administrative Update 1 has been completed.

There is no advance preparation for Administrative Update 2 or your second live student presentations on that content other than those enumerated "for the facilitator" in Update 1.

In terms of students' update (and, therefore, possible third live student presentation) content, any reasonable examples/explanations are acceptable. However, as an aid to facilitators, in terms of item 3 (theorize why this aspect of instinct/habit/ritual has been historically/classically considered fundamentally "animal" in nature), the scientific/philosophical rationale is that (i) animals in the wild expend most of their time and energy devoted to individual and species level survival, conserving energy rather than engaging in activities not directly related to those tasks. Furthermore, (ii) most animals that organize into large scale societies like ants and bees demonstrate little ability to deviate from birth-determined social roles or otherwise alter their individual behavior in response to circumstances that are beyond the normal range of expectation, while (iii) most animals that do demonstrate such flexibility in thinking – like primates, large cats, wolves, dolphins, whales, etc. – demonstrate little ability to organize beyond the family/pack/herd/pride/etc. Therefore (iv) humans alone demonstrate both the large scale organization and flexibility characteristic of creating and acting on opportunities due to perceptions of value beyond that of mere survival for the individual or species.

This topic may come up again in the student updates/presentations following Administrative Update 3. whether due to a student’s oppositional nature and/or their emotional connection to animals. If a student does get sidetracked in this way, acknowledge that (i) we love animals and animals can also love us, but that does not preclude our prior observations above; (ii) what students have been asked to comment on is just the historical/classical view, not necessarily their view; (iii) a student’s preference for animals is understandable: humanity’s ability to flexibly organize on a global social scale toward non-survival goals – in other words, wants, not needs – is arguably what has driven the planet toward environmental crisis. However, with those acknowledgments, re-direct the student back to the topic at hand.

Update 3: The Movie

For the Student

Why Groundhog Day IS exciting: our life (having meaning) depends on it

Yes, after today's update it will finally be time to watch the movie!

However, to finish our pre-film discussion, once more the diagram from our prior sessions is attached above as a PDF in case you would like to view or print it out full size, but is also included again below.

Also, thank you for demonstrating your acting skills after our first session, and providing your insights into ritual's potential to be a "rut of routines", which shed light on the existential crisis at the heart of our "key quote" from this film:

Image 4 (reprise). Why Groundhog Day IS exciting: our life (having meaning) depends on it. (Author, 2016).

Now let's look at the positive side of instinct/habit/ritual: it puts on autopilot the routine activities necessary for our preservation so we can shift our mental focus to take on challenges and opportunities that aren't routine.

For example, you probably brush your teeth every morning as a matter of habit and don't have to focus too much on that activity to do it sufficiently to keep your teeth from rotting out. This enables your mind to simultaneously think of and prepare for other things you have going on today: a friend you need to connect with; a homework assignment that's due; a tryout or interview for something exciting like a play, a concert, a sports team, or a new job.

In other words, you're NOT like Harold Crick in this opening clip from a movie we'll see later in this course.

Media embedded February 28, 2022

VIDEO 2. Harold Crick brushing his teeth, from "Stranger than Fiction". (Sony Pictures, 2006).

Of course, as infinitely more exciting our tooth brushing thoughts were than Harold Crick's, they were still pretty common to everyone's everyday experience in this world: connecting with a friend; completing homework; even trying out or interviewing for a play, a concert, a sports team, or a new job is something that thousands, millions, maybe even a billion people do all the time.

But reading our diagram down through all the green lettering, we see that -- at their best -- our individual good habits can build up into community rituals that lead us toward and then continues to reinforce a "sacramental" view of the world. A sacramental worldview is defined as looking at objects and events of the material world as having the potential to be interpreted as symbols of a higher intellectual or spiritual (i.e., sacred) meaning.

Image 4 Close-Up: Positive individual habits can create positive communal rituals that return to the individual as a "sacramental worldview"

To adopt a sacramental worldview does not mean that one must believe in any particular religion, god as a general concept, or even that this symbolic relationship is “real”, only to accept that someone could look at the world in this way.

In the late 19th–early 20th century this theological construct was adopted by some novelists -- notably non-English language authors -- to create the genre ultimately labeled “magical realism”. It was also used by visual artists to create what was commonly labeled “the surreal”, a French term that actually implies a kind of hyper-reality. At the crux of magical realism, surrealism, or a sacramental worldview is the idea that too much focus on materialistic fact might miss greater metaphorical truths: the proverbial failing to see the forest for the trees.

Historically/classically, these truths that are not revealed by facts alone have been described as being insights into the divine and/or attunement with one’s higher power or best self.

Please note that none of these descriptions – divinity/higher-power/best-self – is to pit "animal" versus "human" nature, but instead recognize that a human being is both animal and spiritual in nature. Our animal nature is necessarily and correctly the one most focused on simple survival; our spiritual nature is by definition detached from that need. Consequently, the ultimate realization of the sacramental world view is when it enables an individual to be sacrificial by placing the needs of the distant stranger in distress above his or her own.

This brings us to the bottom of our diagram. Carefully examine the image below and how the text's statements interconnect:

Image 4 Close-Up: Phil's animal reaction to the man in the bar starts his human journey to the spiritual.

Okay, now you are ready to watch Groundhog Day:

a “surreal” work of magical realism
that asks us to take a sacramental view of the world
in order to answer the existential question Phil posed to the man in the bar.

Let's take a look at that quote one last time:

Phil: What if every day you woke up and it was exactly the same and nothing you did ever mattered?

Man in Bar: That about sums it up for me.

It's Phil’s defiant reaction to the man in the bar’s defeatist response that transforms him into a true protagonist (and, arguably, what distinguishes him from being like his groundhog namesake).

Enjoy the movie. You can watch it here on Amazon Prime Video or YouTube Video Rentals, as well as other streaming services.

Once you have watched the movie, proceed to the 3 exercises below.

First, please create the following comment to this post: What is Phil’s reaction to the man in the bar’s statement, and why do you think it sets him off on the journey that is the rest of the film?

Second, please write an update to the following: Notice how our diagram insinuates that Phil’s journey is humanity’s journey, and, as such, the potential journey of any human individual. With that in mind, at what point(s) in the movie after the scene in the bowling alley bar did you most resonate with Phil, feeling like "yeah, I've been there, I can relate to that"? Please explain your answer. Furthermore, in addition to writing your own update, please also read and comment on the updates of at least 2 of your classmates.

Third, if you'd like to make your one required class presentation for Groundhog Day to be about what you wrote for this update, sign up here on the tab "Update 3". You would present at our next live session. You will have two more opportunities to sign up and present on future updates.

For the Facilitator

Post Administrative Update 3 after your second live session with student presentations on Administrative Update 2 has been completed.

There is no advance preparation for Administrative Update 3 or your third live student presentations on that content other than those enumerated "for the facilitator" in Update 1.

Update 4: Phil Connor's Existential Journey

For the Student

Thank you for your initial insights into the film Groundhog Day from Update 3!

With this update (Update 4), we move past the halfway point in our exploration of this movie, and with that, a little deeper dive into the details of our metaphor.

Toward that end, please use the chart below to:

Go back to each transition scene in the movie when Phil enters a new stage on his existential journey.
Provide a brief (one to three word) description for each of those 14 stages (i.e., complete the second column from the right). For example, stage one could be easily described as "disbelief", "dismay", or "confusion".
Review the 14 stages you described and label each of the four larger categories to which they belong (i.e., complete the multi-colored last column on the right by replacing the question mark). For example, the first four stages you will probably find easily categorized as stages of "denial."

Chart 1. (For student completion).

Once you have completed the chart to the best of your ability, proceed to the 3 exercises below.

First, please create the following comment to this post: Pick 1 - 3 of the 14 stages you found the most difficult to describe, state which ones they are, describe why you found each one difficult, and solicit help from your classmates. Then pick 1 - 3 of the 14 stages for which you feel confident in your description -- even better if they are stages that one of your classmates commented that they had trouble with -- and provide both your description and a brief justification for what you said.

Second, please write an update to EITHER of the following two groups of questions:

Does Phil plan these stages? Does he know to what destination they’re leading him? Please explain your answers with reference to actions and dialogue in the film informed by your personal experience.
In hindsight, each stage is necessary and part of a progression, but are they always pleasant, and does Phil always feel like he’s progressing? Please explain your answers with reference to actions and dialogue in the film informed by your personal experience.

Third, if you'd like to make your one required class presentation for Groundhog Day to be about what you wrote for this update, sign up here on the tab "Update 4". You would present at our next live session. You will have one more opportunity to sign up and present on future updates.

For the Facilitator

Post Administrative Updates 4 and 5 (Work 1 Request) after your third live session with student presentations on Update 3 has been completed.

There is no advance preparation for Administrative Update 4 or your fourth live student presentations on that content other than those enumerated "for the facilitator" in Update 1.

Update 5: Work 1 assignment & instructions

For the Student

Work 1 Directions:

Guiding Question: How would you have reacted to Phil’s circumstances, and how, despite its magical realism, does this film reflect actual situations you have been in and responses that you have had to such existential situations?

Your response: "Answer" the guiding question in "Creator" using whatever textual, visual, video, or audio elements, singly or in combination, original or curated, that enables you to best express (not avoid) your personal reflection. A sample completed version of Chart 1 from our last Update has been included again here for your convenience (please look up any unknown terms). A clear connection between your response, the concepts in this chart, and the film must be made, either directly in the work created or in a written introduction to the work (for example, if your original work is completely visual or audio, or in some other way an artistic self-expression that doesn't explicitly reference the chart or film, you need to provide a brief written introduction that does make an explicit connection of your artistry to both the chart and the film).

Chart 1. (Sample Completed Version)

REMEMBER AS YOU CREATE: In this course, it is always acceptable and encouraged to include personal experience.

HOWEVER, because this work explicitly asks you to speak from personal experience, it will NOT be made public unless you choose to present it. In other words, it will:

not be read or commented on by your classmates.
not be published in CGScholar unless you ask for it to be published.
remain confidential to the course facilitator and, not without prior discussion with you, potentially school counseling staff.

THAT STATED, if you'd like to make your one required class presentation for Groundhog Day to be about this work, please sign up here on the tab "Update 5". You would present NOT at the next live session, which will focus on Update 4, but our fifth live session together (i.e., you have extra time to prepare, as this is a longer work).

For the Facilitator

Post Administrative Update 5 (Work 1 Request) simultaneously with, or relatively shortly after, posting Administrative Update 4; in other words, also after your third live session with student presentations on Administrative Update 3 has been completed.

PLEASE NOTE: Although there is no advance preparation for Administrative Update 5, these are the instructions that accompany a work request, and are therefore different from prior updates in terms of content, procedure, and timing. Consequently, please review the "for the student" section of this update carefully for those differences in addition to continuing to keep in mind the preparations enumerated "for the facilitator" in Update 1.

PLEASE NOTIFY STUDENTS during your fifth live session that Administrative Update 7 (Work 2 assignment & instructions) will be posted before instead of after your next live session, as there will be no student presentations at that live session, which will instead be office hours to assist anyone with questions about Work 2 (or anything else about the class before it ends).

Update 6: Re-visiting Groundhog Day's essential existential question

For the Student

Image 5. (Columbia Pictures, 1993)

Congratulations, although this is a bittersweet moment -- we're coming close to the end of our exploration of Groundhog Day, but that also means the end of what has been a surprisingly magical journey.

Coming to that close, however, also means revisiting the "essential existential" question we posed way back in Update 1, and which I bet has still been in the back of your mind throughout our exploration of this movie, even if you think you've forgotten it!

Before we bring that question up, though, let's pierce the veil on our metaphor a little bit more to learn the existentialist philosophers and works that influenced this movie's creator, making Groundhog Day what the following essayist, Michael Faust, claimed in the journal PhilosophyNow: the most philosophical movie ever made.

Groundhog Day brings to mind the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, in which the eponymous anti-hero defies the gods and is punished by being sentenced to push a huge rock up a steep hill in the certain knowledge that as soon as he has succeeded, the rock will roll back down and he must start the process again, over and over, for all eternity. Like Bill Murray’s character Phil during the repeated day in the film, Sisyphus cannot die, even though he might long for death as the only means to escape his personal Hell.

The existentialist writer Albert Camus (1913-60) was fascinated by the myth of Sisyphus, seeing it as a metaphor for the human condition: for most of us, each day is only fractionally different from the previous day. Sure, we can break the routine from time to time by going on vacation or whatever, but these interludes only reinforce the fact that the vast majority of our daily activities are routine. Only precise repetition is missing.

Still, although the task confronting Sisyphus – and Phil Connors, and us – may seem grinding, even soulcrushing, Camus imagines that Sisyphus can and does transform his situation through acceptance: “The struggle towards the heights is itself enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy” (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942).

Groundhog Day explicitly makes Camus’ twist on the tale part of its own re-telling of the myth of Sisyphus: like Camus’ version of the anti-hero, Phil Connors comes to fully accept his fate, and, ironically, it is precisely at that moment that he’s liberated from it. However, unlike Camus’ Sisyphus, Phil’s liberation is literal, not figurative, and in that difference Groundhog Day implies that the granting of this one freedom comes at the cost of another: immortality.

Such trading immortality for free will resonates with another theme from ancient Greece that found its echo among twentieth-century existentialists like Camus: it is because we are mortal that we find life – and, arguably, anything – meaningful. Thus in her novel, All Men are Mortal, Camus’ sympathetic contemporary, Simone de Beauvoir, presented a man cursed with immortality; cursed because, once immortal, eternity ultimately became as repetitive as Sisyphus’ rolling rock, and with that repetition, just as meaningless.

Unfortunately, this theme did not make its way into Camus’ re-imagining, and thus Camus’ Sisyphus is left with the hollow victory that “there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” Phil Connors’ mortal position is arguably better than Sisyphus’ immortal one, as rather than scorn, it is love that liberates the antihero of Groundhog Day.

Perhaps that is why, despite all its magical realism, Groundhog Day ends with Phil physically freed from his curse, while even Camus leaves Sisyphus constrained but for the metaphor in his mind.

(Edited and adapted from Faust, 2012).

With those insights in mind, as we come to the end of our encounter with both Phil the weatherman and Phil the groundhog, let's re-visit our essential existential question:

Does life have a purpose?

Please write a comment to the following: A one sentence "gut" response to our essential question.

Please write an update to the following: Use the one sentence "gut" response to our essential question as a thesis statement to develop a longer, more thought out "update" response. Read and reflect on some of your classmates' comments to this update before you start. You may simply unpack your thesis and explain your answer, you may contradict your thesis and tear it apart, or you may do a bit of both and come to a whole new conclusion by the end of your update. There is no right or wrong answer, just make the answer yours: honesty and honest effort is all anyone can ask. Please also write an encouraging but constructive comment to the update of at least 2 of the other people in this class.

REMEMBER AS YOU WRITE: In this course, it is acceptable and encouraged to include personal experience. You may do so -- or choose not do so -- to whatever degree you feel comfortable.

ALSO NOTE, there is no presentation on this update, in case that makes you feel more comfortable as you're writing. In any case, as always you may also choose -- and this will have no affect on your grade, positive or negative -- to discuss personal experiences brought up by these prompts with the course facilitator and/or school counseling staff instead of including them in your response. These conversations would be kept confidential.

For the Facilitator

Post Administrative Update 6 after your fifth live session with student presentations on Administrative Update 5 (Work 1) has been completed.

Please note that there are no student presentations based on Administrative Update 6.

Rather, your sixth live session will be dedicated to office hours for answering student questions about Administrative Update 7 (Work 2 assignment & instructions) specifically, as well as anything about the class generally.

THEREFORE PLEASE NOTE AHEAD that the instructions for Update 7 will be to post shortly (i.e., 24 - 72 hours in advance) of your sixth live session.

Update 7A: Work 2 assignment & instructions (option 1)

For the Student

Work 2 Directions:

Guiding Prompt: Remembering the final essay we read by Michael Faust in Update 6, create a reflection (written, musical, visual, etc., any medium is acceptable as long as the medium enables you to best express yourself, as opposed to distract you from the subject) that addresses each of the following questions (approximately 2 hours):

How was your life before addiction^[1] like Sisyphus rolling the rock uphill only to watch it roll back down again, over and over?
How was your life in addiction like Sisyphus’ rock?
How has recovery been like Sisyphus’ rock?
What is different among these three stages? How is the rock different? How is the task of rolling the rock different? Why?

Your Response: Respond to this prompt in "Creator" using and/or uploading whatever textual, visual, video, or audio elements, singly or in combination, original or curated, that enables you to best express (not avoid) your response.

REMEMBER AS YOU CREATE: In this course, it is always acceptable and encouraged to include personal experience.

HOWEVER, because this work explicitly asks you to speak from personal experience, it will NOT be made public unless you choose to present it. In other words, it will:

not be read or commented on by your classmates.
not be published in CGScholar unless you ask for it to be published.
remain confidential to the course facilitator and, not without prior discussion with you, potentially school counseling staff.

THAT STATED, if you'd like to present this work, please sign up here on the tab "My Choice". You would present NOT at the next live session, which will be office hours to answer any questions anyone has about this assignment or the class in general, but at our last live session together (i.e., you have extra time to prepare, as this is a longer work).

Footnotes

^ Addiction here is loosely defined: it could be to substances, an eating disorder, emotional turmoil, co-dependent relationship(s) with family/friend/romantic partner, whatever. Alternatively, for educators working with a more general population, replace the word "addiction" with "adolescence", although then this prompt and its depth/nuance may require more facilitator guidance.

For the Facilitator

Post ONE of the Administrative Update 7 options 24-72 hours before your sixth live session, which will be dedicated to office hours for answering student questions about this update (i.e., the Work 2 assignment & instructions).

Select the Administrative Update 7 option that is most appropriate for your students.

Alternatively, you can also not post an Administrative Update 7 to the whole class, but copy and paste content from any of those options into individual emails so as to give differentiated assignments to each student.

In either case, please give students advance notice during the fifth live session that the next live session will be "office hours" for questions about their Work 2 Assignment and Instructions, and that Update 7 will therefore be posted early so they can review it in advance and come to that session prepared. Similarly, at the end of the sixth, "office hour" live session, remind students that they will have a seventh live session for Work 1 presentations.

Update 7B: Work 2 assignment & instructions (option 2)

For the Student

Work 2 Directions:

Guiding Prompt: Remembering the final essay we read by Michael Faust in Update 6, Camus assumed that the world was ‘absurd’, meaning that because our time here ends in death the world must be uncaring, and that it would therefore be illogical to seek purpose or meaning in it. However, in contrast to Sisyphus – who Camus states surmounted his fate through his scorn for its absurdity – Phil Connors seems to have surmounted his fate not by scorning its absurdity, but through finding that it was not absurd. In other words, Phil found that repeating Groundhog Day over and over did have purpose and meaning, and that this purpose/meaning in turn revealed that the world is caring after all.

Your Response: Answer and (creatively) illustrate -- using whatever textual, visual, video, or audio elements, singly or in combination, original or curated, that enables you to best express (not avoid) -- your personal reactions to and engagement with the following questions (approximately 2 hours):

What was/were the source(s) of caring in Groundhog Day?
What purpose or meaning does the presence of that caring imply?
Draw the relationship between caring and purpose/meaning as it appears in Groundhog Day. Which comes first: purpose/meaning or caring?
How is your drawing reflected or not reflected in your own life?

REMEMBER AS YOU CREATE: In this course, it is always acceptable and encouraged to include personal experience.

HOWEVER, because this work explicitly asks you to speak from personal experience, it will NOT be made public unless you choose to present it. In other words, it will:

not be read or commented on by your classmates
not be published in CGScholar unless you ask for it to be published
remain confidential to the course facilitator and, not without prior discussion with you, potentially school counseling staff

For the Facilitator

Select the Administrative Update 7 option that is most appropriate for your students.

RE OPTION 7B (please see also, "For the Student"):

Update 7C: Work 2 assignment & instructions (option 3)

For the Student

Work 2 Directions:

Guiding Prompt: Keeping in mind Groundhog Day and Michael Faust's philosophical essay about the film that we read in Update 6, listen to, take notes on, and write a short personal reflection regarding the following podcast (author interview conducted by Krista Tippett):

JENNIFER MICHAEL HECHT — Suicide, and Hope for Our Future Selves

ABSTRACT: Stay. That’s the message that philosopher, poet, and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht puts at the center of her unusual writing about suicide. She’s traced how the history of Western civilization has, at times, demonized those who commit suicide, and, at times, celebrated it as a moral freedom. She has struggled with suicidal places in her life and lost friends to it. As a scholar, she’s now proposing a new cultural reckoning with suicide, based not on morality or on rights but on our essential need for each other.

http://www.onbeing.org/program/jennifer-michael-hecht-suicide-and-hope-for-our-future-selves/6187

(approximately 2 hours, not counting optional sharing session, at students' and faciliator's discretion)

REMEMBER AS YOU CREATE: In this course, it is always acceptable and encouraged to include personal experience.

HOWEVER, because this work explicitly asks you to speak from personal experience, it will NOT be made public unless you choose to present it. In other words, it will:

not be read or commented on by your classmates.
not be published in CGScholar unless you ask for it to be published.
remain confidential to the course facilitator and, not without prior discussion with you, potentially school counseling staff.

For the Facilitator

Select the Administrative Update 7 option that is most appropriate for your students.

RE OPTION 7C: If multiple students are doing this exercise, sharing and discussing their reflections would be appropriate and probably desirable, but is left to the judgment of the facilitator in consideration of and in consultation with their class.

Update 7D: Work 2 assignment & instructions (option 4)

For the Student

Work 2 Directions:

Guiding Prompt: Group Project option for students taking the full year curriculum.

Rationale & Requirements for Definition: Remembering the final essay we read by Michael Faust in Update 6, a major theme in Groundhog Day that is absent from Camus’ re-telling of Sisyphus (and thus might explain why Groundhog Day is a comedy while Camus’ Sisyphus remains tragic) is finding meaning/purpose in becoming other- as opposed to self-focused. As a group, come up with a few different ways your community can be more other- as opposed to self-focused and how that would still benefit you as a community and as individuals. Select one of those ideas to be implemented, then plan its implementation and see it into being. (all group projects selected/assigned during Unit 1 should be considered to have approximately 200 hours to complete over the duration of the course).

For the Facilitator

Select the Administrative Update 7 option that is most appropriate for your students.

Update 7E: Work 2 assignment & instructions (option 5)

The facilitator is always welcome to create their own final work assignment, or adopt their students’ ideas for a final work assignment, if they would better serve their particular communities' exploration and understanding of this lesson's essential existential question.

That stated, all the other general directions posted in the Administrative Update 7 options still apply:

Select the Administrative Update 7 option that is most appropriate for your students.

References

Business Insider. Why groundhogs supposedly predict the weather on Groundhog Day. YouTube. (2018, January 30). Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://youtu.be/FDFy7_DM_qQ

Cope, W., Kalantzis, M., Francis, K., Tzirides, A., Mattingly, S. (2015). Advanced Instructional Techniques. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://cgscolar.com/bookstore/works/advanced-instructional-technologies?category_id=higher-education-modules&path=higher-education-modules%2F160

Cope, W., Kalantzis, M., Francis, K., Tzirides, A., Mattingly, S. (2018). Assessment for Learning. Retrieved February 15, 2022, from https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/copy-of-assessment-for-learning-version-1?category_id=higher-education-modules&path=higher-education-modules%2F160

Curious Muse (2021, May 18). Magical realism in 6 minutes: Literary fantasy or fantastic literature? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI9I2p71ct0.

Curious Muse (2021, January 15). Surrealism in 5 minutes: Idea behind the art movement [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/bP2JS4vDvNc.

Education at Illinois. (2014, March 3). From didactic pedagogy to new learning [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/YIWM7Ot9yD4.

Education at Illinois. (2014, March 3). What's the use of technology in learning? introducing Seven e-affordances [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/INC4s_kuC7g.

English language arts standards "writing" grade 6-8. English Language Arts Standards "Writing" Grade 6-8 | Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.). Retrieved November 30, 2021, from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/WHST/6-8/.

English language arts standards "reading: Literature" grade 9-10. English Language Arts Standards " Reading: Literature " Grade 9-10 | Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.). Retrieved November 30, 2021, from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RL/9-10/.

English language arts standards "reading: Literature" grade 11-12. English Language Arts Standards " Reading: Literature " Grade 11-12 | Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.). Retrieved November 30, 2021, from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RL/11-12/.

Faust, M. Groundhog day. Philosophy Now: a magazine of ideas. Vol. 93. (2012). Retrieved March 1, 2022, from https://philosophynow.org/issues/93/Groundhog_Day

Gee, J.P.. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Monroe, J. (2020, December 2). Day schools. Newport Academy. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://www.newportacademy.com/programs/day-schools/.

Montessori, Maria. 1964 (1912). The Montessori Method. Schocken Books.

Mossa, M. (2010). Already there: Letting god find you. St. Anthony Messenger Press.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, October 20). Project-Based Learning. Wikipedia. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project-based_learning.

Williams, M. E. (2014, February 25). Why Harold Ramis' "Groundhog day" is A perfect guide to life. Salon. Retrieved February 17, 2022, from https://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/why_harold_ramis_groundhog_day_is_a_perfect_guide_to_life/

Wilson, J. (2022, March 7). Know thyself: The use and efficacy of self-assessments for learning. CGScholar. Retrieved March 8, 2022,https://cgscholar.com/community/profiles/user-85289-52645/publications/244332

Images

Columbia Pictures. (1993). Groundhog Day. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/

Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Groundhog. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/animal/groundhog

Sony Pictures. (2006). Stranger than Fiction: Opening. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDwTQ57YyzI

Warner Bros. Pictures. (1983). Cujo. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.amazon.com/Cujo-Dee-Wallace/dp/B00005O438

Warner Bros. Pictures. (2000). My Dog Skip. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0156812/

Appendices

Appendix I: Statement of Purpose

Synopsis: to stimulate students’ personal reflection toward enhanced insight into and sympathy for the human condition, with a consequent ultimate aim of student “engagement” with the world.

Elucidation:

The purpose of any course is to educate.

The questions to therefore put to any course are, to educate (a) about what and (b) how?

For this course, the answers to each of these questions in turn are:

(a) Existentialism, which is:

the intentional confrontation (whether playfully or with deadly seriousness)...
of the potential purpose(s) or purposelessness of existence...
in order not to live in fear of that about which we cannot be certain (which includes the reality or continued existence of what each of us thinks of as “me”).

(b) Through (mostly) funny films (i.e., playfully).

Of course, these answers beg a third question: why?

In terms of existentialism, the answer to this question is simple: why not?

Contemporary philosopher, best-selling author and public atheist Alain de Botton – in an interview with Krista Tippett, herself the 2013 recipient of the National Humanities Medal at the White House for her “thoughtful delving into the mysteries of human existence” – has lamented that his personal experience has not enabled him to embrace any religious tradition. This philosopher freely confesses that as an atheist he does not oppose religion, but rather envies those who are religious, because he finds that secular education has strayed from what, according to him, religion has always rightly recognized as of primary importance. In explanation, Messr. de Botton states that most high schools and colleges – public and private – despite what they might say in their admissions literature, dedicate their time almost exclusively to teaching topics that any student with an adequate elementary foundation could and largely does learn on their own, the cost of which is that they then spend precious little time on or even outright ignore the truly difficult questions of identity, friendship, family, rites of passage, and the handling of personal tragedy – including the ultimate “tragedy” of death, whether that death be our own or that of someone we love. Messr. de Botton’s personal and professional lament is therefore that – as people have abandoned their traditional religious institutions – these subjects have also been left out of how our schools – those institutions that do remain – prepare the young. The philosopher laughs at the irony: we act as if marriage, death, raising children and similar subjects are either easy or unnecessary topics, while calculus and the like alone are what are truly difficult, demanded by life, and therefore deserving of dedicated instruction.

For educators and therapists working with young people in recovery, the fallacy of such an approach – its absolute inversion of what we know to be true – is painfully obvious.

Thus the answer to “why existentialism” is equally obvious, and just inverts the question:
knowing what we do, why wouldn’t we teach a course exploring existentialism?

Consequently, the only question that really remains is “why through (mostly) funny films”?

The easy responses are:

film because it resonates with more young people than reading; is short enough of an art form to explore several over the course of an academic year, each selected for how it resonates with a particular existential question or concept; and yet is also an art form with a long enough narrative structure and sufficient potential for character development to enable a rich conversation.
funny because it’s harder to capture flies with vinegar than honey.

There are other, equally potent reasons for exploring existentialism through (mostly) funny films; however, those reasons are best understood by explaining why this course doesn’t explore its existential questions by other, more traditional means.

For example, there is a rich history of fine children’s movies that respond to life’s questions and are enjoyed by all ages. However, despite much to commend them, these movies are not optimal for our purpose of working with individuals in adolescence and early adulthood. This is because these films, arguably by necessity, cut up their philosophical food into easily digestible moral lessons for younger audiences still in need of spoon feeding. The problem with using this approach for adolescents and early adults is that, as we grow older, we tend to only embody that with which we have had to wrestle in order to understand – in other words, we appreciate most the meal that we have had a hand in preparing, especially those whose ingredients we have hunted and harvested ourselves. Fortunately, existential questions are also essential questions, and as such they appear naturally and frequently in films never formally intended to explore such issues, the same way existential questions frequently intrude unbidden into our actual lives. Therefore, although not a perfect surrogate for real life experience, the process of discovering and exploring these questions through films in which all the answers aren’t laid out for us increases the likelihood that we will make their life lessons our own.

Conversely, young people in recovery are often found to have grown up knowing and loving every song and string of dialogue from the major Disney cartoons, or the ins and outs of all the hero-quests from Star Wars to Harry Potter and beyond, yet, despite this familiarity, deeper discussion and personal reflection reveals that they have either forgotten, taken for granted, or simply set aside the more profound meanings of these movies. Although they’ve savored their flickering images on the screen and swallowed their stories whole, it’s as if these films’ – often wonderful – life lessons have been made so palatable that these young people never even tasted them on the way down. Consequently, many teachers and students advocate for meatier fare, “true-to-life” dramas whose fictional or non-fictional characters and situations are serious enough to choke on. However, these film suggestions are also suboptimal. The problem with fictional yet “true-to-life” drama will be examined later in the context of prescribing contemporary literature for these students. The two-fold problem with prescribing non-fictional characters and events will be examined now.

First, for these students, even the finest of films can be alienating: young people in recovery are often literal minded and also frequently feel – however incorrectly – that they are unique in their problems. As such, they would ascribe to Tolstoy’s aphorism from the opening of Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Thus the initial risk in using dramas based on real characters or events is that students will have a knee-jerk response of “that isn’t me.” Whether this response comes in the form of an active resistance or simply a passive failure to identify with the medium doesn’t matter; either scenario is sufficient to preclude the existential exploration we want to engage.

Second, although an instructor may counter that confronting these students with extraordinary real life situations and/or individuals is precisely the point, “the conquering hero” narrative that is most frequently championed in this context can prove more problematic than inspirational. To understand why, let us consider the case of the recently canonized Catholic saint and social activist Dorothy Day. Day recognized the ironic flaw in the "conquering hero as inspiration" narrative when she pleaded before her death that she never be canonized – that she never be made a saint – because then people would forget about all the bad things she had done, how human she really was, how much she was like each one of us. Day's concern was that when this happens people feel they are excused on account of this unrealistic portrait (and unattainable example) from trying to do their own radical good in the world. Of course, having passed away in 1980, Day may not have come to fully realize how much a post-Watergate America and a post-9/11 world would yield a further problem with holding up heroes to audiences who feel decidedly unheroic: here in the 21st century we love to tear our heroes down, re-casting even Superman as a possible villain, all human heroes naturally suspect, perhaps especially to young people for whom it is age appropriate to question authority.

Which by the process of elimination brings us to dramatic fiction. This we will discuss in the context of literature, for the critiques here apply equally well to film, and it is in literature classes – if anywhere – that schools most often seek to address existential questions. Alain de Botton’s accusations at the outset of this introduction notwithstanding, schools are aware of the crises common to many young people, and young people with a history of addictive behavior in particular. In this context, as well as the constraints of their classes and what many school districts conservatively interpret the First Amendment to allow in terms of "moralistic" texts, most literature teachers turn to reading the classics as a simultaneously implicit and automatic remedy. They are, after all, classics for a reason. Meanwhile, more therapeutically minded teachers may seek to replace such standard fare with more contemporary works populated by characters who struggle with issues similar to those of their readers. But however well-intentioned, both approaches are problematic.

First, although it should not be the case, the classics – even with the most universal of literature taught by the most ardent of instructors – often fall prey in the minds of young people, particularly those in recovery, to the literal-minded alienation already discussed above, as well as the distrust or outright denouncement of heroes. However, a caveat should be mentioned here: many students in recovery don’t fit that population’s stereotype of being academically behind or belligerent. Many students, particularly those from families at the top of the socio-economic ladder, begin their addictive behaviors in a maladaptive effort to excel, not escape, from the academic (and implied future professional) pressures society places upon them. Such students frequently are among the best of the best at dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of the traditional curriculum; however, such success is misleading. These students embrace those i’s and t’s precisely for their ability to distract them from classic works’ greater, existentially challenging meanings. Thus we have uncovered a second problem with simply assigning the classics to engage students: conscientious grade-seekers in today’s over-scheduled academic environments are not rewarded for taking time out for thoughtful self-reflection; however, students are rewarded for the superficial pre-occupation with grades that is often commensurate with the unrelenting self-criticism and quest for perfection characteristic of being an individual in recovery (particularly for students with a history of eating disorders and other forms of self-harm). Thus prescribing the “expected reading” in which everyone else in their class year is engaged can initiate a knee-jerk response from these students that (i) leave both them and their teachers self-satisfied because of the high grades achieved, and yet, ironically, (ii) only perpetuates the students’ more existential problems, because to achieve those grades these students feel both compelled to and rewarded for failing to engage with a classic text’s inherent therapeutic power.

In other words, the student is not only left unchanged by the reading, but feels validated for once again having avoided a process that might have led them toward change.

Doubly unfortunate, though, is that the literature typically assigned as an alternative to the classics fares no better.

Specifically, when more contemporary dramatic works populated by characters who struggle with issues similar to those of the reader are assigned – but that reader is still engaged in the studied avoidance of their emotional self, precluding empathy for others, reflection on their own thought processes, and the cultivation of a self-actualized life – instead of providing its intended illumination, such literature becomes voyeuristic fodder for those students’ alternately narcissistic and hypercritical gaze. Students and teachers may feel self-satisfied that – unlike the classics, which would have been mostly skipped or skimmed in favor of scouring their synopses and analyses online – in this case the assigned text will have been actually read and genuinely enjoyed. However, the nature of these students’ process for reading and enjoying these texts will have only – and once again ironically – perpetuated their existential problems.

Why?

First, the students will not have been challenged to become more engaged with the world beyond the disorder with which they have historically struggled.

Second, not having gained sufficient distance from that narrowly circumscribed world, neither will they have been enabled to become any more insightful about that disorder.

In other words, young people in recovery will tend to focus on how a book’s activities and events mirror their own present or relatively recent life as opposed to how the author’s insights and acquired wisdom may have come to contradict it.

Consequently, as with the classic texts, the student is not only left unchanged by the reading, but feels validated for once again having avoided a process that might have led them toward change.

Nor can we completely blame them; both the classic and contemporary literature assigned by high school English curricula are oddly crowded with tragedies centered around problematic parent-child relationships that are never or only negatively resolved: Death of a Salesman, The Bluest Eye, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Oedipus Rex, and Huckleberry Finn are only a few examples of those assigned from school districts around the country over the course of a single academic year to students at one treatment facility. For students in recovery these assignments can give an exaggerated sense of the frequency and degree of family dysfunction, lending a further (defeatist, acquiescent) sense of normalcy and intractability to their own situation.

Thus, what are we left with?

(Mostly) funny films.

These films are optimal for our purpose because comic irony is by design disarming and surreptitious, sneaking in on us between chuckles and against our better judgment to confront us with questions that we would rather not contemplate. By the time we do realize what we’ve allowed ourselves to be sucked into, it’s too late: we’re already bought in, identifying with the actors’ “every person” characters on the screen before us, almost no matter how surreal their situation, as in the example below.

Dr. Jules Hilbert: Hell Harold, you could just eat nothing but pancakes if you wanted.

Harold Crick: What is wrong with you? I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?

Dr. Jules Hilbert: Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes.

From the film, Stranger than Fiction (Lesson 4)

IN CONCLUSION, here are a few less philosophical points about this course to keep in mind before launching into the lesson plans. These points may have been implied, but were not covered explicitly in the Design, Grading Rubric, and other introductory material:

This is not a class to teach existential philosophy, let alone the history of existential philosophy, but to get students – through the Socratic method – to philosophize about their own existence.
Neither is this a film class. There are arguably better films if one was studying either cinematic history or technique, but that is not the point. Unlike traditional high school and college literature or film classes, in this course the works of art are a means, not an end. The point is to get students to “commit philosophy”. Many films’ content could be relevant to this activity, but the movies herein were also chosen because they were: (a) generally popular/accessible, enabling students to focus on philosophizing, not struggling to understand a challenging movie; (b) not written to do the philosophizing for its audience (as, for example, a film like The Matrix); (c) at least ten years old at the time this curriculum was written (with one exception) in order to decrease the likelihood that students would have already seen or been familiar with a movie, and also to provide the author a greater opportunity to assess each film’s capacity to remain relevant and not distract students by being “dated”.
The lesson plans refer to a “facilitator” and not a “professor/teacher” for a reason. This course is less about professing or teaching than keeping students engaged with a constant barrage of questions. Whatever truth exists, it won’t matter to these students if they do not believe that truth to be their own, arrived at on their own accord. Furthermore, and of particular relevance to non-traditional high school and therapeutic settings in which this course may be offered, one need not be a formal “professor/teacher” to facilitate this course; therapists, care coordinators, and other suitable and suitably motivated staff well versed in the course content will prove equally appropriate.

Appendix II: Original Course Outline, Design Statement, and Grading Rubric

From the Curriculum/Syllabus "Laughing at Life: Exploring Existential Questions through (mostly) Funny Films"

Appendix III: Original Lesson Plan

Groundhog Day Original Lesson Plan

Appendix IV: Full Curriculum Original Final Exam Options

The PDF below provides the original, full year "Laughing at Life" curriculum's 5 final exam options.

Please note that this course was originally designed for students of Newport Academy (see "Overview"), and the films selected, although meeting all the criteria stated in Appendix I, are consequently also reflective of the super-majority of that school's student population.

Thus, for many facilitators, assignment of exam option 3 and incorporation of those students' productions into subsequent iterations of the course may be optimal, as it would broaden the cultural relevance of its materials both for the students immediately given that assignment, as well as their later peers who would be the subsquent beneficiaries of their efforts.

Laughing at Life - Full Curriculum's Final Exam Options

Laughing at Life

Exploring Existential Questions through (mostly) Funny Films: Lesson 2 of 14: Groundhog Day

Learning Module

Abstract

Keywords

Overview

Intended Learning Outcomes

Update 1: Introducing our essential question and a groundhog

For the Student

For the Facilitator

Update 2: Instinct, Habit, and Ritual

For the Student

For the Facilitator

Update 3: The Movie

For the Student

For the Facilitator

Update 4: Phil Connor's Existential Journey

For the Student

For the Facilitator

Update 5: Work 1 assignment & instructions

For the Student

For the Facilitator

Update 6: Re-visiting Groundhog Day's essential existential question

For the Student

For the Facilitator

Update 7A: Work 2 assignment & instructions (option 1)

For the Student

For the Facilitator

Update 7B: Work 2 assignment & instructions (option 2)

For the Student

For the Facilitator

Update 7C: Work 2 assignment & instructions (option 3)

For the Student

For the Facilitator

Update 7D: Work 2 assignment & instructions (option 4)

For the Student

For the Facilitator

Update 7E: Work 2 assignment & instructions (option 5)

References

Appendices

Appendix I: Statement of Purpose

Appendix II: Original Course Outline, Design Statement, and Grading Rubric

Appendix III: Original Lesson Plan

Appendix IV: Full Curriculum Original Final Exam Options