Serial Hyperbole

For nine weeks, I've been touting the podcast Serial, and people are finally starting to listen to me-- in fact, there's even a Slate Spoiler podcast about the podcast-- but while I'm proud to say that I was hip to this thing when it started, and let everyone know it, I certainly wasn't smart enough (or brave enough) to teach it to my students, but -- thanks to my friend Alec, who sent me a link to "Why I'm Teaching Serial Instead of Shakespeare" and double-thanks to a generous and altruistic English teacher (Michael Godsey) who provided lesson plans, hand-outs, and connections to the Common Core Standards-- I started teaching Serial on Friday . . . and though I'm not going to skip Hamlet, I will say this: I've never had a kid say to me, when I introduced a new book "now I know what I'm doing this weekend" but a bunch of kids stayed after class to ask me questions about the podcast (which I could barely answer, because this story is so complicated) and that's what one student said before she left the room (another student listened to seven episodes in one day before I even started teaching it . . . Sarah Koenig has invented a new genre of media, and created a masterpiece in one fell swoop).