The ninth grade English classes are in the midst of reading Fahrenheit 451 and have an interesting project on their hands:

Fahrenheit 451 is a novel about a future dystopian society where books are banned and firemen, instead of extinguishing fires, ignite them. In light of this interesting take on the future of our world, the freshman English teachers came up with a project to harness student creativity.  In small groups, students were required to sit down and create a futuristic version of the United States. This assignment gave students an idea of what it’s like to create a fully functioning country from the ground up. Mr. Hurst thought this was a valuable assignment for the students and a good opportunity for them to use their creativity. “They got to create their own society where they had to think everything through… they had to figure out what to do for money and laws and had to find ways to get information out to their citizens,” Hurst said. Like most reading projects, the concluding assignment for the unit will be an essay, but leading up to it, the department likes to include some more involved projects for students.