TheJill Carroll Story (A Think)

This morning when I was looking for something to write about I came across the series of articles written by Jill Carroll and Peter Grier, at the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) website. Jill Carroll was in Iraq working as a freelancer for CSM when she was taken captive by the Mujahadeen. I found the entire series of articles well written and informative - definitely worth a read. I might even assign it as a series of articles for high school students to read. I could easily have chosen any one of dozens of paragraphs to quote, but here's the one I did choose:

The gunmen ran at us. A whisper exploded from me into a scream, "No, no, NO!" as I tried to get out. The door closed on my right ankle as someone shoved me back in, pushing so hard that the right lens of my glasses popped out. Through the crack in the door - before the intruder slammed it - I saw the last moment of Alan's life.

Alan was Jill Carroll's interpreter with whom she had grown very close. In the article she explains that even while she feels guilty for Alan's death, she had to push this from her mind during her captivity, or she might not have made it.

Lesson Ideas:
1. Our students often complain that they are asked to work too hard and don't want to exert great efforts on their papers or other work. At the same time, we often see newspaper articles and television broadcasts as finished products. We sometimes don't think about the effort that went into producing these forms of communication. Jill was kidnapped in the process of writing a story. Present your students with a newspaper article or television clip and ask them to make a list of ten things that the author or producer had to do in order to develop the finished product.
2. Ask students if they think news is important enough for a reporter to risk his/her life to write a story. Encourage them to support their opinions. Ask them to consider what value a news story has beyond quelching curiousity. How do news stories promote democratic processes?
3. Jill discusses interactions with her captives throughout the article. If you set aside the fact that she was kidnapped and held against her wishes and her interpreter was killed, which I recognize is very difficult to do, she was treated fairly well. She was not beaten and she was fed. In several places, she describes the kind of meals she was given as those reserved for an honored guest. Ask students to consider why horrible people who murder and kidnap might otherwise treat a captive well. You might ask them to pretend that they are the inner thoughts of Jill's kidnappers, what are their thoughts?
4. If you ask your students to read the entire series of articles, you might ask them to draw a diagram explaining Jill's captivity.