Oftentimes, a text from an English course far outlives its lifespan in the classroom. After reading, analyzing, and relating to a novel, students bring what they’ve learned with them, reflecting on the story for years to come.
In English 8, The Outsiders is one of those texts.
Written by S.E. Hinton, who began the novel when she was just 15, The Outsiders explores class, friendship, loyalty, and the challenges of understanding people whose lives look different from our own. As students engage with the text, they consider how these themes connect to their own experiences and the dynamics they observe around them.
‘The Outsiders’ encourages 8th graders to reflect on their own social selves and to observe the social dynamics among their peers more thoughtfully. It also invites them to ask some important questions: What makes someone a good person? How much agency do we have in our circumstances—and does that control depend on our privilege?
Kathleen Kosberg, Middle School English
To expand upon their inquiry into the novel, students were faced with a creative challenge: curating music for a film adaptation of the novel. After selecting a scene and identifying an appropriate musical accompaniment, students had to build a case to support their suggestion, identifying connections between the scene and their chosen song’s lyrics, emotional impact, and themes.
“I tried to find a scene that really resonated with me, that I really felt an emotional connection with,” shared Owen Littlefield ’31. “From that point, I had to find a song that also expressed the same theme and meaning.”
Ellery Harper ’31 chose to focus on a character’s death scene, a passage that took on a new meaning when she returned to the chapter. She connected her reading to “Cigarette Smoke” by Olivia Rodrigo, finding parallels between the novel’s recurring imagery of smoke and the song’s exploration of grief, memory, and healing.
The more I looked into the scene and read the chapter again and again, I was able to focus on the small details that mean a lot. Connecting that scene to a song made me think about how this stuff can actually happen.
Ellery Harper '31
Each student approached the assignment in a different way. Owen chose “Winter” from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, using an instrumental piece to explore how music can convey a theme without lyrics to guide the listener’s interpretation. Eva Bachman ’31 leveraged Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” to explore a character’s grief.
After students selected a song, they translated their interpretations into a visual design for a record cover. This design challenge gave students another way to communicate the meaning of their chosen scene, using visual expression to explore symbolism, theme, and tone. Each record jacket—housing songs ranging from Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill” to The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”—became a visual representation of the thematic elements students explored.
“My favorite part of the assignment was definitely decorating the record cover,” shared Eva Bachman ’31. “It was really fun to think about what the song might look like relative to the scene and how I might convey that vibe.”
This project asks students to pitch a creative choice to an audience, thus communicating verbally and and visually. When they review each other’s final products, they have the opportunity to celebrate and praise one another for their inspired choices.
Kathleen Kosberg, Middle School English
By connecting literature to music and design, students had the opportunity to revisit The Outsiders from new perspectives. The assignment challenged the class to look closely at the novel, drawing new conclusions and defending their arguments through writing.