English Confronting Modernity: Becoming Citizens of the World: Troubling Truth

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Troubling Truth

At this point, students have read through chapter eight of Tree Girl, which means they are bearing witness, as Felman in Testimony might say, by "listening" to Gabi's narratorial account of the aftermath of the massacre in her canton and her 200 kilometer journey to a refugee camp in Mexico.

We started class today by going to tables in the library or cafeteria to have small book discussions. One of the learning goals is to Speak about Reading and to practice "building on ideas" of others. Students selected classmates to work with, and I provided a rubric to help set goals for the discussion -- listening with postiive body language and eye contact, building on others' ideas when you speak, using the book to clarify, and noticing the great ideas that members contribute. Students did a self and peer assessment of how it went.

Students wrote comments about what they discovered during their discussions with the help of their peers. Here are a few comments:

We re-read the part where Antonio died. It was really sad, but we wanted to read it together one more time.
One student helped me understand this history of land ownership between the Latinos and Indios.
It was helpful to go back and figure out how much time has passed. This all happened so quickly.
We are not sure who are the "bad" guys in this -- both the soldiers and guerrillas seem "bad."
I can't believe this is based on a true story.

The next day, I will read these comments to the class to point out conversation can answer questions, but it also opens spaces for more question. I also want to use a little class time to talk about what went well in the small group discussion: Do we work well together? Do we trust each other? Do we share our knowledge to help others?

After a discussion of the book thus far, we will talk about the genre "historical fiction" briefly before turning to the "documentary," Discovering Dominga." Students are realizing what it means for fiction to be "based on a true story" and how the documentary has both real footage and re-enactments. Understanding Rio Negro is just one example of 240 villages that were scorched in a two-year period and that there are at least 75 mass graves across Guatemala complicates the novel for students. Only Rio Negro was building a dam, which the government used as an excuse for killing the Maya there, but the government did make a common accusation that the Maya were "subversives." The other issue complicating students' understanding of global issues is that the "good guy/bad guy" binary is being troubled. The Maya civil patrolmen that the government enlisted to monitor their own villages was "responsible" for some of the massacres in Rio Negro, so students are asking questions about guilt. Who is right? Which stories are true? Can we believe the novel? Is it any more or less truth that the documentary? What is our responsibility as readers or listeners?

We finished Discovering Dominga -- what came out of this second part of the short documentary was the way the survivors worked together to seek answers and work towards justice for government's actions. As a the poorest members of the society, they were able to bring about awareness and justice by working together: this is the message of cooperation.

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Re-imagining the English Classroom

This unit is an example of what English teachers can do to explore global issues of social justice through reading and writing. This is specifically designed using eighth grade Common Core Standards, but the units are appropriate for middle through high school students. The essential question that began this blog is this: How have the Maya responded to signs of change, and what can the Maya teach us about tradition, cooperation, and democracy? However, it expanded to other units that also seek to find the lessons of modernity -- or the belief that knowledge, the economy, technology and even our selves are capable of never-ending improvement. That said, our work is to uncover the darker side of such progress, which is also complex and shows how we are implicated in the lives of people all over the world. The format of these units is mostly inquiry-based, but we hold onto the core of our discipline, which is narrative. History is a narrative just as stories are, so we need to see any story as having gaps that prompt questions and further inquiry.

For the Maya unit, students will learn about cooperation through inquiry by beginning with a central text, developing comprehension and literary analysis skills while reading the central text, and then filling in the narrative gaps with additional inquiry researching a variety of genres. The summative assessment will enact this principle by presenting their research through multiple genres and then sharing their findings in a oral presentation and gallery walk. I try variations of this with each unit.

1. Thus, the first learning goal is to understand that knowledge is constructed by and through multiple sources. For this reason, we will do fishbowl and socratic seminars throughout the 3 weeks . The summative writing and speaking assessment is a multigenre project (see Romano’s Blending Genre, Altering Style or many websites) that synthesizes various sources to answer our essential question using multiple genres. Students are free to select from a variety of topics.

2. The second goal is to consider what different genres do to help us understand Maya experiences; thus, students will be able to examine the structure, authorial language, and authenticity of historical fiction and testimonio and to analyze what impact each has on the reader’s experience.In reading various texts, students will practice comprehension skills, identify and analyze literary devices, and trace the theme of cooperation. The summative reading assessment is a written assessment about figurative language, vocabulary in context, dialogue, and genre.

3.The third goal is to enact inclusivity, participation and critical engagement -- pillars of thick democracy. The texts in this unit captures the resilience of people and the value of cooperation. By focusing on Maya genocide of the early 1980s and exploring their culture, American students can learn the true meaning of cooperation and gain a greater sense of democratic living while also celebrating the resilience of a people. We will see how the Maya maintain their cultural foundation while making modern adaptation.

The novel, Tree Girl, is the central text, so the study guide here follows this book chapter by chapter indicating places for additional inquiry. Students will do inquiry during workshop time and keep notes in their research journals. The testimonio of I, Rigoberta Menchu, and numerous documentary and other media resources capture the social structures that created oppression in Guatemala and the mechanisms people used to resist and maintain traditions such as coops for farming and weaving and integrating Catholicism with indigenous religion. The two books are also a source of comparison as we think about how we learn about history.

As we see in Grandin's book, "Repression severed alliances between reforming elites and popular classes, disaggregated powerful collective movements into individual survival strategies, extracted leaders from their communities, and redefined the relationship between human beings and society" (196). However, individuals, especially activists like Rigoberta Menchu, while extracted did not remain isolated. Out of such manifestations grew a new way of thinking that resisted oppression –granito de arena. This metaphor for cooperation is a powerful message for any democratic society and is particularly relevant for developing classroom ethos. Guatemala advanced democracy not through autonomy or isolated freedom but rather a "collective action laid bare the social foundations of self" (181). This, I think, is what is worth knowing and teaching in our schools; this notion of democracy is worth contemplating, and so this unit attempts to explore these notions by using stories as points of access for these young thinkers.

Ganito de arena – a humble phrase that says “ I alone can’t change things. But I can HELP to change things." It’s a collective concept of change! It signifies a process that change can take many forms. It comes through struggle that unites collective rights and individual rights. What I give is only a tiny contribution (as with all the people we will meet in this unit). There are no heroes, but when the hand of destiny touches you, you have to act – you don’t have a choice.

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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Troubling Truth

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