English Confronting Modernity: Becoming Citizens of the World: Distribution: Teens Teach

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Distribution: Teens Teach

The day of distributing our work is the day students really see the power of literacy and the joy of teaching others. Today, students presented their multigenre projects in two forms: first by sharing one genre as an oral presentation and second by making their project available to classmates in all their classes.

To prepare to present, I asked students to share their creative genre, but some chose their print media or informational genre. They practiced reading it for volume, clarity, pace, and body language (avoiding distracting gestures or verbal utterances). Listeners prepared by taking notes on the presentation quality and information. I gave students a small piece of paper. On one side was a rubric to increase awareness of effective presentation skills and on the other side was the celebration phrase "What you taught me today was..." Then, the presenter shared his or her selected piece to a small group while the group practiced "being a good audience member" (no walk, no talk, eye contact, attentive nodding,applause at the end). After the presentation, the audience members wrote what they learned on the celebration note. And finally, after each member of the small group presented and listened, they exchanged celebration notes.

The next step was to read projects in their entirety and to learn about other topics/research questions. I gave students a handout with three columns -- one for each multigenre project they read. Students chose any mulitgenre project from the sharing/teaching wall to read, and then they responded on the handout. I asked student to write 3 facts they learned, their favorite genre and why, and any additional questions that came up after reading the project. After students read and responded to several projects, I cut up the columns and distributed them to the writer/author/teacher of the project so that he/she could see, again, how their writing can both teach and bring joy to others.

We will post these projects on our Teens Teach: Global Participation Project website.

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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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Saturday, October 27, 2012

Distribution: Teens Teach

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