Tag: English Teaching

• Modeling Lit Analysis with Audio

  In my neverending quest to find methods of modeling deep literary analysis with high transferability practice for students, I have recently started experimenting with some different lesson designs. In taking a cue from my STEM colleagues who rely on Khan Academy to do inverted lessons (when students learn the material independently and then teachers monitor the practice in class), I have started pre-recording my own guided analysis activities; then, in class, while students listen with headphones and answer questions about what they are learning, I can focus on what they are producing instead of on my delivery of the lesson. I like this format because it allows me to model for students what strong textual analysis looks like while also freeing up my focus and energy in class to focus exclusively on student understanding.

  There are a few criteria that guide this lesson format for me:

  1. Students need to have pre-read the text for homework. This includes completing their own annotations and thinking. If they didn’t complete the reading, they need to do so in class before they begin listening to the recording. I don’t spend a lot of time summarizing text or reading it for them on the recordings, so I need them to have a preliminary understanding of the text before they begin the analysis activity.
  2. Students can work at their own pace through the lesson, but they need to complete everything by the end of the period. While the recordings tend to be about ten minutes long, they are broken up by short questions throughout that they need to respond to before moving on. I make a companion worksheet for students to complete as they listen and cue them in the recording when to pause and answer questions. Their written answers allow me to assess in real time if students are understanding and pacing themselves well. If their response is accurate, I’ll silently give a check next to questions. If their response reveals some misunderstanding, I’ll ask the student to listen to a section of the recording again or do a quick reteach on the spot. In all, the lesson takes about 45-50 minutes for most students to complete.
  3. At the end of the activity, I ask students to synthesize what they have learned by responding to a longer written prompt. The prompt is frequently structured to push students’ thinking further than what they heard in any one part of the recording. This is vital because I still want students to be doing the intellectual heavy lifting; even though my analysis has raised the floor on how they might think about the text, I want them to use the interpretation I provide to go further than the clues I give them.

  In terms of preparation, it takes me about 45 minutes to write up a script for a ten-minute recording and then another 30 to record and make the corresponding worksheet. However, this prep time is invaluable in the classroom as it allows students to work at their own pace and I can focus all my energy in class on checking for their understanding (instead of delivering or guiding the lesson live).

  Overall, students like the format. I’ve asked for their feedback after each time I use this structure and it is generally positive.

  Here is an example of a full script I write for myself before recording.

  The materials for this lesson including the student worksheet, audio recording, and a magical realism reference sheet are available on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

  This is a recorded activity to guide you through an analysis of Meat, by Virgilio Piñera, a Cuban writer who uses magical realism. As you listen, follow along and annotate your text. At certain points in the recording I will ask you to pause the recording and answer the questions on your worksheet. Do not go ahead in the recording until you have answered the required question.

  Let’s get started.

  In Meat, by Virgilio Piñera, the characters are forced to go to extreme measures because they are starving. The solution they find is to cut off, cook, and eat parts of their own bodies. When I see something that obviously is magical realism, since it does not make sense in the real world, I immediately start asking myself: what point is the author trying to make by introducing this magical element? In Gabriel García Márquez’s story, Light is Like Water, the magical realism is both a tribute to the relationship between a grandfather and his grandchildren as well as a warning about the power of the imagination. So, with Meat, we have to ask ourselves as we read: what point is the author trying to communicate to us by using magical realism? Pause the recording here and answer question number one on your worksheet.

  The magical realism is introduced at the beginning of paragraph 2. Take a careful look at these first two sentences in your text as I read them aloud: “Only Mr. Ansaldo didn’t follow the order of the day. With great tranquility, he began to sharpen an enormous knife and then, dropping his pants to his knees, he cut a beautiful fillet from his left buttock.” In these sentences, the magical and the ordinary are treated the same. In fact, look at the words used to describe what Mr. Ansaldo is doing. I first notice the word “tranquility” – he is clearly calm as he takes a knife and cuts off a piece of his own back side. Find one other word in this sentence that seems odd to use as part of this description of Mr. Ansaldo’s actions and reflects how the magical and ordinary are treated the same. Pause the recording while you find the word and write it on your worksheet under number two.

  The author, Virgilio Piñera, plays with verbal irony throughout the story. I’ll point out and explain one example and then I want you to look at another example on your own. Look about half-way through paragraph 2. Find the short sentence that says: “The facts were laid bare.” This is the author’s idea of a joke. This expression: the facts were laid bare, usually means the facts are obvious. But in this context, the word “bare” has a second meaning. In the sentence before, Mr. Ansaldo drops his pants and exposes his bare backside to his neighbor. The author is playing with language, using this verbal irony to remind readers of the absurdity of the story. He doesn’t want us to take this story too seriously. Now it’s your turn. Go look at the first sentence in paragraph 6. How is this sentence an example of verbal irony and what is the author’s purpose for including this? Pause the recording while you respond to question 3.

  One of the most interesting elements of this text for me is the relationship between the characters and their bodies. In the real world, our bodies are our part of our identity; they are who we are. They also must remain healthy enough for us to continue living in them. But in this story, the characters’ bodies become objects. They actually become meat, and technically, this is true of our bodies as well. At the end of the day we are animals like all others. Let’s talk for a minute about this word: meat. The story was originally written in Spanish and given the Spanish title, “La Carne.” In Spanish, the word carne means both animal meat AND the flesh of people. But in English, we would never use the word meat to describe human skin as carne is used in Spanish. The translated title makes this story almost horrifying to imagine as English speakers because we associate the word meat with animals and food. But the Spanish title, “La Carne,” plays with the double meaning of the word in a more subtle way since it can mean either food or human flesh. This is a great example of how the connotation of words can change in different languages and different contexts. Pause the recording while you answer question 4 about the title of this story.

  Aside from becoming meat, the characters’ bodies also become objects in another way. They become food. While we would normally be disturbed by the idea of eating our own bodies, the author makes this act something to be celebrated. In paragraph 1, the bodies begin as objects of starvation and suffering and by paragraph 2, they are transformed into a resource of nourishment and energy. In paragraph 3, Mr. Ansaldo teaches his neighbors how to cut meat off of their own bodies. Re-read paragraph 3 to the bottom of page 99; then find two phrases from this section of text that celebrate the discovery that the characters can eat their own flesh. Pause the recording while you re-read and answer question 5 on your worksheet.

  It is important to note that the most critical aspect of magical realism used in this story is that cause and effect are subjective. Eating your own body would be painful. Moreover, it actually destroys your body. And this brings us to the main situational irony of the story. Mr. Ansaldo and his neighbors are starving to death. Although eating their bodies solves the problem of starvation, it creates an equally – if not moreso – complicated problem of no longer having a body. Either path results in death. Given the absurd logic of this situation, we have to ask ourselves, what point is the author trying to make by using this magical realism?

  Here are some of my theories. As you listen, record my thoughts on number 6 on your worksheet.

  Eating your own body gives you control over a desperate situation. Starvation is a slow and painful way to die. It is also a passive way to die – it happens to you. By eating their own bodies, the characters are able to take active control over their destiny. That said, they seem unconcerned that this choice still results in their death. Which leads me to my next theory.

  Eating your own body is not meant to be taken literally; instead it is symbolic. Since the characters so easily embrace the act of eating themselves and don’t appear to be crazy, the story actually is trying to deliver a message about how people make choices that end up harming themselves. We are not meant to interpret “eating” as literal eating but rather figurative or symbolic eating. For example, people might smoke cigarettes knowing the damage they can do to their lungs. By smoking, they are harming their health in a similar way that the characters in the story are destroying themselves. Pause the recording and answer question 7.

  For this final part of the recording, please follow along with number 8 on your worksheet and fill in the blanks as you hear them.

  Whenever we see magical realism in a text, we should always be asking ourselves: What point is the author trying to make? Magical realism often is used to highlight the irony of a situation. It also forces us to look at a situation in a new way because we see the magic that the characters in the story do not.

  This is the end of the recording. Please finish responding to the questions on your worksheet and then follow directions on the board.

   

• Another “crazy” woman

  “My mom gets crazy when I’m not doing well in school.” -14-year-old student

  This week I turned my class’s attention to the idea of critical theory and specifically the concept of reading a text with a feminist lens. While some may argue that middle school is too early to do this, I have increasingly found that critical theory adds nuance to students’ thinking by providing them an avenue through which they can interpret text. Simply asking students what they see in a text generates a broad range of response, some of which are more helpful at moving their thinking forward than others. While there are tasks that are appropriate for this open-ended approach, I find that students benefit from going through a text with an analytical framework and a distinct set of vocabulary through which they can explore, critique, and understand a text.

  We’re reading Antigone. Notably, I went back to using the Robert Fagles translation this year after two years trying Seamus Heaney’s. The Fagles translation, published in 1982, is replete with the pathos that I associate with Greek tragedy and students immediately draw comparisons to the more melodramatic telenovelas that some are more willing than others to admit they watch. Aside from the richness of the language, what I also like about Fagles’ Antigone is that it provides an accessible opportunity for students to see the gender dynamics that are inherent. As a Greek woman, Antigone acts out of a duty to her oikos. As a powerful Greek man, Creon is obsessed with the polis. The play is as much about the two characters as it is about restoring the balance to the oikos and polis of Thebes, both of which have been thrown into disarray as a result of the fate of Oedipus, the war between Polynices and Eteocles, and subsequently, Creon’s ill-fated inheritance of the city and denial of burial rites to Polynices. One of the ways Creon’s brand of hubris plays out in the story is that his objections to Antigone take on distinctively misogynist overtones.

  However, it was one of the more subtle examples of misogyny as opposition to Antigone that later provided an opportunity to challenge the casual misogyny that we all experience today. When Antigone is brought before Creon for the first time, the Chorus tries to make sense of the revelation that she is to blame for burying the body of Polynices and breaking Creon’s law (lines 417-424):

  Here is a dark sign from the gods —
  what to make of this? I know her,
  how can I deny it? That young girl’s Antigone!
  Wretched, child of a wretched father,
  Oedipus. Look, is it possible?
  They bring you in like a prisoner —
  why? did you break the king’s laws?
  Did they take you in some act of mad defiance?

  The subtle misogyny is easy to miss without an understanding of the historical and cultural context of describing woman as mad or hysterical. This is not a new phenomenon but rather one that is part of all patriarchal agrarian societies; it was the ancient Greeks, after all, who coined the term hysteria. We talked as a class about the inherent problem of assuming that Antigone is motivated solely by emotional rebellion; this assumption is rich with irony given the moral high ground on which Antigone stands at this moment in the play. It has always been the easiest dismissal of women to call them mad.

  But this point became most salient to one of my students outside of class later in the day. He approached me with concern about his grades and behavior. Since he is a strong student and earnest in his behavior most of the time, I asked why he was concerned. With the close of the quarter and upcoming parent conferences he said, “I want to be sure everything is good because my mom gets crazy when I’m not doing well in school.” It was a casual comment that I’m certain most 14 year old boys have said about their mothers at one time or another. Even though I know this student has a strong relationship with his mother, I knew instantly I had to point out his word choice. I asked, “Your mother loves you enough to want to make sure you’re successful in school, right?” He nodded. “But you’re a male who just called his mother’s expression of her love for you crazy.” His eyes immediately widened and he let out an audible gasp as he quickly realized the connection I was making.

  The moment was easy enough for me to point out given the relevance to the day’s earlier lesson. But it has since had me reflecting more on the casual misogyny that exists all around us and how it enters my own language. This student was mature and reflective enough to have realize his mistake. I am acutely aware of the disparity between how confident my male students use their voices in class and how silenced my female students can feel. While I actively try to create space for female voices and quieter voices, I realize more needs to be done on this front. A few thoughts that feel most salient to me:

  1. It’s not just about my actions to create a classroom where all students develop a strong sense of voice; I need to teach students to be aware of how their gender influences the way their voices are perceived and valued so that they can do this work for themselves.
  2. As a male teacher, I must model for my male students the ability to be silent for the express purpose of giving female voices space. Similarly, I must model how to disagree without dominating.
  3. It is inevitable that casual misogyny will come up in the classroom. Given this, I must be more aware of how I play a role in ensuring it does not go unaddressed.

  The student with whom I had this interaction was gracious and mature about my response to him. While I know it won’t always go that way, it gives me comfort to know that English class is doing exactly what I believe so strongly it has the power to do: reading good books makes us better at living our lives. The fact that it was a 2,500-year-old Greek tragedy that created an opportunity for this reflection to occur for my 14-year-old student and for me is what I most love about teaching English.