In previous installments, I've given details about an action research project I designed a few years ago. The first three weeks of the project went as planned, and I now include my notes from my observations of the class.
Week 1 of the study – The Study Begins
At the beginning of the workshop period for what was to be the beginning of the study, I instructed the students that this week's lab was going to be different from previous sessions – they would not be writing an essay, and they would not be handing in their work to me. Without revealing the source, I copied the first step of Jacobs' cubing technique and instructed the students to write a timeline of their lives, listing ten events which were important or significant to them. When asked what the purpose was, I explained that this list was going to be used in future assignments.
I began the lecture period by returning the first practice test and Formal Essay #3 to the students, and leading a discussion on some of the various grammar and vocabulary issues I had noticed were becoming common. The first lesson involved commonly substituted homophones – the difference between “to” and “too” has long been the bane of many a composition teacher, as well as confusion by writers regarding “your” and “you're.” “There,” “their,” and “they're” are also commonly misused at every level of composition. Difficulties in choosing between these words is not limited to ESL students; many native English speakers often use the wrong word.The class discussed possible reasons; the consensus seemed to be that most people make these mistakes because spellcheck programs do not spot them as errors.
I led the class in an impromptu exercise by first writing a sentence on the board which deliberately misused each of the words in question. I then asked volunteers from the class to identify mistakes and correct them. Upon finding an error, I would write every form of the word on the board, and ask the student to give a definition and a sentence it would be used in. I noticed at this point that none of the study participants spoke up; the discussion was led primarily by my native English speaking students. I also noticed that after this exercise, this error, at least involving these particular words, dropped sharply from all future essays.
It was at this point that I announced a change in the syllabus – rather than take a question from this week's chapter (the lesson was cause and effect), I wanted them to write an essay based on one of the experiences from the list they had just written up in the lab. I explained that at this point in the class, they had learned enough writing patterns and techniques to be able to use them in combination, and that I wanted to see them do just that. It was at this point that I listed the six elements of the “cubing” technique on the board, and explained to the students what each one meant.
The assignment, I explained to them, would be simple: I indicated that I wanted them to “cube” their paper – that is, use each of the six patterns listed (preferably in the order presented) to discuss the experience they were writing about. I asked if there were any questions; a few students requested clarification about specific parts of the cubing technique. On the whole, the students seemed puzzled by the sudden change, but happily anticipated what they perceived as a new, more interesting assignment. At the time, I noticed nothing distinctive about the study participants' reactions.
I then led the students through a discussion of the assigned readings from the text, although between the grammar discussion and the introduction to cubing, we only had time to discuss one of them in any sort of detail: Norman Cousins' “Who Killed Benny Paret?” The examination of cause and effect in the essay quickly led to a discussion of violence in sports (Benny Paret was a boxer who died in 1963, nine days after being knocked out in the ring), where I asked the students to consider whether sports have grown more or less violent in modern times. Except for Sarah, who talked about how the ancient Romans used to have people fight to the death, the study participants were largely silent, although towards the end of the class period, Carlos did mention being a fan of MMA (mixed martial arts), and asked if I was one as well. I said I was not.
Week 2 of the study – Went off-topic today; must remember to do that more often.
For this weeks lab work, I had the students go back to the list of important life events that they had written up in last weeks lab, and, in a review of last week's “Cause and Effect” theme, asked them to write a short essay explaining how one of those events affected them today. I gave them a brief reminder of the cubing technique which I wanted them to use for their upcoming essay (due next week), and suggested they use an abbreviated version for the lab work – choose only two of the six patterns specified in cubing, and apply them to the lab assignment.
During the lecture portion of the class, the writing theme of the week was “Comparison and Contrast,” and the text's example was a sample outline and essay comparing and contrasting Herman Melville's Moby-Dick to Jack London's The Sea-Wolf. Realizing that my students probably wouldn't be familiar enough with either of those stories for such a lesson to be effective, I prepared an alternate example in class – comparing the television show House to the literary character of Sherlock Holmes. House, is, of course, a popular television series, and a quick survey of the class indicated that the majority of the students were familiar with it, if not faithful watchers themselves. Although none of my students had ever read any of Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes stories, the character himself is ubiquitous enough in popular culture to be instantly recognizable – thanks in no small part to the recent Sherlock Holmes movie, where the titular character was played (surprisingly faithfully to the original, in my own opinion) by Robert Downey Jr. I was not disappointed; a show of hands indicated that many of the students had seen the movie, or at least were familiar with the character.
After explaining that the character of House was directly based on Sherlock Holmes, I used the two characters to demonstrate, in outline form, the differences between a subject by subject and a point by point comparison of the two characters – the whole time, prompting the students to answer questions about a hypothetical essay on such a topic: “What would your thesis be in such an essay?” “Which character should be discussed first in the essay?” “Would you want to start with their similarities, or their differences?”
I noticed that the study participants were more engaged and more eager to participate in the discussion than usual, asking questions and engaging both their fellow students and me in the discussion. Carlos had remarked that he had enjoyed the Robert Downey Jr. movie, and Paula admitted to being a fan of House. But what completely turned the class around was an offhand remark by Andrew, one of my native English speaking students: “I always thought Sherlock Holmes was a real person.” The remark drew some chuckles and comments from some classmates, nods of agreement from others. I then related a story I remembered reading a few years back: a poll of British students indicated that about 20% of them has also believed that Sherlock Holmes was a historic figure. More interesting, however, was that fact that the poll had shown that the same percentage – approximately 20% – of students believed that Winston Churchill was not a historical figure, but instead a fictional character created by the British government to keep people's spirits up during WWII. (A quick show of hands indicated that the majority of the class knew who Winston Churchill was; a quick explanation took care of the others). This led the class in a discussion, comparing and contrasting history with popular culture.
In my literature classes of previous years, I have often called on what I refer to as “Shamburg's Second Law of Literature: history, literature, and mythology are always connected and often confused.” To teach that lesson, I've taught students about various historical figures such as Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Paul Revere, and Betsy Ross, explaining that a lot of what we think of as history are actually literary creations – for example, Nobody in Christopher Columbus' time actually believed that the world was flat – that myth had long since been dispelled by the Ancient Greeks. However, because the American novelist Washington Irving wrote it into a biography of Columbus, it has long since been erroneously assumed to be history, and taught as such.
The “Laws of Literature” had been a fixture of my previous literature classes of years gone by, and I had not expected to use them in the College Composition course. On a personal note, I believe that it was this sudden venture into familiar territory, for myself as much as for the students, which prompted me to continue this discussion.
The examples mentioned led to a discussion comparing and contrasting the heroic tales of historic figures, and the actual history. More models were put on the board, and students – including my study participants – were more engaged than I had seen them since the beginning of the semester. Jacobs stresses the importance of making writing relevant to the students, and nowhere is that more relevant that in the fact that at no point in the class did we even mention the assigned readings that the text uses as examples of “Compare and Contrast” essays. Once I saw how engaged the class was, I chose to ignore the assigned readings for that week and keep on the topic that they had become interested in, while at the same time, occasionally alluding to them during slow points in the discussion with comments such as “you know, we probably should say something about that essay by Tannen that you read...” which would prompt the class into a whole new discussion on popular culture vs. history.
The reason is simple: although I had already decided to use this, and not the text, as an example of the “Compare and Contrast” format, the students believed this to be a distraction, and, as a group, were willing to work extra hard in order to keep me “distracted” and the class “off-topic.” Even from preschool, educators have taught their students through play, disguising lessons as games. This method is effective at every level of education. It's been one of my maxims of teaching experience that students will go to more effort to get around an assignment than to actually do it. The students were still playing a game, although many of them no doubt believed that they were “playing” me.
Week 3 – Mythology 101
In the lab tonight, I had the students review and apply the reading due that week, “Classification and Division,” by choosing from a list of topics, such as music, food, or movies, and naming their favorite types of each, while comparing and contrasting their choices. This was not only in line with Jacobs' strategy of keeping the writing relevant and personal to the students, but also useful as comparison and contrast was the topic of a previous lesson. It has been my goal for the course to avoid teaching the various writing strategies separately (as the text does), but to integrate them as much as possible.
Although some students (particularly those who came to the lab late, and required me to restate my directions) misunderstood my instructions and instead mentioned specific items instead of categories (discussing a particular movie instead of a genre such as “action movies,” for example), I accepted the assignments as they still fit the spirit, if not the letter, of the lab work.
I also took the time to collect their homework essays, which was their first assignment using the “cubing” technique discusses in class. I was quite disappointed in the low turnover rate (only eight essays were handed in on time), but was assured by students that more essays would be forthcoming – either by hand or by email. This has been an ongoing issue with all my classes, and is an unfortunate trend among students at this particular community college. I shall have to stress the importance of handing in future work so that I have enough data for my study.
Realizing that last week's “off topic” discussion was one of the most productive I'd had with the class all semester, and crediting it in no small part with my own familiarity with the topic, I decided to continue it and make mythology the theme of this week's “Classification and Division” class. I began the class with a game I had used back in my high school teaching days: “Fact or Fiction?” I wrote a list of well known figures from popular culture on the board, and challenged the class, by vote, to determine which of the pop culture icons were actual historical people: Betty Crocker (fiction), Chef Boyardee (fact), Jose Cuervo (fact), Aunt Jemima (fiction), Ben and Jerry (fact). I noticed at the mention of Jose Cuervo, Carlos, having gained some measure of confidence, jokingly asked about two other famous alcohol-related names: Captain Morgan and Jack Daniel. I noticed that Carlos was interacting more with other students this week, and rather than dismiss his question as the efforts of a nascent class clown, straightly responded that yes, both characters were in fact real people – and advised the class not to become too familiar with either of them during their upcoming spring break (to their laughter).
The votes were even on most of the characters, although Betty Crocker stumped all but 2 students. I connected this to last week's discussion of characters such as Sherlock Holmes by pointing out how the stories of famous people often overshadow the facts, giving these characters the status of heroes. After leading the class in a group discussion of what a “hero” is, we settled on a definition of a hero as a role model, whose stories and adventures are supposed to serve as an example for others. I used this definition to lead the students into the topic of mythology, explaining that while myths could be classified in a number of different ways, what we had just been discussion was an example of what was called a “Heroic Myth,” defined as a story about a great person and their accomplishments. The class understood how stories about such people could grow over time, and, like the pop culture figures mentioned at the beginning of class, the story quickly overshadowed the fact.
Once again, I was on familiar ground – I had long used heroic tales and myths in world literature classes I had taught in previous years, and even once led a workshop on the topic at one of my previous schools. I had at this point begun to realize that in order to introduce the concepts that the course required to the students, it was necessary to do so within a context which I myself was familiar and comfortable with, perhaps more so than they were. The goal of this class became to teach the students about mythology, and in so doing, teach them how to take such a broad topic, classify and divide it into categories, and organize such categories as would be expected in academic literature.
Continuing with discussing heroes as role models, I broke the class into small groups and had each group come up with famous (real and fictional) heroes. For each name, I challenged each group with the question, “What was it about this person that makes them a role model?” As the groups named names from Greek Gods to comic-book superheroes, I decided it was time to move on to the next category.
Keeping the “Heroic Myth” definition on the board, I wrote in “Folk Myth” underneath it, and asked the students to think about fairy tales. As the named names such as “Cinderella,” or “Beauty and the Beast,” I pointed out that many of these tales (both made famous and ruined by Disney) fit the definition of the next category of myth: Stories about ordinary people which often serve to teach a lesson. After explaining that many fairy tales were originally cautionary (and often bloody) in nature, and have only recently been changed into more child-friendly versions (Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel all get eaten in their original stories), I asked the students (in their same groups) to explain what lessons could be learned from the main characters' (usually bad) examples. They noticed that many of these stories involved children getting punished for breaking some common-sense rule: “Don't talk to strangers,” or “don't go out alone after dark,” at which point they say how myths were useful as teaching tools.
It was at this point, unfortunately, that an announcement was made that the school would be closing early due to inclement weather (the ice storm outside was making travel treacherous). As such, I pointed to the board and demonstrated to them that we had taken a large topic (mythology) and had proceeded to organize it into categories to make it easier to discuss and understand. I let them go with the promise that the third and last category of myths – “Divine myths” would be discussed next week.
Before dismissing the class, I remarked that we had discussed quite a bit about the topic of heroes, and asked them who their own heroes were. Rather than hold the class beyond the closing time, I suggested that that question would be the topic for Formal Essay #5 (FE5), and quickly put the list of categories for “Cubing' on the board. I then quickly explained that I wanted them to “cube” their essay on heroes, just as they had cubed their previous essay on their own experiences. I asked if there were any questions (as usual, there were none), and dismissed an hour early.
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