Discussion, man. Sometimes we nail it, sometimes it falls flat. Today the eleventh grade tackled a tricky subject: the extent to which the world that a writer creates in his piece of fiction is believable and what details allow us to see even bizarre phenomena as credible in the world the writer has created. One class did absolutely splendidly, the other class lagged significantly.
We listened to the opening of this This American Life segment
which talks about the importance of using details when creating fantasy worlds. The world of chapter nine in Things Fall Apart while not actually fantastical, presents several scenes which strain credulity.
There is the medicine man, who, in an effort to rid a body of an evil spirit, "brought out a short razor from the goatskin bag slung from is left shoulder and began to mutilate the child. Then he took it away to bury in the Evil Forest, holding it by the ankle and dragging it on the ground behind him. After such treatment it would think twice before coming again, unless it was on of the stubborn ones who returned, carrying the stamp of their mutilation -- a missing finger or perhaps a dark line where the medicine man's razor had cut it."
We also get details about one of Ekwefi's former children. A "man told [Okonkwo] that the child was an ogbanji, one of those wicked children who, when they died, entered their mothers' wombs to be born again." Okonkwo says of his wife, "Let her go and stay with her people. In that way she will elude her wicked tormentor and break its evil cycle of birth and death."
Achebe heaps a lot on his readers in this chapter, and I wanted students to consider whether he had sufficiently prepared us for this induction into the superstitious beliefs surrounding death in Umuofia. Do we know enough about the Igbo people that we can orient ourselves in this world so foreign from our own?
Students found their own bizarre moments in chapter nine, then decided in pairs whether they could contextualise them based on details Achebe had previously given. Then a wonderful thing happened. Thanks to comments from Ameer, they also started comparing the level of normalcy in Umuofia to the level of normalcy in their Arab culture. Perhaps we don't mutilate dead children, Ameer conceded, but we use similarly random ways of deciding a woman's value, and we give babies names that we hope will ward off evil later in their lives." Others chimed in with comparisons of "other" and "familiar" behaviour. It was fascinating to see them examine to where they could say "Ah, yes, I can relate to that practice in some way," and where they said "No, that is completely foreign and impossible for me to understand."
The second class never gained momentum about looking properly at the book, and so the discussion never had the grounding in the text that the first class did. The second class is more prone to being off task when doing pair or group work. Next time I would have given, only to that class, specific paragraphs to analyse in chapter 9, to keep them on task.
___________
Later, the twelfth graders nailed an activity about identifying different uses of the conventions of drama. We looked at key moments in The Doctor's Dilemma and they identified how staging, props, costumes, and set influenced the audience's understanding of the action.
In this scene, the artist Louis offers Sir Walpole a pawn ticket, all that's left of the cigarette case Walpole lent Louis a few days before. "Was that yours? I wondered whose it was." says Louis disingenuously.
Those who worked with this photo took note of how static and child-like all the doctors look in the seats that Louis has deliberately placed them in. As a class we looked at how he has set them up on his model's stage, and he, next to his brushes, is set to make a drawing, dare we say caricature, of them. In fact that's exactly what he does in this scene - make them look ridiculous and silly for their moralising, and high and mighty attitudes.
In this image, Louis is dying of TB, giving a final speech, while the newspaper man takes (inaccurate) notes about his last words and wishes. Jennifer is disconsolate and BB is moved to tears. Shams made a brilliant comment when I asked her what effect the presence of the newspaper man had on the scene. She pointed out that he is writing the story about the man Louis, his life, his feelings, his wishes for his wife - a human interest story that will captivate his readers. That story contrasts with the "research paper" which BB is so keen to write about Louis's confounding medical case (BB has no idea why the cure has failed). BB cares little for the human side of the story, while the newspaper man indicates that general society doesn't care about the cold science, but is interested in the man himself.
Next week we move onto the Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster, which Monica will join us on. I can't wait! Also, everyone in the class except one student is going to see Hamlet when performed at Ashtar theatre at the end of the month. I picked up the tickets yesterday.
We listened to the opening of this This American Life segment
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/566/the-land-of-make-believe
which talks about the importance of using details when creating fantasy worlds. The world of chapter nine in Things Fall Apart while not actually fantastical, presents several scenes which strain credulity.
There is the medicine man, who, in an effort to rid a body of an evil spirit, "brought out a short razor from the goatskin bag slung from is left shoulder and began to mutilate the child. Then he took it away to bury in the Evil Forest, holding it by the ankle and dragging it on the ground behind him. After such treatment it would think twice before coming again, unless it was on of the stubborn ones who returned, carrying the stamp of their mutilation -- a missing finger or perhaps a dark line where the medicine man's razor had cut it."
We also get details about one of Ekwefi's former children. A "man told [Okonkwo] that the child was an ogbanji, one of those wicked children who, when they died, entered their mothers' wombs to be born again." Okonkwo says of his wife, "Let her go and stay with her people. In that way she will elude her wicked tormentor and break its evil cycle of birth and death."
Achebe heaps a lot on his readers in this chapter, and I wanted students to consider whether he had sufficiently prepared us for this induction into the superstitious beliefs surrounding death in Umuofia. Do we know enough about the Igbo people that we can orient ourselves in this world so foreign from our own?
Students found their own bizarre moments in chapter nine, then decided in pairs whether they could contextualise them based on details Achebe had previously given. Then a wonderful thing happened. Thanks to comments from Ameer, they also started comparing the level of normalcy in Umuofia to the level of normalcy in their Arab culture. Perhaps we don't mutilate dead children, Ameer conceded, but we use similarly random ways of deciding a woman's value, and we give babies names that we hope will ward off evil later in their lives." Others chimed in with comparisons of "other" and "familiar" behaviour. It was fascinating to see them examine to where they could say "Ah, yes, I can relate to that practice in some way," and where they said "No, that is completely foreign and impossible for me to understand."
The second class never gained momentum about looking properly at the book, and so the discussion never had the grounding in the text that the first class did. The second class is more prone to being off task when doing pair or group work. Next time I would have given, only to that class, specific paragraphs to analyse in chapter 9, to keep them on task.
___________
Later, the twelfth graders nailed an activity about identifying different uses of the conventions of drama. We looked at key moments in The Doctor's Dilemma and they identified how staging, props, costumes, and set influenced the audience's understanding of the action.
In this scene, the artist Louis offers Sir Walpole a pawn ticket, all that's left of the cigarette case Walpole lent Louis a few days before. "Was that yours? I wondered whose it was." says Louis disingenuously.
Those who worked with this photo took note of how static and child-like all the doctors look in the seats that Louis has deliberately placed them in. As a class we looked at how he has set them up on his model's stage, and he, next to his brushes, is set to make a drawing, dare we say caricature, of them. In fact that's exactly what he does in this scene - make them look ridiculous and silly for their moralising, and high and mighty attitudes.
In this image, Louis is dying of TB, giving a final speech, while the newspaper man takes (inaccurate) notes about his last words and wishes. Jennifer is disconsolate and BB is moved to tears. Shams made a brilliant comment when I asked her what effect the presence of the newspaper man had on the scene. She pointed out that he is writing the story about the man Louis, his life, his feelings, his wishes for his wife - a human interest story that will captivate his readers. That story contrasts with the "research paper" which BB is so keen to write about Louis's confounding medical case (BB has no idea why the cure has failed). BB cares little for the human side of the story, while the newspaper man indicates that general society doesn't care about the cold science, but is interested in the man himself.
Next week we move onto the Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster, which Monica will join us on. I can't wait! Also, everyone in the class except one student is going to see Hamlet when performed at Ashtar theatre at the end of the month. I picked up the tickets yesterday.
No comments:
Post a Comment