What to do in a class with seven students?
There are few class plans I would feel comfortable plowing ahead with in a class as depleted as my last period twelfth grade class today. Typically, with such small numbers I would resort to unseen passage analysis for discussion. But today I had planned to listen to a radio production of All My Sons, the end of the second act.
It's the climate of the play at which point Chris learns that his father is guilty of supplying the army with faulty air plane parts, a sale that costs 21 pilots their lives when the parts malfunction mid flight, and for which his neighbour and partner took the fall and ended up behind bars. It's a difficult moment for everyone on stage: Chris, his father, his mother, who has known and concealed the truth for three years, and Chris's fiancee, who is also the daughter of the business partner who was jailed.
Here is the radio version:
https://beta.prx.org/stories/56778
After listening to the scene and discussing what we had heard, I had them stand up and create a line across the front of the classroom. At one end of the board I wrote "Agree" and on the other end "Disagree".
Then I posed statements and asked them to arrange themselves along the spectrum of agreement. This was remarkably effective. I've done the exercise before, but their responses in the barometer were better today than they ever have been. I hardly needed to call on people - they responded directly to each other and defended their positions. I had worked during my lunch break to come up with good statements (I always come back to Monica's enlightening point that posing the right question is the teacher's hardest task) and I took it as a sign of the success of the statements were polarising. Here are the statements I asked them to weigh in on:
Joe Keller has committed an unforgivable crime.
If George hadn’t arrived, conflict would have been avoided.
Mother is the more reasonable than Keller.
There are few class plans I would feel comfortable plowing ahead with in a class as depleted as my last period twelfth grade class today. Typically, with such small numbers I would resort to unseen passage analysis for discussion. But today I had planned to listen to a radio production of All My Sons, the end of the second act.
It's the climate of the play at which point Chris learns that his father is guilty of supplying the army with faulty air plane parts, a sale that costs 21 pilots their lives when the parts malfunction mid flight, and for which his neighbour and partner took the fall and ended up behind bars. It's a difficult moment for everyone on stage: Chris, his father, his mother, who has known and concealed the truth for three years, and Chris's fiancee, who is also the daughter of the business partner who was jailed.
Here is the radio version:
https://beta.prx.org/stories/56778
After listening to the scene and discussing what we had heard, I had them stand up and create a line across the front of the classroom. At one end of the board I wrote "Agree" and on the other end "Disagree".
Then I posed statements and asked them to arrange themselves along the spectrum of agreement. This was remarkably effective. I've done the exercise before, but their responses in the barometer were better today than they ever have been. I hardly needed to call on people - they responded directly to each other and defended their positions. I had worked during my lunch break to come up with good statements (I always come back to Monica's enlightening point that posing the right question is the teacher's hardest task) and I took it as a sign of the success of the statements were polarising. Here are the statements I asked them to weigh in on:
Joe Keller has committed an unforgivable crime.
If George hadn’t arrived, conflict would have been avoided.
Mother is the more reasonable than Keller.
I was glad A. defended Joe for the first statement, saying that he was acting in accordance with his values, which are his business and the legacy (money, business reputation) he'll be able to leave for his son. B. added that Joe would basically have been killing himself if he had let the business be ruined by recalling the parts.
M. argued that his crime was forgivable because it happened so long ago. I wanted someone to talk about people who have been in prison for 20 years serving sentences for crimes that they didn't commit, and whether they would forego the opportunity to use DNA testing to put the guilty party behind bars. R. made a comment similar to this one when I prompted others to respond. Sometimes students in these small, smart literature classes are too polite to rip into what their classmates say.
When I stir the pot, asking others if they agree or disagree, I am asking them to mine for truth; don't let half-truths go un-questioned. A classroom with no conflict is not a very just classroom, because there will always be comments or opinions that should be questioned, qualified or clarified. The quest for peace involves a quest for accuracy; much violence and oppression can be hidden in ambiguous or vaguely true statements.
M. argued that his crime was forgivable because it happened so long ago. I wanted someone to talk about people who have been in prison for 20 years serving sentences for crimes that they didn't commit, and whether they would forego the opportunity to use DNA testing to put the guilty party behind bars. R. made a comment similar to this one when I prompted others to respond. Sometimes students in these small, smart literature classes are too polite to rip into what their classmates say.
When I stir the pot, asking others if they agree or disagree, I am asking them to mine for truth; don't let half-truths go un-questioned. A classroom with no conflict is not a very just classroom, because there will always be comments or opinions that should be questioned, qualified or clarified. The quest for peace involves a quest for accuracy; much violence and oppression can be hidden in ambiguous or vaguely true statements.
The final statement, which I had planned to leave out, but which solicited the best responses, was
Ann should leave with George.
Somehow the barometer today encouraged the students to reach into their personal arsenal of experience to answer questions. They were making analogies and referring to TV episodes as evidence that their opinion on an issue in Sons was well-founded. References to cancer patients, "The Walking Dead," and the unwritten "bro-code" ("don't marry your brother's fiancee, even if he is dead", all lent energy to this conversation.
Tomorrow, when I teach this lesson to the other section of twelfth grade, I'll add:
This is a sexist play.
to the list of statements.
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