Poetry Analysis Help

Poetry Types and Terminology

51 Types of Poetry Mainly single sentence definitions of different types of poems.

Poetry Forms and Terminology Each form and term is linked to definitions and/orexamples.

Poetry-Wikipedia The sections on elements and genre might prove helpful.

Poetry Groups and Movements -Good place to start if you are trying to place you’re poet in a movement or want to know about some of the different movements.

Poetic Schools and Movements– A very brief statement of each movements main idea.

Movements: A more detailed summary of some of the major movements throughout history.

Timeline of Poets and Poetry A time line that shows birth and death of major poets as well as publication dates and movement dates.

Poets

Maya Angelou: Uncp, Poetry Foundation, Voices from the Gap

Robert Frost: Poetry Foundation, R.F. LIterary Criticism

William Butler Yeats: The Literature Network, Literary History

 

 

Developing the Class Utopia

Note: These are the directions my students will be using in order to complete portions of their Utopian Society Project.

Some questions to discuss as a group

1. What are the core values that the class agrees on and wants to live by?  For example, do you think everyone should be treated exactly the same?  Should everyone have a say in how the government is run?  Should there be a government?  Is hard work and individual effort to be rewarded?  Is education, an opportunity, a right, an expectation, or a threat?  Is there a greater concern in the society, such as “the environment before the people”?
2. Will there be a government?  What kind?  Will there be a single leader or multiple leaders?
3. Will there be laws?  Who decides them?  Who maintains them?
4. What kind of community is going to exist?  Will it be filled with technology like today, an industrial community, farming community, trade community, or something like Plato’s philosopher’s society?
5. Is there ownership of property?  Is there money?
6. Is there a physical infrastructure to the society?  For example, nearly every town in America has a post office, a police department, a fire department, a library, waste and city management, churches and schools.  If there are such things, how do they maintain operation?
7. How does language play a role in your society?  Is there a national language? Forbidden words?  Censorship?

Creation:

1. Develop a virtual world that highlights some of the most important places, buildings, etc. in your world.
2. Explain on paper the answers to the questions above.

Virtual World Directions

Note: These are the directions my students will be using in order to complete portions of their Utopian Society Project.

Virtual World Directions:

1. Choose five places, buildings or rooms that you feel are important to your story.
2. For each place, find descriptive literature from the book to help describe the world to others.
3. Find or create a picture that is appropriate and helps create the environment of each place.
4. Identify any characters or objects that might be in the room.  For example,  in the 1984 world a wall screen would be important or in the world of Fahrenheit 451 books would  probably need to be placed in some of the rooms.  Don’t forget, the objects don’t just exist in blank space.  A book would probably be found on a table, in a drawer, on a book shelf or some other object.
5. Be prepared to explain why your group chose each of the five places.

Lit Circle Report Directions:

1. Summarize the major events in your story and explain what you think the author is trying to say. (Theme)
2. If your story has a society that is already established (The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, 1984) explain the major conflict(s) your character has with the society.

2.1.     If your story develops a society (Watership Down, Lord of the Flies) explain how the society was developed and the leader was chosen.

1. If your story has a society that is already established explore the mindset of the creators of that society.  Why did they develop the laws and hierarchy special to that society?  Was it to promote certain values or deter ideas?

3.1.    If your story develops a society explore the mindset of the leader(s).  What were the primary concerns of the group when the society was forming?  Did they change and how?  What values did the leaders express as they formed their society.

1. How did language and/or communication play a role in the society found in your book?  Were there words unique to your world?  Did words in your book have a double or alternative meaning from words in our society?  Did the rulers control or try to shape the language?  Why?
2. Compare the society in your book with our society.  Are there ideas in the book that you would like to see implemented in our society?  Are there particular ideas in the book that disturb you and you would want to safeguard our society from?

Utopian Society Project

We have been examining the formation of a society.   Recall that we have looked at Plato’s ideal society, the Republic.  We examined Thomas More’s Utopia. In groups, we created preliminary ideal societies.  We looked at leaders within societies, such as Stalin and James Jones.    And each group has been reading a book that either explored a utopia or dystopia.  Now it is time to bring these ideas together.

The first part of the project, the Literary Groups will be creating a virtual world, based on the book they have been reading.  This project has two purposes, the first purpose is to familiarize you with using the software we are using, the second is to allow students that haven’t read your story “see” the world and get a feel for what it was like.

In addition to creating a virtual world of your book, your group will also need to summarize your book with a report that highlights the theme, the key events, how the society functions or was developed, what was effective with it, what was the major conflict of the characters, the vocabulary that was used and compare it to a society that you would like to live in.

The next step will be an entire class project.  Together, the class will develop a society that highlights the ideals of the group.  Just like you did for your lit circles, the class will create a virtual world that hosts important places or buildings.  The basic laws and functions of the society will be created in a report.

When the world is created we will attempt to recreate your society in the classroom and allow it to function for a given period of time –the amount of time will be determined by how much time I feel the class needs to adequately explore your society.

A final individual reflection paper will be written to share your experience in the creating and interacting of the world.

Changes to my Instruction

Photo Courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/

It is not easy to decide how to transform your instruction when you are given free rein on how that transformation is to take shape.   If I were told, I must improve my instruction by making sure that I have a lesson plan completed for every hour of instruction and it needs to follow Madeline Hunter’s template, it would be easy to accommodate and no weighty decision would really need to be made on my part; however, the decision has been left to me and I have to decide on an a transformative approach based upon my own principles.  I am initially drawn to the heritage model of teaching.  I am somewhat of an “old, Western dinosaur” when it comes to my own values.  I do believe that society’s moral compass is off because it is too busy trying to please everybody and in doing so has abandoned Truths, which require both a right and a wrong, for accommodation—I’m right, your right.  I believe there are certain universal Truths that can be found in nearly all wisdom literature.  This belief urges me to want to adopt an instructional model that would guide students into reading and evaluating these Truths.  The problem with adopting such a position is that it is a dogmatic position and could anger some students and parents.  While, I believe there are Truths it is not my place to instruct students in these views.  I will not entirely abandon this principle.  I believe that if students become avid readers they will come across much of these Truths on their own.  Therefore the number one principle I would use to guide my instruction would be to create avid readers.

I also believe that students need to be prepared for the 21^st Century work force, which means that they will need to be flexible, global, team thinkers.  Therefore, the second guiding principle of my instruction will be to help create thinkers open to new ideas and cultures.

In order to create readers and thinkers a couple of instructional models will need to be used.  I believe that Rosenblatt’s reader-response model is an effective starting point for creating readers; however, I believe that students will need to read with a purpose if they are going to become thinkers.  Therefore, I will also utilize a student-centered approach.  I am a fan of Vygotskey and believe that students can help each other become better learners and thinkers.  I will utilize literature circles, collaborative learning, jigsaws, and other forms of group work as the basis for my instruction.  I would prefer to pose cultural and social problems and let the students read and think together to come up with solutions.

I think that a study on utopias and dystopias is the perfect vehicle for answer the questions of cultural and social problems.  I think that giving the students a chance to create their own society, at least in the classroom, and allowing them to compare their society to other societies, both historical and fictional should create a high level of engagement for the students.   At the beginning of the course the students would be asked to write a paper on what they like or dislike about the society we live in and how can we make it even better.  Student will use the paper as a basis for discussion and help create a working model for an in-class society.   The students will be broken into literature circles to read books on different utopias and dystopias and asked to evaluate the societies, defining what worked, what didn’t.  The groups would also be asked to create model the society in-class, where each group would create a lesson and a means to demonstrate how the society in their books worked and let the class live in that society for a week.  Students would take on different roles during the week, they may be the governing body, they may be workers, students, etc… they would reflect on their experiences in that position, and if they are not happy with their lot in society, they will be asked to problem solve on how to fix it.  This may mean writing letters, creating new laws, hiring someone to quell the uprisings, etc…

At the end of each week, the students will discuss and evaluate their experiences and compare it to their created society and ask if there is anything they would like to change in the class society that was created at the beginning of the program.  The final project would be a class website where they would display their working model and the name of their society.

I believe that such a student-centered approach to the literature would engage the students on a high level.  As in Rosenblatt’s model, the students would be able to read and share their transaction with the text and they would also have a common consensus to the text as they apply what they learned to creating or recreating their societies.  The writing involved in it, will be both reflective and audience orientated, as they will be writing to government bodies or other entities that they identify in their reading.  The literature circles also allow for different reading levels and abilities, while the group work allows students to situate themselves in roles that address their diverse abilities.

I also believe that since the students are going to assume different roles, it will require independent thought and flexibility.   Students will not only have to think about how society works, but they will have to do so from different viewpoints.  Problem solving from different viewpoints creates flexibility by necessity.  Since the students will be asked on a weekly basis about changing their society, it will hopefully foster a sense of power and voice in the classroom and lead to students taking active roles in their learning.  If the students are going to be given this power, then the real challenge will be with the teacher.  What happens when students draw up new classroom rules such as, automatic A’s for everybody or some such law that jeopardizes school rules?  Obviously grades and school rules need to be followed, it would be best to be prepared for a meta-discussion about how the teacher and the class must work within the confines of school and state rules.

Transformation

Photo Courtesy Sir Mervs

In the movie, The Matrix, machines have taken over the world and created a virtual reality designed to keep humans in a content, comatose state in order to harvest the energy produced by living bodies.  Agent Smith, a virtual G-man designed to capture and destroy humans that have rejected the virtual program, explains the Matrix to Morpheus, a human that has rejected the program:

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world—w ere none suffered, where everyone would be happy?  It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.

Agent Smith’s observation would be the crux of my ideal class.  Agent Smith speaks of contempt for humans, but hidden in this observation is a real question: “How do humans define themselves?” I believe this is a huge question.  Literature, at the very minimum, can be described as an attempt to define the world. Teenagers, at the very minimum, can be described as attempting to define themselves. I believe that a literature class that focuses on this core question, “How do humans define themselves?” would create a high level of interest to students and hopefully help them become more enthusiastic readers.

The course would need to span the entire school year as I intend to go as deep into the rabbit hole as time would allow.  The course would begin with the scene I described above and a discussion about whether the students believe that we are at the peak of civilization and what role, if any, do students feel they play in that society.  We would then end the discussion by asking students to discuss how they think that society is created.

After the introduction, and our focus on the “peak of civilization” the class would start moving backwards in time by examining the foundations of societies, beginning with our own.  The class would first look at the “Declaration of Independence” we would look at it is the foundation piece for the United States of America.  First the students would examine the language to see what values are implied and debate whether our current society reflects theses values.  Then we would put on a historical lens and view the document in light of our relation with England.

At this point we would examine why people started coming to America, e.g. for religious freedom, for profit, to escape or because they were forced to leave.  We would ask why America was the “land of opportunity”.  During the discussion we would read selections from Thomas More’s  Utopia. The students would examine how More created the concept of a Utopia and discuss the possible consequences it had on our society.  The students would then be ushered further back in time to read Plato’s Republic to see how he influenced More.  It is here that students would begin to think about the concept of utopias and building the perfect society. The students would be given a discovery writing assignment that would help them identify their own values and priorities.  The paper would later be used when they are given a project of creating the ultimate classroom society.

The introduction to creating utopias and the paper on writing about their own values would then lead into the different types of utopias.  We would begin with religious utopias. The students would read passages about the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic versions of the Garden of Eden.  They would also read about the Hindi concept of Moksha and the Buddhist concept of Nirvana. The students would also look at heroic resting places such as Elysium and Valhalla.   The students would be asked to examine why these utopias all seem to be places of attainment in the afterlife and they would be asked to compare and contrast the different values that seem to be placed in achieving the utopias.  Were there any universal values that all societies seemed to value? Finally they would be asked to research each of these places and determine if the societies that had adopted these religious utopias reflected their values in their every day interactions.

The students would move on from religious concepts of utopia to economic and political versions of utopia, the students would examine Capitalist, Socialist, and Communist utopias through theoretical texts.  The students would be given definitions of different forms of government, Authoritarian, Anarchy, Anarchism, and Democracy (Wikipedia.org) and asked to compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of each form of government and then evaluate which form of government they believe is most effective for the various economic societies.

When the students finish evaluating the forms of government they should be sufficiently grounded in the concept of creating a society and how to implement the societies. They would then be given the following quote from Plato:

Man…is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures. (Plato, quotationspage.com)

The students will be asked to discuss the quote in relationship to the first scene we watched and the utopias we have studied and finally they will be asked, “What happens when it all goes wrong?”

The  students will be read parts of Mien Kopf by Adolph Hitler, watch the movie Schindler’s List, they will listen to some radio broadcasts from Joseph Stalin, watch the History Channel presentation Joseph Stalin: Declassified, finally they will watch a video: Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple.  The students will be asked to do the same assessment of values that they did for themselves on Hitler, Stalin and Jones.  They will then be asked to examine how each of these leaders was trying to achieve a utopia. They will hopefully see that each of these men was trying to force their values on others.

When the students have finished examining how one person can exert their values over a society, they will then examine how societies impose on other societies.  The students will watch Kingdom of Heaven to briefly touch on the Crusades. They will read A Particular Discource Concerning the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties That Are Like to Grow to This Realme of Englande by the Westerne Discouries Lately Attempted, Written in the Yere 1584 by Richard Hakluyt (Wikipedia.org),  which was one of the first writings calling for the “planting of the English race” (Wikipedia.org).  The students will also read Annexation by John O’Sullivan where they would learn of the concept of “Manifest Destiny.”  The students would use this background information to watch a series of films from a postcolonial and historical perspective.  The students would watch, Last of the Mohicans, Gandhi, Mister Johnson and Rabbit Proof Fence.  After fully inundating students with a history of colonization the students would continue to keep their postcolonial glasses on and read The Tempest. The students will discuss how our literature shaped our views of different cultures as Western Civilization collides with them.  When we have finished, we will reflect on how all the ways we have seen utopias go wrong, then we would look at how authors try to teach us to create better worlds by exploring dystopias.

Students would watch 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. The students would be asked to examine what the author is reacting to and the intent of writing these stories.  The students would then be split into Literary Circles for independent exploration of different dystopia novels.  The students will choose from Nueromancer, Herland, Brave New World, and Ectopia. The books will offer a variety of perspectives for exploration.  Nueromancer represents a technological utopia with many new words that can be examined from both a structuralist and deconstructionist perspective and Herland is perfect for feminist criticism.    Throughout the literacy circle interactions, the students will explore the different forms of literary criticism and share what insights these explorations bring them.

The final project for the students will be to create a multi-media project based on all of their research and understanding of the utopias.  They will be asked to create a utopia based on their values and demonstrate what type of social structure they will use to create it.  They will need to demonstrate how they will address concerns and pitfalls of developing societies.  They will be asked to be conscious of the language they use and demonstrate how it can affect the conscience and values of their society. And they would be asked to answer the question asked at the beginning of the course, “How do humans define themselves?”

At the completion of this course the students would have covered nearly all of the standards for the state.  They will have explored mainly literature from the western world, but they would have also explored its effects on citizens from around the world and this historical evolution of different societies.   They will have written, read, listened, challenged to speak and debate their point of view.  They will have researched websites to understand other cultures; they will have been exposed to a variety of media from traditional literature to obscure documents to film and popular culture.

Implementing this course would not be difficult.  I have done much of the leg work in designing the course, the school has nearly every in the course, and because of the literary circle format, only a few copies of each book the school does not possess would be needed to purchase.  Many of the film and video clips are available free on line.  The rest can be purchased at a minor cost.

I have already implemented Literary Circles in the classroom.  The students are studying a scaled down version of the curriculum I have detailed above.  They are exploring the same question and will do a similar final project, however due to time constraints the students do not have time to do the historical exploration.

Discussion Analysis

Photo courtesy The Library of Congress

On January 19^th, 2009 the sophomore class of XXXXXXX High School were asked to partake in a discussion about community service in response to a brief video featuring President Obama talking about the importance of Martin Luther King , Jr.  Day and what it ought to be—a day of community service.  The following is an analysis of the attempted discussion , with the intent to utilize the data to improve discussion within the classroom.  Throughout the analysis I will refer to myself as “the teacher” in an attempt to distance myself and remain as objective as possible.

Physical Setting

The classroom is fairly large approximately 60’ x 30’.  The door to the room is in the middle of the west wall, effectively splitting the room in two.  The teacher’s desk is opposite the door facing out from the east wall.  The south wall is covered by a white board and the north wall contains two closets in each corner separated by a row of computers.  The students sit at an assortment of two-person tables.  The tables are aligned in three rows on the south side of the room and two rows on the north side of the room; each side is facing towards the center of the room, where a natural isle has been created, between the door and the teacher’s desk.   While the room is fairly large, the tables do not accommodate a circular layout.  The room is painted white with blue trim after the school colors.  On the three walls not covered by the white board are large posters created by the students that display the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens” created by Steven Covey.    Posters of the Six Traits of writing and the unit learning goals are the only other decorations on the wall.

Clear Purposes for Discussion

The discussion was part of a larger unit on the “American Dream”.  The students were provided learning goals at the beginning of the unit, they are on display and referred to daily.  The three learning goals for the unit are:

1. I will understand the concept of the “American Dream” during the Harlem Renaissance and Post World War II eras in relation to race, culture, and prejudice, and I will be able to make connections with my life and dreams.
2. I will be able to read text like the author intended it to be read.  I will pay close attention to punctuation, dialogue, and sentence rhythm so I can read with proper intonation, pace, and emphasis.
3. I will be able to take a critical stance and express judgments of people or things according to certain standards or values and express my understanding through a multi-genre presentation.

Prior to the discussion these goals were not mentioned. The students were in a routine of watching a short video clip and doing a written response to the video.  The teacher referred to this, “We will be responding to this, like we have with the other videos. Please look at the question at the bottom of your page that goes along with video number two”.  No other link was provided prior to the discussion.

Teacher Caring/Affect/Interest/ Enthusiasm

The teacher positioned himself near the door of the room.  This placed him between the North half of the room and the south half of the room and allowed eye contact between both halves of the room as well as effectively placing him at the center of attention.  The teacher smiled six times, twice in response to his own comments and four times in response to student comments.  He held his arms across his chest for thirty seconds near the end of the discussion.  This was most likely due to comfort than a barrier act.  The majority of the discussion (nine out of 13 minutes) the teacher held his hands clasped behind his back.  This posture was typically assumed while listening to student response or while walking amongst the students to observe written responses.  The rest of the time the teacher used his arms to point and to gesture while talking or questioning.  Three times the teacher walked with his hand in the air, which is the class signal to cease talking and bring eyes back to the teacher.  This was used when students broke out into table talk that was off topic.  The teacher shared personal experiences, “I was part of a group that was able to feed twenty-five-thousand people for a day…” and “I know a pastor who always brightens up a room…”.    The teacher also joked with the class, by taking a student’s misbehavior as an example of selfishness that brings a class down.  The teacher was familiar enough with the student to be able to bring laughter to the class.  The teacher did not use any physical contact, such as a pat on the shoulder, to display approval.

Discussion Support Activities

Prior to the discussion the students were given a response question, “Have you ever participated in any community service?  Why did do it and do you think it was important? Why or why not?”  They were then shown a video about the purpose of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that discussed the importance of community service as an additional prompt to their writing.  After the video the students were asked to do a three minute free-write in response to the question.  After the free-write the discussion began.

Questioning Strategies

The attempted discussion lasted thirteen minutes.  The teacher asked 16 questions during the duration. Sixteen students were in the class for the discussion. There were eight female students, all white and eight male students, one black and one Hispanic. There were twenty-three  student responses to the questions.  Seven out of the sixteen students did not respond—five males and two females. There were nine male responses to fourteen female responses. There were twenty-three responses from white students and zero responses from the non-white students.  During the discussion the teacher called on three students by name, all three were female.  Two were asked a direct question, the third name was used to specify a student, “What can you do to make Riki’s day better?”  The questions the teacher asked were split, eight higher level thinking questions and eight lower level thinking questions. The teacher repeated the question one time; it was the only time a response to a question took longer than one second (2 seconds).    The pattern of responses was almost entirely teacher-student-teacher-student.  Twice there were multiple shout-outs, but the students did not respond to each other.  The teacher spoke for five minutes and forty-five seconds of the thirteen minute discussion.

Assessment of Student Learning from Discussion

The students did two raise of hands surveys during the discussion, but they only were knowledge level questions and had little to do with the actual learning goal.  A multi-genre presentation was implied in the learning goal where students were expected to draw upon their portfolios that contained their written responses.

Discussion Management

Every two minutes during the discussion (including the video and free-write) a snap-shot of on-task versus off-task students was taken.  Only ten of the sixteen students could be observed from the camera angle.  A total of eight assessments per student were taken for a total of eighty total assessments.   Fifty, on-task assessments were identified and thirty off-task assessments were identified.  An off-task assessment was given if the student did not have eye contact with the speaker.  Three females were observed to be on-task one-hundred percent of the time.  One male was observed to be off-task one-hundred percent of the time and one female was observed to be off-task seven out of eight times, all other students had a mixture of off-task versus off-task assessments. It should be noted that the two students that were off-task almost the entire conversation sat next to each other at the table farthest from the teacher, while the three that were on-task were seated closest to the teacher.  Twice during the discussion the students were off-topic and the teacher brought the student back on topic by raising his hand and waiting for attention.  The discussion fizzled out when students were unable to be drawn back into it through the raising of hands.  One student was sent into the hallway for a hall conference.  A lecture on behavior and wasting time ended the discussion and transitioned into the next part of class, which was reading from a play.

Assessment of data

The very first glaring concern for me is that nearly half of the students did not participate, seven out of sixteen students.  The teacher failed to notice this issue during the discussion and never attempted to call on the students or seek input from those students.  I see this as a major concern, as it does not send the message that everyone is encouraged to speak.  It also concerns me, because of the seven students that did not respond four of those students are at-risk of failing the class.  Another concern is that the two minority students were in the group that did not respond.  One of the main learning goals was to address prejudice and racism in our society.  Three of the students in the class are openly racist and have had to be sent from the class because of racist remarks.  This most likely had an important effect on the non-white students’ sense of safety and comfort in responding to the discussion.  The teacher and co-teachers in the class have a zero tolerance policy on racist comments; however it has not been enough to alleviate that concern.  Perhaps, as the class moves into a new subject the students that are uncomfortable can be brought back into the discussion and feel more comfortable.  The teacher would best help improve the level of participation by creating a planned system of calling on each students, whether it be by a seating chart, name chart, or by something similar to the reverse spiral technique mentioned in class.

The second concern I have is that the teacher talked for nearly six of the thirteen minutes and basically led the discussion in a question-response format.  There wasn’t any student-student response.  I think this could be improved if the teacher began with the a higher level question that was the learning goal and then was willing to wait longer for student response and encouraged student follow up.  From this data, the teacher followed each student response with a new question, instead of seeking additional input, lower level questions that help students lead up to a higher level response should only be used if the students are unable to address the higher level question adequately after a reasonable number of attempts and time.

Finally, I believe that the teacher better improve the discussion by having several strategies for encouraging response when students are struggling, such as pausing the discussion to write out responses, and meta-discussions about the discussion in order to receive feedback on why a discussion is not working, perhaps the students will have insights that data cannot predict.

Class Analysis

Photo courtesy Nationaal Archief

It is useful to examine the Freshman English class of XXXXXXX High School’s data on racial background, economic background, parent education level, parent occupation, and political background  and district size to analyze how it is situated in the overall educational, economic and political structure of our society. The class consists of sixteen freshmen, two sophomores, and two senior exchange students (one from Brazil and one from Vietnam). All students are Caucasian except for the exchange students.  According to schoolmatters.com over half of the population of the class is considered “economically disadvantaged.”  Another indicator of the economic background of the class is the free and reduced lunch program.  Only one out of the twenty students in the class actually pays for any portion of their lunch.  The level of poverty seems to correspond to the educational level of the district.  According to Census information, the district has a higher than average number of residents that have a high school diploma or its equivalency, 44% locally compared to 29% nationally, and a lower than average number of residents with a Bachelor’s degree or higher, a combined total of 9% total compared to 24% nationally.  Only 3% of the working population has a professional level job, the majority work either in manufacturing or agriculture.  XXXXXXX is a predominately democratic district, city-data.com showed that 86% of the population voted democrat during the Kerry/Bush presidential election.  Finally, the entire high school has a total enrollment of 107 students.

The extremely small number of students enrolled in the school along with a low taxable property value severely limits the capital with which the school operates.  This means that there is one teacher for each core subject and all students are limited to basic classes, for example there are no A.P or Honor’s courses and elective courses are nearly non-existent.  In addition to limited classes, the school also has a limited technology budget. None of the student computers in the district have Microsoft Office installed on them.  Nearly all programs are freeware only.  There are two computer labs for the school district, one contains 20 computers the other contains 13 computers. These labs are shared between k-12, which makes it very difficult for teachers to plan extended computer time with the students and makes it extremely difficult to teach 21^st Century Skills to the students. Such financial limitations are the first challenge to the students of this school district.  They will be at a huge disadvantage to students from larger and wealthier districts that have the opportunity to work with more expensive computer programs and can spend extended time with the technology that will be the basis of future jobs.

In addition to the financial challenges, the students of the district come from families that tend to have less education and have more working-class jobs than other districts.  The focus in the school tends to be on behavioral control and rule-following and mirrors the “correspondence principal.”  Most of the students in the classroom are not adequately equipped to handle an open behavioral system.  The classes focus on norms and expectations, a behavioral code is read over the announcements every day and heavy monitoring of these expectations is featured in the halls and in the classrooms.  Despite this concentration on behavior there is still a large discipline issue.  The majority of the students that are not succeeding in the classroom tend to fall into the independent and aggressive categories as pointed out in “the correspondence principal.”  The only way to “fail” in the classroom is to not do the work.  Students are allowed to continue working on their assignments until they have demonstrated mastery of each concept.  This focus is a real challenge for teachers, for there are students that are consistent, dependable and punctual that complete assignments on time and display mastery of the concepts and therefore need to continue moving on with instruction and at the other end of the spectrum there never complete assignments on-time and tend to fall extremely far behind.  The teachers are expected to keep working with these students until they display mastery of the concepts and still keep moving forward with the rest of the class.  Therefore, in my classroom I have students that are still working on concepts introduced during the first few weeks of school and at the same time have students that have displayed mastery of nearly every state standard for their level.  This vast difference in skill sets makes it difficult to give either track of students the emphasis they need.  Most likely those student that posses the personality traits that suggest high achievement will not be able to choose the more competitive colleges because of their inability to advance and specialize within the school.  The students at the other end of the spectrum have another disadvantage.  They tend to come from working class and agricultural families that never needed a further education.  Many of these families do not believe their children should or could attend colleges and this lack of expectation has transferred to the students.

This has forced the teachers to actually create a “hidden curriculum.”  All teachers are instructed to teach and talk to each student with the assumption that every student will go to college.  Teachers are asked to display college posters, where college apparel on Fridays, and talk as much about college with students as possible, to try and instill it as a necessity and a viable option to all students and counter that which is taught at home by many of the families.  In addition to the idea that students expectations need to be set on higher education, my class really needs to broaden its 21^st Century Skills.

If I could change one aspect of my class it would be to expand their 21^st Century Skills.  This would require inundating them with technology, exposing them to new cultures, teaching team-work and independent thought.  This would be a major challenge.  First the technology is already limited and access to it is difficult.  Second, the district is predominately white and many families do nothing to discourage racism and or encourage cultural diversity.   It makes it a challenge to try and teach the students that they may work with people from all around the world when their parents tend to have worked with the same population in a manufacturing or agricultural job for the whole of their lives.  Third, many of the students are very uncomfortable working with anyone outside of their close friends.  They shut down and become uncooperative when they are asked to work with a diverse team.  Finally, many of the students are afraid to express independent thought as they have always been taught to look for the “right” answer.  In addition to challenges from the students I can foresee challenges from parents.

Parents of both the high-achieving students and low-achieving students may have issues with their students being forced to work in groups that established by myself and contain diverse learning levels.  Parents from high-achieving students will be worried that their students are doing all the work while the other students are getting a free ride.  The low achieving students tend to be the ones most resistant to working in groups outside of their comfort zone and tend to complain to their parents about it. These parents often try to appease the student by coming to the teacher to ask the teacher if their student can be allowed to work in a group of their friends.  I would want the diversity, because the high-achieving students will most likely lead teams that might have challenging subordinates and the low-achieving students can benefit from seeing positive behavior.  One of the behaviors that all students need work on is time management.  In order to teach 21^st Century Skills I feel it is important to set deadlines and teach students to work within those time constraints.  This could be the major objection by administration, if there were to be any.

Our administration is very focused on the teaching practice of standards based education and concept mastery.  This predicates that a student must continue working on a concept until the student achieves mastery.  Creating a project that has a deadline and is graded according to whether they achieve that deadline or not is contrary to the mastery concept.  If it is a challenge the administration makes, I can always offer alternative individual projects to those students that do not feel they can meet the time constraints.

I do not feel that administration will really offer any objections, as they do encourage collaborative learning and want the students to be more in touch with 21^st Century Skills.  I plan to focus on this with my freshman class during a unit on “Romeo and Juliet.”    I am going to have them research Elizabethan culture the English culture and explore how other cultures around the world have adopted “Romeo and Juliet.”  I will begin by creating a list of research topic for small groups to explore and create movies that they will post to a website the class as a whole is going to create.  The first research groups will be in fairly homogenous groups, in order to help the students become comfortable with the group work concept.  The second set of research groups will be more diversified.

Canon Analysis

Photo Courtesy davis144

InXXXXXX High School’s Freshmen English course the following literary works will be studied this year: The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, “The Necklace”, “The Most Dangerous Game” and “The Gift of the Magi.” The entire “canon” is drawn from Learning Life’s Lessons Through Literature developed by Macomb Intermediate School District.  The entire curriculum is divided into units that center around a particular theme (all of which have to do with “life lessons”), for example To Kill a Mockingbird focuses on Inter-Relationships and Self-Reliance.  Each unit has supplemental selections that help develop the theme and student understanding.  Macomb developed the lesson plans by closely following the Michigan Merit Curriculum model for English 9.  Compare the Macomb ISD curriculum with the model from the Michigan Merit Curriculum from the unit on To Kill a Mockingbird:

Macomb ISD

Michigan Merit Curriculum model

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee “Jocks and Prejudice”, Nicholas Kristof “At Duke, a Scandal In Search of Meaning,” Anna Applebaum “Tough Questions in Durham,” Eugene Robinson “Keeping the Duke Scandal in Context” letters to editor Washington Post “Duke Men’s Lacrosse Team is Reinstated, and Warned,” Viv Bernstein and Juliet Macur Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, Barak Goodman Freedom’s Children ,Ellen Levine “Freedom” Langston Hughes “A Christmas Memory” Truman Copote “The Death of Emmett Till,” Bob Dylan Freedom Summer, Deborah Wiles Mississippi Trial 1955, Chris Crowe Getting Away With Murder, Chris Crowe

Narrative Text Realistic Contemporary Fiction, Novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee Informational Text Opinion/Editorial “Jocks and Prejudice,” Nicholas D. Kristof, N.Y. Times, 6-11-06, http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/pdf/kristof611.pdf “At Duke, a Scandal In Search of Meaning,” Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 4-26-06 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/25/AR2006042501589.html “Tough Questions in Durham,” Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post, 4-25-06 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/24/AR2006042401395.html “Keeping the Duke Scandal in Context,” letters to the editor, 5-2-06 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/01/AR2006050101396.html “Duke Men’s Lacrosse Team Is Reinstated, and Warned,” Viv Bernstein and Juliet Macur, The New York Times, 6-6-06, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/sports/sportsspecial1/06duke.html?_r=1&oref=slogin “Duke Prosecutor Nifong Preps for His Own Trial” http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3100160&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 “Harper Lee, Gregarious for a Day”, Ginia Bellafante, The New York Times,1-30-06 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/books/30lee.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The reading material is almost identical.  The units also follow the same suggestions, both the Michigan Merit Curriculum Model and the Macomb ISD model have the same thematic units.  The almost identical reading selections and thematic units did not happen by coincidence.

Since the introduction of “No Child Left behind” and the Michigan Promise schools have been under pressure to make sure that their students can meet proficiency levels on various standardized testing.  The schools are concerned about meeting proficiency for their Annual Yearly Progress reports in order to continue to get needed funding, and they need students to meet the requirements for the Michigan Merit Award.  If the students do not meet the proficiency levels then their parents will seek schools that have better testing scores and again schools will lose out on money.  Consequently, many of the schools, as well as the Macomb ISD, have adopted the recommended curriculum suggested by the state.  This was the rational Burr Oak High School used when the purchased the materials from the Macomb ISD.  However, XXXXXXX High  School does not have a policy that teachers are bound to instruct their classes solely from Macomb’s lesson plans, the plans were purchased as a resource.

XXXXXXX High School does not have a defined canon as matter of policy.  The only policy the district has focuses on the teaching of Michigan ELA Content Expectations.   The teachers need to ensure that all students can pass 70% of all the Content Expectations.  Grading is based on mastery levels of the content expectations.  How the contents are taught and what texts are used to teach the expectations is left up to the teacher and the limitations of budget.  Given that XXXXXXX High School has no defined policy, the question as to why this year’s English 9 class will be reading the selections they are reading needs to be addressed.  The short answer is that it was convenient for me as an instructor to follow the curriculum developed by the Macomb ISD.  An entire year of lesson plans has already been created and as a new teacher, it makes sense to follow a curriculum that I know will meet the state requirements.  The second short answer is that the school does not have much of a budget to purchase new materials, so using materials that are already purchased is cost effective.  I have been able to answer why I chose the materials and I have been able to answer why Macomb ISD chose to create lesson plans on the subjects, but I have not answered why the state chose texts it recommends.

The texts the state chose are far from progressive or contemporary.  According to “On the Margins in a High-Performing High School: Policy and the Struggling Reader,” Judith Franzak alludes to the teaching of Romeo and Juliet and The Odyssey as a phantom policy that “”every single freshman in every single high school’ was expected to read.” (Franzak 486.)  As far as a “traditional” canon exists, I believe that these two stories have secured their place in the freshman English courses in the United States.  I tend to agree with the teacher Alison Ames that  teaching these stories is a way of “conveying cultural capital” (Franzak 487).   The stories that have been chosen by the state are stories that appear on many standardized tests and are the stories that “everyone reads.”  Therefore, if a student wants to be able to gain acceptance into the educated culture, then they need to read these materials.  There is some evidence that lessons are receiving less traditional influences in the choices of supplemental material.    The Macomb ISD has poems and short stories written by minorities or from the perspective of minorities.  However, these materials are only taught in support of the main texts which are fairly homogenous in cultural diversity.

While I would like to include more diversity in the subjects I teach to the students. I do not foresee being able to make any radical changes to the main texts this year, due to budgetary constraints.  I have moved away from following Macomb’s plan and focused more on 21^st Century Skills as an emphasis in my instruction, which heavily stresses the need to understand diverse cultures in order to be competitive in a continuously shrinking world.