Judith J. Katz
As the lead teacher for Creative Writing at Cooperative Arts and Humanities Magnet High School, I have one overarching objective for the Creative Writing faculty (including myself): make the students write and keep them writing. It sounds so simple, but as you know, it is not. Most students, teachers and other sentient beings fear writing. The question is why?
Having conducted several years' worth of unscientific research on the question of why humans fear writing I have come to the conclusion that it is almost always based on the fact that humans fear they have nothing intelligent, original, or even minimally useful to say. Hence there is a great deal on the line when one sits down to write, or even speak, in an academic setting. Having nothing to say is tantamount to an admission of total ignorance, and who in their right mind would want to admit that, in school, and on paper no less.
The vast majority of our students are not ignorantfar from it. In fact the majority of them possess nascent intelligence of astounding potential. And often they know it. But for a wide variety of reasons, which are not necessary to recount here, they have not been taught to think, question, and reflect. This lack of practice in the essential elements of learning makes the process of finding the inner diamond, and cutting it for brilliance, all the more painful for both teacher and student. And yet, I have observed and experienced success with my students whenever I challenge them to think, question, reflect, and write (or speak). In fact, the higher I set their goal, the harder they work to show me they can perform. No, my classroom is not in Disneyworld and mine are real students. They fight me, fight with me, ignore me, and occasionally sleep through my directions. But I hold this truth to be self-evident: most human beings prefer being intellectually occupied to being bored. Whether they know it, will admit it, or not.
I want the work in this unit to challenge students to ask themselves, each other, and me, questions about the films they are seeing. I want students to ask the kind of questions that touch on how writers and filmmakers deliver meaning, message and feeling to ustheir audience. I want my students to moan with disappointment at the end of the period when we haven't finished the film. I want them all to talk at one timeabout the film. I want them to stay awake. I want them to fightintellectually of course. I want them to want more.
How can we give our students the tools they need, to feel as if they have something intelligent to say? First and most important we need to give our students the
experience
of having something intelligent to say. In this regard (and many others) I agree with John Dewey's seminal (and remarkably short) book
Experience & Education
. Dewey reminds (practically warns) teachers to take into consideration the prior experience and prior knowledge of the student as part of the students' ability to absorb new experience. As he says, "…experience does not occur in a vacuum. There are sources outside an individual which give rise to experience." (40)
The contemporary student definitely has a prior knowledge base in viewing movies. I am not so naïve as to believe that my students (or yours) have viewed or know they want to view what I am about to suggest we show them in this unit, but in my experience, well prepared students will view what I show. Not every one of them, a percentage will fall asleep in the dark, but a percentage of them might fall asleep in the light. No unit, not even this one, is a panacea for the problems of the modern classroom.
Experience alone, however, is not enough of an educator for Dewey. In
Experience & Education
he devotes a chapter to what he calls "Progressive Organization of Subject Matter." In that chapter he creates a formula for making thought out of
experience, observation
, and
reflection
.
[…] the method of intelligence manifested in the experimental [experiential] method demands
keeping track of ideas
, activities, and observed consequences. Keeping track is a matter of reflective review and summarizing, in which there is both discrimination and record of the significant features of a developing experience. To reflect is to look back over what has been done so as to extract the net meanings which are the capital stock for intelligent dealing with f further experiences. It is the heart of intellectual organization and of the disciplined mind. (87)
When I reflect on the construction of this unit, I use Dewey's formula as a checklist to make sure that I am, in fact, keeping track of the steps that he recommends. By parsing his formula and matching each step with the activity I expect the students to engage in, I am able to see how the scaffolding of the lesson is likely to work for the students. For the purposes of this unit I have parsed and matched Dewey's formula as follows:
- "Keeping track of ideas, activities, and observed consequences" –Students will learn a common vocabulary (Narrative Structure/CCR, Character Development/CPC etc.) and will use it for discussion, journal-keeping, and short reviews/essays.
- "Keeping track is a matter of reflective review and summarizing"Students will review each learned concept before adding a new concept. Learning will be solidified through discussion and writing (journal-keeping and short reviews/essays).
- "Reflective review [and] summarizing [with] discrimination and record of the significant features of a developing experience"Students will share their developing thoughts through group discussion, sharing of quick-writes and/or journal-entries, and short reviews/essays.
- "To reflect is to look back over what has been done […] extract net meaning"Students will read their own journals to find formal topics and supporting evidence in order to write their short reviews/essays.
- "Intelligent dealing with further experiences"Students will be encouraged to make connections between the scaffolded lessons, their own experiences, and observations. We will also discuss the way in which the thinking and writing in this unit are methods of "critical or higher order thinking". These are skills students expected to produce evidence of without having been taught how to recognize, or repeat them, even when they succeed at accomplishing them.
" [this is] the heart of the disciplined mind"If our goal is to have our students develop the independent ability to learn, we must model for them how our own disciplined minds observe, organize, review, reflect, and respond. And then we have to give them the opportunity to fail and succeed in their experience of that progressive series of actions.
This unit is designed as a one-size-fits-all structure. But it is worth noting that every mind is different and that it is in the experience of filling the unit structure that individual students, with the help of a teacher/facililtator, can come to an understanding of the strategies that work in building his/her own disciplined mind.
The practice of watching a series of films together (students and teacher) creates a community of people who have shared experiences. Giving the shared community the language (vocabulary) to discuss the experiences (verbally and in writing) can deepen the individual and group connection to the experience. Having the opportunity to focus on something s/he understands, doesn't understand, wants to understand better, or finds fault with, gives the student the opportunity to organize, control, and finally share (uninterrupted) his/her higher order thinking, with a group that is predisposed to comprehend it.
