Judith J. Katz
There are two things I have discovered about high school students that are particularly important to keep in mind during this unit: they are quite young, and for all of their bravado they are often experiencing life passages for the first time. Often they do not have the vocabulary to describe what they are thinking and feeling and invariably they will attempt to get help from an equally inexperienced/inarticulate peer, before seeking out a more mature role model. This leads to a "sameness" in students' writing that goes against the idea of developing each students' original authentic voice.
Over years of exceedingly unscientific polling, I have asked my students to read countless pieces of famous writing and to underline words, lines, phrases, and ideas that they wish they had written. Not just words, lines, phrases, and ideas they "like" and think are "nice" or "beautiful"…but that they wish they had come up with before the writer they are reading did. Without fail they are able to identify the most powerful snippets and are able to explain why the chosen words could have come from their own minds or hearts, if they'd have just thought of them first. Often the link they are responding to is something quite specific and detailed. These specific details usually come in the forms of sensory and figurative language. When Walt Whitman writes: "…every atom in me as good belongs in you" (1) he is telling us that we are the same down to the atomic level. It does not get much smaller or larger than that.
Students' first draft writing will invariably contain clichés and generalizations that they believe to be powerful. They simply have not been on the planet long enough to know that it is the details and personal specific examples and observations that give writing its universality. As A.N. Whitehead said, "We think in generalities, but we live in details" (Hattie 22). They do recognize the power and transformative beauty of words when they see them used by great writers and, when they see it, they want that power. This unit is designed to help students move from sameness, cliché, and generalizations to specific, personal, powerful writing.
This unit is also designed to give students a working understanding of the vocabulary for and process of grieving so that they may own, express, and share their grief as a means of moving forward with their lives. Not to drop their grief like unclaimed baggage, nor to angrily throw it in the face of all comers, but instead, perhaps, to carry their grief as ee cummings suggests: "…i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)."
In this unit students will be able to (SWBAT):
1.
|
Use reading to become better writers and writing to become better readers.
|
2.
|
Use a common vocabulary of psychological terms to read, analyze, synthesize, discuss, and write about grief and loss.
|
3.
|
Use a common vocabulary of literary elements to analyze, discuss, and guide the writing and revision in their own and the writing of their peers.
|
4.
|
Begin the process of understanding, synthesizing, and expressing, their past grief and loss and will begin the process of empathizing with the grief and loss of others.
|
5.
|
Begin the process of choosing what to carry away from their past grief and loss.
|
6.
|
Begin to understand how master writers use detailed sensory and figurative language to create unique writing and express meaning.
|
7.
|
Use a master text as a map that can help lead them to their own authentic writing.
|
8.
|
"Listen with a pen" (take notes) during readings and discussions of the master-works studied.
|
9.
|
Use a positive and constructive method for responding to the emerging writing of their peers.
|
-