Perspective

After yesterday's discussion in class about Dorian Gray, with special attention added to the preface, I realized that most literature--how it and characters in it are perceived--is all about perspective. This adds to the extremely difficult task teachers already have of grading papers or open-ended questions on tests because there are multiple ways a person could interpret the meaning of the question and the meaning of a term used in that question.
To use an example from the discussion we had yesterday, each individual perception of what a "villain" and a "victim" are is going to differ based on experiences with characters (or people) who have been labeled as such. Many of my classmates thought Dorian was the villain, however, I argued that Lord Henry was the villain because he was imposing his own ideas upon Dorian, influencing his way of thinking which ultimately influences his actions. Another peer mentioned that Lord Henry was only saying things so, in a way, he was more like a writer while Dorian was the one acting on behalf of the words as an actor.
As you can see, the question "Is Dorian the villain or is he a victim?" can have many different answers, not one direct, clear answer. Therefore, it is difficult to grade such an answer unless you have unbiased criteria. In this situation, I would change the question a little bit so the student knows what they will be evaluated on. Facing a question like the one mentioned above could cause some students to worry about their answers not being "right" because it is unclear what the teacher is looking for. So, to clarify and ease some of my students minds, I would add: "Use three examples from the book to support your answer." This way students will know that they can answer any way they wish as long as they can support it with evidence from the book.

These kinds of open-ended questions promote different perspectives, though they might be less popular, to be equally valid. This connects back to my last post about building respect in the classroom because these questions don't have a right or wrong answer so all students can be right even though they have different opinions. Showing students multiple perspectives encourages diversity and acceptance of different, opposing view points. To point out that both stances (or a combination of stances) have supporting evidence allows students to look into each others minds and broaden their own perceptions of what a villain is or what a victim is.
To take this one step further, I would propose students apply their new definitions or perspectives on the terms of villain and victim to their previous understanding of these terms. Then I would challenge them to be critically thinking about these definitions when they categorize a character of media they come across from now on into those boxes. I want them to think about why they categorize the character this way and, further more, I want them to notice that characters (and people) don't fit into simple labels such as "victim" or "villain." Hopefully, my students will see that these characters have traits that break these categories and that there are so many more elements to a character (or to human kind) than binary labels.
Sure, there will be many times in fiction where there is a definite villain or victim who fits into the stereotype. However, in real life, and literature that reflects reality, I hope my students will notice and respect that these labels we use to classify others do not fully encapsulate the whole essence of their character.

Approaches to Keeping Students Involved

Throughout the class, we have seen many examples of and types of presentations. We have had our topic presentations and multiple group presentations. After examining and comparing everyone’s throughout the semester, it is interesting to see which ones stood out most to me. If I were teaching a high school class I would consider looking at different techniques to keep students involved and engaged if I had to lecture.

Visual Aids:

Providing visual aids keeps students engaged by giving them something to look at while they listen in order to focus their attention. PowerPoint allows a teacher to summarize their points where providing visual aids such as pictures. Too much text is distracting and makes students pay too much attention to copying text and not enough to what is being said.

Prezi is also a really good visual aid. I haven’t messed with it much, but have been impressed with others presentations that I have seen. In Prezi the pictures and text are constantly moving, zooming in and out and creatively flowing from picture to text. The movement and interesting angles keep student’s eyes focused on the presentation. Prezi also lets you easily zoom into pictures to better show something of interest, or to zoom in on a quote for emphasis.

Adding video clips or sound bytes are another good way to spice up a presentation. Giving the students a new voice or sound to listen to keeps them alert. If the sound byte or videos are interesting they will focus them back into what is being discussed. Or sometimes it’s just nice to throw in a good comic or video that allows them to have a good laugh or provide an interesting view of the topic at hand.

 (Who doesn’t like a good Calvin and Hobbes comic?)

Staying Involved:

Keeping students involved by asking questions directly to the class or asking them to discuss the topic in groups is another good way to keep them focused. By discussing with their classmates they are able to articulate their own ideas, or all admit that they in fact didn’t read the reading ( you win some you lose some).

Hands on activities are also a great way to let students express their ideas. Any type of drawing, creating, even molding things out of clay helps keep students engaged. It also gives them a break from continuous listening and note taking. I had a teacher once in high school place giant pieces of clay on our desks. He then asked us to either to make a large figure or a small figure based on where we were sitting. Once made, he picked his favorite creations and reenacted a whole battle with them. I can remember almost every detail and it’s been six years. Random is always good, same with fresh and new ideas. 

Cooperation between Teachers

 A complaint I’ve often heard about the educational system in K-12 is the lack of cooperation between teachers in different subjects. This has come from teachers who have suggested that certain topics would be more interesting for the students and who believe the students would not only be more engaged in the process, but also maintain the information better.

Several of the texts we’ve recently read have evolved around colonialism, imperialism, race and class. The narrators have been from various sides of these controversial issues, which have given us as readers an appreciation of how different the experiences must have been. I believe the range of topics provide an opportunity for teachers of different subjects to cooperate to further the education of students.

            In the context of 19^th century literature, I think the most obvious subject to combine a project or lesson with is history. While many will claim that the 20^th century saw more change to the way of human life than any other, I would argue the 19^th century was of at least, if not greater, importance. The Industrial Revolution is considered the most significant advancement since the Agricultural Revolution with how it tremendously improved efficiency of manufacturing and changed the dynamics of human settlement from rural to urban. The texts we read during the “Ecology and Industrialism” section could be a starting point for a project about how the changes were viewed at the time by having students read original texts and analysis of them.

             As we dove further into the semester, the texts have been focusing more on the interaction between people of different race and class. Psychology, sociology and anthropology are subjects that come to mind in order to further explore the issues. “How does a character’s race affect his or her interaction with the people around” is an example of incorporating sociology into an assignment. Although one could say that it’s up to the narrator to decide on how characters interact, it’s likely that the narrator was influenced by his or her surroundings and trend.

            A potential challenge with joint projects is that each subject has a common core of standards the students have to meet during the year. Time is often the biggest challenge for a teacher when planning a semester or year’s curriculum. However, with the proper communication between teachers, projects or assignments can be well developed and meet the common core for multiple subjects at once.