My English IV classes are starting Hamlet soon, and I wanted to use an "Article of the Week" approach to get them into some of the issues we'll be grappling with.
I assigned a close reading of Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009: The Brother Who Mattered Most and asked them to come to class with three open-ended questions for Socratic Circles. They specifically voted that they wanted to (a) go more deeply into issues and ideas than in past dialogues and (b) to engage in thoughtful disagreement.
I'm now mulling over three observations:
1) When given the article and ample time to read & annotate, most students went ashen. I thought I'd done sufficient teaching and modeling, but clearly not! They'd beckon me over and whisper, "Is this what you want me to do?" pointing to some highlighting or arrow or question mark.
It struck me that these kids are so used to "thinking" only about one question: "What's she likely to put on a quiz over this article?" that when I ask them to simply read and record their thinking, they don't know where to start. I'm afraid some of them don't even know where or how to start thinking, let alone recording their thinking!
2) During the Socratic dialogue (I experimented with one large circle with 25 minutes of dialogue rather than two circles of 10 minutes) I noticed a tendency for the kids to start to dive deeply into an issue and then suddenly make a joke out of it and pop back up to surface topics.
They were discussing the difference between necessity and luxury, asking each other what they would or wouldn't be willing to sacrifice if they had to choose between having a job that made them money or a job that made them happy (questions which stemmed from universal health care which stemmed from Ted Kennedy's championing of health-related causes.) One student brought up the news story from a year or two ago about a man who killed himself and his family because he'd lost his job and could no longer support them at the level of "comfort" they'd come to expect. I expected them to really wrestle with this practical example, but one kid made a snide remark about how he should have just killed the wife and kids, someone else made a comment about marriage and parenthood being burdens, and "poof"! -- the moment was gone.
I realize that I do this all the time, myself -- I use "humor" (usually sarcastic!) to get myself out of uncomfortable or serious situations. And as I reflect on yesterday's dialogues as well as others, I believe this is a trend, especially for one class -- it's made up of bright bored boys. I'd like for them to discover this habit for themselves, rather than have me point it out to them . . . maybe via video?
3) I thoroughly enjoyed listening in on their dialogues. They brought up significant concepts that we'll be developing over the upcoming weeks:
* Parental “meddling” in a child’s life
* Parent getting what (s)he wants/needs at the expense of the child
* Reluctance to lead/take action
* Personal tragedy/loss: Enabling & empowering? or Paralyzing & immobilizing?
* Pain / Suffering creating a “cause” -- a life focus
* Focusing one’s life on “carrying the torch” for one who died
* Ideal qualities in a leader / Standards we set for a leader
* Weakness / Failure / Corruption in a leader -- Humanity? vs. Criminality?
* Impact on the women and children in the lives of public male leaders
* Motivations for leadership
* What’s the cost? Is it worth it?
* What will we forgive / not forgive in a leader? Personal failures? vs. Political failures?
* If _____ had / hadn’t happened, how would things be different?
* The impact of one bad choice
* Truth vs. Lies
* Privacy vs. Publicity / Secrecy vs. Discovery
* Living an inauthentic identity
* What are you willing to give up / sacrifice in order to achieve your goal?
* Power / Quest for power / What is “real power”?
Aside from being elated that for 25 minutes, everyone was not only awake but engaged, I'm thrilled with how much they pulled from the article.
But many of my students felt like the group "got off topic" or "talked about nothing." So either (a) I'm too easily impressed or (b) I'm seeing things that they don't see but I think should be obvious to them.
I look at this list and see not just great ideas and questions that we'll wrestle with via literature this year, but that they'll wrestle with their whole lives.
But I feel like they're still at a "so what" stage, secretly (and some not-so-secretly!) believing they got away with wasting yesterday's class period. How do I move them to a place where they see the connections and take action on them?
How about you? What are your thoughts on student thinking? How do you teach/guide/model "a close reading of the text"? How do you encourage questioning, especially high-level thinking? How do you help students "connect" without connecting the dots for them?