One of our most important jobs as educators is to elevate our students’ voices. Our classrooms should be places were students feel that their voices will not only be heard, but that they will make a difference. I want them to consider their roles in their community and world. Right now, West Virginia is facing some extra-ordinary challenges: a struggling economy, a population decline, an opioid epidemic. Young people in West Virginia are discouraged. They constantly hear negative things about our state, and they ignore or don’t know is that West Virginia has a rich literary and art tradition. That our state exists because Mountaineers rejected slavery and valued freedom. Activists and artists are working tirelessly to create accurate reflections of the complexities and contradictions of our state and culture, and preserve our rich, history and traditions. This year I decided to try something. I wanted find a way to not just engage my students in conversations about West Virginia and our struggles and successes, but I wanted them to be thinking about their place in West Virginia—how as young people they have a unique voice and perspective regarding how fix problems in our region. I believe that West Virginia’s path forward begins in our classrooms. (To read an Op-ed Karla Hilliard and I wrote about this, click HERE.) This year, I taught my introduction to rhetoric to my Advanced Placement Class through the lens of Appalachian studies. You can see an overview of the unit HERE. The goals of the unit are (like West Virginia) diverse and multi-faceted. I wanted students to master the basics of rhetorical analysis, but also immerse themselves in the rhetoric surrounding our region. The final culminating project in this unit was for the students to apply what they learned about crafting effective arguments, and create a proposal to present at the 40th Annual National Appalachian Studies Conference. We approached the task as an exercise in rhetoric. I asked the student to first choose something we studied in the unit that resonated with them. We covered a wide range of topics related to Appalachia: literature, poetry, environmental issues, the opioid epidemic, diversity, veterans, and stereotypes. Then, students were split into teams had to write a proposal to present their chosen topic at the ASA conference. I asked the students to consider their unique voices. They are teenagers in Appalachia today, and they have a chance to share a concern or a topic with a conference of academics, writers, and activists. We read a few sample proposals and studied the conference website, program, and theme. I asked them to think about their proposals as persuasive essays and apply what they learned through our study of effective arguments. The kids had a week to put together a “pitch” and write their proposals. They then presented their proposals to the whole class. I chose what I thought were the “top 10” pitches and gave them to a panel of teachers and administrators in my building to evaluate. They narrowed it down to four that they thought were the exemplars in terms of executing the task. I put these four exemplars and my unit presentation together as a panel proposal for the conference, submitted it not really imagining that we would actually get accepted. But then we did! And not only did we get accepted, the conference committee emailed me to say how excited they were the students would be attending. We were going to Blacksburg. Below are three take-aways from taking 13 teenagers to present at the 40th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA on March 9-12: 1. Kids rise to the occasion. My students prepped and prepared like professionals. I required them to meet with me bi-weekly to show me the progress of their project, and then we had a “dress rehearsal” the week before. They worked so hard. They understood the gravity of the opportunity they were being given, and their presentations were thoughtful, smart, and executed with more grace and poise than many presentations I’ve had to sit though given by adults. They blew everybody away. We were also asked to sit in on a round-table discussion on youth and activism through art, and the authenticity and honesty of my students brought me and the rest of the room to tears. They were rock stars. 2. There is a wealth of educator resources at this conference! Not only did I learn about several new pieces of Appalachian literature (read about Robert Gipe’s novel, Trampoline HERE), but my students and I learned about several incredible programs, organizations, and educational groups who care deeply about and are working on many of the same things we were discussing in our own presentation. And the authors and artists! My students were in the same room as Silas House, Jason Howard, Roger May, and Nikki Giovanni. Roger May is not only a gifted artist, but he is also the director at Appalachian South Folklife and the Looking at Appalachia project, and a generous and kind human. Here he is taking time out of the opening of his own gallery show to answer my students’ questions about his photography. And here is the incomparable Nikki Giovanni. Giovanni was brilliant, funny, honest, and by far one of the highlights for my students. 3. Young people want their voices to be heard. My students had the opportunity to participate in discussions about activism, art, and literature. And because having high school students actively participate in this conference is a bit of an anomaly, they were encouraged to speak up and share their perspectives and opinions. What I noticed was a maturity and a sense of importance settle over my students that I had not previously seen. They reveled in having adults who were not their teachers or parents, care about what they thought. I realized that giving them this opportunity to simply be heard was one of the most important and powerful components of this activity’s success. For more reflections on this wonderful weekend, you can check out my Twitter feed @jessica_salfia, and look for the #ASA2017.
WVCTE is wondering... How do you incorporate ways for your students to share their voices or impact their communities in your classroom?
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Our students live in a world saturated with images. The modern era of television, film, commercials, YouTube, Instagram, and infographics have made it necessary to make visual literacy and visual rhetoric and integral part of our ELA classrooms. And why not? The skills needed to analyze a political cartoon or artwork translate very well language analysis. An artist creates mood with color; a writer creates mood with adjectives. Is there a single figure in the frame? Is there a single idea being expressed in the text? Connecting these skill sets not only prepares our students to enter into a world that will inundate them with visual media, but also makes them stronger readers and writers. In my own classroom, I try to incorporate a visual component into every lesson, but my favorite visual literacy lesson combines poetry, argument, analysis, and two American treasures, Edward Hopper and Joyce Carol Oates. This lesson usually happens well into the school year, after we have laid a foundation for writing and making and supporting claims. I start by asking my students if art “can make an argument.” Student responses here will vary. A lot of students generally say “no”, but a few will say “yes”, and may reference political cartoons, or if they’re really hip, graffiti artists like Banksy. At this point I allow about 10-15 minutes of Socratic style discussion exploring ways that art can be “argument.” I try to lead my students into a conversation that connects author’s purpose to artist’s purpose. Then, I generally provide a few quick examples of photographers or artists who are making a clear claim about something. The iconic "Migrant Mother" photo below is a good example for this early discussion. Most students are familiar with both the photo and its context, and so it’s usually easy to make and then to identify the claims this photographer is making. After this discussion, I display this painting by American painter, Edward Hopper. I set a timer for 5 minutes, and the students are to write down as many observations and/or inferences about the painting as they can. When the timer dings, I then tell them that the name of the painting is Nighthawks and it was painted in 1942. I give them another minute or two here to add to or clarify any of their observations. Students are then put in groups of 3 or 4. They have 15 minutes to share their observations and/or inferences, and decide as a group what claim(s) the artist is making. I usually leave the painting up during this time. When time is up, each group must share what conclusions they came to about the painting’s claim(s), and support this with evidence from the “text” (the painting). This introduction to the lesson usually 1-2 class days. The next day, I pass out copies of the poem “Nighthawks, 1942” by Joyce Carol Oates. Below is the full text of the poem. This poem is rich with imagery and figurative language. We read it together, and after we analyze the language effects, I ask the students if Oates has accurately analyzed the painting. Because essentially that is what her poem is—an analysis of Hopper’s artwork. Now, at this point most of our students have been trained to think about analytical writing as only essays and articles. The idea that analysis of a text or artwork can appear in the form of a poem, that you can make a claim about a work in poem form, appeals to them, especially the creative writers. What comes next is the coolest part. I give them a handout of other Hopper paintings. (See the slideshow below.) I use Hopper, not only because of the pairing of Nighthawks with the Oates poem, but because many of Hopper’s paintings are these beautiful, captured moments of time in which Hopper is making a clear claim about humanity, relationships, or the America of the 1940s and 50s. Students then have an exercise in imitation. They have to pick one of the Hopper paintings in the handout, and write a poem that analyzes the painting in the same way Oates analyzes Nighthawks. Their poem of analysis must be of comparable length to Oates’ poem, and they must imitate Joyce Carol Oates’ style, form, and language effects. I generally give them 2-3 “imitation goals” as well. For example in her poem, Oates references the female figure’s “pouty lip-sticked mouth.” We would have identified and discussed the adjectivalization of the word “lip-stick,” and one of their tasks in their own poems would be to make a noun that is not normally an adjective, an adjective. This poetry writing part of the lesson can be done in a day or in several days. I then have students share their poems in a Poetry Coffee House session. We have hot cocoa and cookies, I play music from the 40s and 50s, and as each student shares his or her poem, I project the painting the poem is analyzing on the board behind the student as he or she shares. It is by far one of the students’ favorite lessons of the year. And it’s one of my favorites because I get to show my students the connections between so many important skills: visual literacy, making clear claims, analysis, poetry, and critical thinking. This lesson is also the “kick-off” to their first research essay in which students pick a piece of art housed at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. that they think is presenting an argument, and write their first formal research essay. In their research essays, students must present the argument they think the artist is making in the painting or photograph, then support this “claim about claim” with research and their own analysis. This also provides my students with an opportunity to spend the day in the National Gallery of Art. (And who doesn’t like a field trip, right?) So WVCTE is wondering… What types of visual literacy lessons do you use in your classroom? How do you connect visual literacy and visual rhetoric to writing? And how can you use and adapt this lesson for your own classroom? Jessica Salfia teaches AP English, English 11, Mythology, and Creative Writing at Spring Mills High School in Berkeley County, WV and also serves as an adjunct professor at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV. Jessica is the President of WVCTE, an author, a poet, and was selected as the 2016 Berkeley County Teacher of the Year. When she's not teaching, writing, or rescuing shelter dogs, Jessica is probably with her three lovely children and husband at a baseball game. You can check out what Jessica is doing in her classroom by visiting www.salfiaenglishclass.weebly.com, or by following her on Twitter, @jessica_salfia. By Jeni Gearhart I like color (and coloring books but that is beside the point). My classroom is covered in color from student projects. On occasion, my teaching wardrobe is too colorful. I say all of this because in the last few years, I have discovered the importance of visual argument in the classroom. Much of this new love of visual has come from AP workshops and creative teacher friends that I follow on Twitter. So, why is this important? If we use visuals well, it can become more than making a project “pretty”. It should be a part of the argument itself. In an increasingly visual society, students should be learning how to use the medium well (and understand how others are using it to influence them). Here are two things that I used this year that worked well. The first is low tech (hello art supplies!). The second is high tech but can be managed with art supplies if computers are inaccessible. Literary Fever Chart I originally read about this strategy in Write Like This by Kelly Gallagher (side note: if you haven’t read this book, find it now. His books are gold mines of great ideas). Essentially, a fever chart is a quote analysis that morphs into an analysis of a large theme in a text. It takes its original concept from medical fever charts documenting an individual’s changes in body temperature. For our purposes, it charts a character’s development. I used this in both my AP Language class and my sophomore class this year. In both cases, the students really got into it. This strategy works best to analyze the development of a theme over the course of a story, specifically in relation to an individual character. In my lesson from The Scarlet Letter, students chose one of the main characters (Hester, Dimmesdale, or Chillingworth) and charted the character’s move toward (or attitude towards) redemption (good) and damnation (evil). Here are the basic instructions:
We did this over the course of a few days at the end of the novel, but I think it would be even better to introduce at the beginning of the novel and carry through. Variations could involve tracking the use of a particular symbol or even a particular kind of word. I’ve also had students chart multiple characters on the same chart. Why I like this:
Infographics Most simply, an infographic is a visual image such as a chart or diagram used to represent information or data. They use text combined with symbols and intentional color/sizing. This has become a pretty prevalent visual medium. Here is an example if you’re not sure what I’m talking about. I first started thinking about ways to use infographics after reading this article a couple of years ago. I experimented with some low tech options and then discovered some great websites that make this project stand out. I wanted the infographics to be more than a poster project. They had to create a visual argument. As such, I have a few very basic requirements when we create infographics:
Read more about my students' infographics after the jump... By Jessica Salfia Vocabulary. It can be the worst, amiright? It’s been one of the most polarizing topics in many of the workshops and professional development seminars I’ve been in. Most teachers believe it’s difficult to teach well, and many teachers I’ve talked to about teaching vocabulary have two main complaints: it takes up way too much time, and the kids don’t really learn the words in the long term, memorizing them only long enough to pass a quiz. But it’s also so, so easy. Kids are trained to grab those worksheets, flip to the glossary, and copy down those definitions. And they can do this with little to no critical thinking. Heck, they can do this with little to no thinking period. It’s automatic and painless, and this can be appealing to both teachers and students. A nice little break for everybody, right? But getting stuck in a vocab rut can be dangerous. Those quickly copied and memorized definitions often are not retained, and the way words work and move in language is often not learned at all when using “traditional” vocab methods. So how do we do it? How do we expand vocabularies, and get kids to really own a word and its meaning? After all, much of the ACT and SAT is in fact vocabulary and context. This is integral part of our English curriculums. I’ve seen a gamut of ways to teach vocab words. Some teachers have tried songs, others memorization. Some enterprising teachers get creative with cartoons like the one below:
Your Mission? Operation Vocab!
(insert Mission Impossible soundtrack here) I use a version of this activity at least once or twice each nine weeks with various texts. HERE is a sample handout I used this year with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Handsomest Drowned Man in the World. Here's how it works: After reading the short story, essay, excerpt, poem, or article you are studying, have students identify five words in the piece they did not know before. These can be words they have seen before, but are unsure of their meaning, but preferably they need to pick out words they have never encountered before. Have students copy these down onto a handout or on a sheet of notebook paper. Divide students into groups of 3 or 4. Each student will be assigned a role (with a catchy name, of course)-
After students are grouped and roles are assigned, students will share their vocab lists with each other. If anyone in the group can define a word for another member of the group, he or she should do so now. This is a 5-10 minute block of time in which the goal is simply to have conversations within the group about the words they didn’t know. Some sample questions for them to use in this discussion are-
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