The best days in class come from spontaneously flowering lessons and outpourings of joy.  I want to share one of those days with you. 

My students have been working on a Musicology Project (see directions here)--in short, a project where they write about songs that mean something to them and the lyrics that strike a particular chord.  The project serves several purposes: it lets me get to know them; it gives me a formative writing assessment; it teaches them to cite properly; I can use it to teach narrative technique; they have to use evidence (story) to back up their points; it allows for a discussion of the importance of storytelling to humanity in general. 

Today was the day they started presenting, but the real genesis of today's success appeared yesterday. 

Some time ago, I read an article about a teacher having his/her students partner up after writing personal narratives, and then presenting each others' stories to the class.  But they had this twist--the students had to read the stories out loud as if the stories were their own, keeping them in first person. So, if Cheryl was my partner, and her story was about leaving Seattle for the last time, I would have to tell the story to the class as if it were me leaving Seattle, even though I have never been there. (I have no idea where I read this. If someone reading this article recognizes the source, please email me and tell me, so I can link back to it.)

That idea was in the back of my mind yesterday when my students commenced their typical caterwauling about not wanting to present in front of their peers. The synapses started to connect, however, when one girl asked Can we just present someone else's? Normally, the reflex answer is No, but this time, remembering the article, I agreed.  We have been working on stereotypes/archetypes anyway, and what better way to confront stereotypes than to literally make students tell stories from someone else's point of view, especially if that somebody was sitting in the room with them?

Here were the specs for their presentations, as given to them: 

• You should read their story to the class. I’d prefer it to be one of the longer stories. You MUST read it aloud to us in FIRST PERSON.
• Play a 30s clip of the song-- a non-profane part.
• Answer, in writing, the following:
• How does it feel to read the other person’s story in the first person?
• What stereotypical type of teen did you think your partner was before reading their story? (prep, goth, jock, frat boy/sorority girl wannabe, rich kid, nerd, drama queen, etc.)
• How does the story you read about them confirm or contradict the stereotype?
• How did your opinion/perception of your partner/classmates change based on these presentations?

And dude, did they ever get into this.  I had to talk them out of doing impersonations of each other during presentations (because that could get a little nasty--they are 15).  

Today's presentations included "Why Georgia" (John Mayer), "100 Years" (Five For Fighting), "1000 Miles" (Vanessa Carlton), and "We Are Young" (fun.).  "Why Georgia" was first, and the guy presenting it sang along to the clip (which I have on video, but cannot share because he's not 18). He got the high notes and everything.  When we got to the others, though, lots of people started singing along.  And this wasn't one of those "a couple people singing under their breath in the corner."  This was a "ten-to-twelve people singing together, sort of on key, in unison, not under their breath."  People laughed at each other in a gentle way; they smiled, they acted silly. 

Man. 

I watched a class come together as a unit today, and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. 

This is the kind of event that can't be measured on a standardized test. Someday, when these kids are grown up, they might remember the rules for citing song lyrics in a paragraph. But they will, every single one of them, remember the day they all sang "We Are Young" together, even the people who hate the song because it has been massively overplayed. 

This is the kind of day that #coflip is all about.  This is community. 

(Note: I will write a follow-up in a few days about the stereotypes part of the activity; not enough have presented yet for them to do this part.)

The issue presented itself early this semester. I have a class, 95 minutes, last period of the day. Sophomore English.  On the first day of this class, I had students create a "reading timeline," where they mapped out their respective reading histories--books they loved, books they hated, books they hated at first but grew to love, etc., along with how old they were when they encountered these texts. 

Over half of the students wrote things like these:

I haven't ever read a book I've liked.
I haven't read a book all the way through, for any class (or by myself) since third grade. 
The last book I read was Green Eggs and Ham.

And there were not ANY students whose "joy peaks" --the highest concentrations of books they read that they liked--weren't centered around 2nd-4th grade. 

As someone who loves reading, this is heartbreaking. 

As someone whose job it is to get these students to read on a tenth grade level and pass an End of Course test with AP/college level analysis types of questions, this is, well, whatever the next step is past heartbreaking. 

Everyone knows that the way to get kids to read better is to get them to read more. But it is difficult to get student buy-in for our impending reading-more-and-then-learning-to-analyze-on-a-college-level project unless they experience some success on the front side. I've had classes in my past that have completely shut down for good (or for weeks, at least) when I have foisted something on them that is above their heads.  So Cheryl and I came up with a solution.

Saved By The Bell may well be in the top ten of cheesiest shows in the history of television.  The show, of course, is centered around the shenanigans of high school friends and rivals, particularly Zach Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselar), probably the most unlikely casting of a putative "bad boy" ever.  The storylines are pretty ridiculous, even campy in places, and certainly not true-to-life for our current high schoolers.  

But they do have straightforward plots, even in episodes where they have multiple storylines. They are 22 minutes long, perfect for end-of-the-day attention spans.  The characters are perfectly archetypal: the prep; the jock; the woman-chaser; the irredeemable boy geek; the totally secretly hot girl geek; the princess; the cheerleader; the out-of-touch principal who tries so hard to be hip.  Teachers in all their passion and pedagogical furor couldn't intentionally design more perfect subjects for studies of plot and archetype. 

Remember, the students in this class haven't read a book (or at least haven't been engaged with one) in 7-8 years. But they are constantly engaged with visual media and visual storytelling--movies, TV shows, and YouTube clips.  So, Cheryl and I designed a unit to semi-secretly teach analytical skills with simple sitcoms like Saved By the Bell.

Here's how it's worked so far (I used SBTB, but any straightforward older sitcom, like Full House or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air would work): 

Day 1: 
(We started this day with a journal/discussion about what makes a good story.)

Watch an episode. Have students divided into 3 groups, each following one conflict/plot line.  Have each group write down three plot points: the beginning (how it's introduced); the climax (where it gets as bad as it is ever going to); and the resolution. Students then shared, first within their own groups, and then with other groups, so everyone got three plot points in three different plots.  Simple. But they felt successful.  

Day 2:
Watch another episode. I had students each write down the same three plot points (beginning, climax, end) for all of the subplots happening--in this case, there were 4.  Then, I gave them a rough paragraph outline to fill in for ONE of the four plot lines.  So, day two, we went from just recognizing plot to turning that recognition into a infant piece of plot summary and analysis. 

Day 3:
We started this day with a journal about stereotypes of teenagers--things they see in their own lives, and things they see in the media, particularly on TV shows. 

Then we watched one final episode and wrote a plot paragraph, summarizing one of the storylines.  Then, we moved into labeling the character stereotypes and deciding whether the portrayal of teenagers in the show was realistic (they decided Absolutely Not).  

Ultimately, we are driving towards the students being able to discuss things like author motivation (why did they choose to tell the story in this way?) and indirect characterization (what can we learn about these people by watching what they do and say?).  

I have no idea whether this will ultimately be successful.  I do know that I have students that haven't felt successful in English in a long time, and they are experiencing success with this.  They are learning analytical skills without even knowing that is what they are doing.  And when we build that success to a climax with more complicated shows and characters, the idea is that they will be strong enough analysts to be able to transfer those skills to texts on the page.  

I feel like we're making progress. That's enough for me for now.