Driving Without a Map: How Kendrick Lamar's 'This Is Bigger Than Music' is a Location

I. Exposition

In the late 1980s, I disconnected from television, turning it off. Literally. My husband still watched his beloved Giants, on Sundays, but beyond that, our lone TV stood quiet in the corner. Yes, we flirted with Twin Peaks sometime in the early 90s, but it wouldn’t be until 2015 when Rob so sick from stage 4 lung cancer ‘discovered’ The West Wing and we momentarily engaged with TV again. We binged as Rob grew sicker and Donald Trump, that brass New Yorker, entered what seemed then an improbable race. So seeing myself watch and rewatch Kendrick Lamar’s 13-minute halftime show stunner this past week was a bit of a surprise. 

I spent Sunday evening as I do most Sundays talking books, politics, and life with a group of dear friends in a book club. The Super Bowl and its halftime show were not on my radar.  But the next morning, I read a post by a former colleague. She wrote how her daughter (who I truly hope to vote for someday) had sent her a completed lesson plan for her to use with high school students based on Lamar's Super Bowl performance. "Mommy you have to." 

So after hearing a lot of buzz about Lamar's performance, an artist frankly I knew only by name, I figured 15 minutes on the treadmill watching the show would work well. An hour later I was still walking, and rewatching. 

II. Subject

Last week, I read a small snippet on Dr. Victoria Williamson's blog about the cognitive importance of listening to new music as we age. It fascinated me. She writes,

“Listening to new music as we age provides the brain with a cognitive challenge that activates multiple, simultaneous neural systems. The benefits of music listening will never compare to the enchantments we get from actively performing music, but, nevertheless, new music listening activates areas of the brain from root to tip, from early auditory processing centres through to the outer reaches of our context.”

Listening to new music is good for us—that is, anyone beyond their teenage years. We tend as we age to deeply appreciate (regardless of quality) the music of our adolescence and early 20s. Neural nostalgia. The music of our youth is tightly bound with experiences. We tend to favor the familiar, such as that beloved song played and replayed on the way to and from school. Or in my youth, that one song my girlfriends and I waited to hear on a cheap AM transistor on the beach. We screamed each time it came on as if we had wished it into existence. Or that evening in Central Park when the concert we waited so long for got rained out, and we made a mad dash to the subway singing too loudly the songs we came to hear. Or maybe for you, it's the prom song, or the songs that followed you to college, or like me, the music that played at the first funeral of a too-young friend who had died. All it takes are the first few notes and memories flood us. The familiar is a comfort. But sometimes the familiar is also too comfortable.

I was thinking about how listening to new music breaks patterns and increases perspective. But doing that requires a modicum of discomfort. After watching the halftime show several times, I wanted to know more as there were holes in my understanding. I wanted a map that could locate what I was hearing with what I knew. But to understand also required a bridge. Whereas I grasped bits and pieces of what Lamar was rapping, and appreciated the choreography, lighting, and symbolism of America built on and by Black bodies, I wanted the full gestalt. So I read a few reviews a details became clearer. No longer was this performance an outline, but rather a map of our history.  Lamar's pronouncement, "40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music" connects the performance with Black history which is US history--and perhaps it is there in that slim space that some discomfort arises for some of the 133+ million people who watched. Yes, this is bigger than music. This is our collective history. 

III. Countersubject

Online opinions of the performance seemed to fall into two distinct camps that we might label, Blue and Red. (We are nothing if we are not tragically consistent.) For many, myself included, this performance was thought-provoking, re-affirming art.  For others, it was culturally affirming. We are here. Our history will not be erased.  Some commented on how it was storytelling, protest, playful, and necessary.

In a NJ newspaper, the reviewer, Bobby Olivier, wrote this: 

“… While Lamar is certainly one of hip-hop’s great minds and typically a blistering performer, the 37-year-old emcee came up small here: serviceable at best, pedestrian at worst…What I would’ve given for some older jams like “m.A.A.d City,” “Swimming Pools,” or “Alright.”

Bobby wanted nostaligia. Like Bobby, many wanted the remembered experiences they had at other halftime shows. The familiar. An America that was less truthful. That was not entertaining, became an ironic refame from many. 

For others, the commentary was less dressed up and I directly quote from several posted reactions:  “It was boring and offensive, a waste of time, DEI halftime show, This makes no sense, Zero diversity.”

Dr. Williamson explains that 

"Listening to new music is a challenge. It is like driving in a new area without a map – our attention is all over the place, faced with unfamiliar input, and we struggle to appreciate our surroundings when faced with the challenge of constantly unfolding novelty. It can be overwhelming to our brain since it cannot rely on memory."

Are some of the more negative experiences with the halftime show about driving without a map? For those and all of us who acknowledge that we all have moments when it might feel easier to turn away than engage, how do we collectively move from the too-quick response and dismissal to dwelling?

IV. Answer

With what bridge do we build that might join land and landscape be?  All the vitriol and hate speech that floods our days have ramifications, as does the targeting by our President of vulnerable populations.  Such hate speech has already resulted in deaths. 

Martin Heidegger in a powerful essay, "Building Dwelling Thinking" writes, "But only something that is itself a location can make space for a site."  

Be a location. Not the location, but a location.

Our practice, like Lamar's art, cannot simply be about using our energy to return to a place we have been. The mythology of making America great again is predicated on that belief. Such desire amplifies the separation we feel and leaves too many of us hungry, frustrated, and unforgiving.

How brave Kendrick Lamar was last Sunday to trust us to look beyond the spectacle of entertainment and the chiding voice of Uncle Sam warning of failure, of "too much ghetto" so that we could feel, think, and witness. This was an aesthetic that required our response. 

Let us learn to hear beyond the nostalgia and familiar tune.

Performing Joseph Bruchac's The Scattered Stars: Choral Reading & Comprehension

This poem is from: Bruchac, Joseph.  (1995). “The Scattered Stars.” In The Earth Under Sky Bear's Feet:  Native American Poems of the Land.  New York:  Philomel Books. (Cochiti Pueblo Southwest)

Choral Reading 

1. Read the poem aloud. Let the children hear the poem several times.
2. Explain to students that they will be reading the poem together. Tell them that choral reading is simply reading in unison under the direction of a leader.
3. Assign speaking roles based on interest and capacity and have students highlight their roles.
4. Practice and practice some more until the poem can be read with expression.
5. Consider audio recording the performance with Voice Recorder (or another app of your choosing) and making it available on iTunes--or you could make a podcast (see how here). 

           

When Teachers Were Trusted to Teach

High School Students Documenting Happenings at Occupy Wall Street (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

I. Teaching and Time

As a middle and high school English teacher, the students I taught passed the state ELA assessments each year. I can recall none who did not.  But those were simpler days, as I was afforded the time to teach and the discretion to fully determine the content of what I taught.  I was able to build continuity across the year alongside my students as my teaching days were largely uninterrupted.  I can recall one time while teaching that an administrator took to the PA system for most of the day calling for classes to come to the auditorium for pictures. It was a litany of interruptions.  This was such an anomaly that towards the end of the day I sent a senior to the office carrying a white t-shirt with our signatures saying we had surrendered.  In those days, teaching was a respected act.

What people who do not teach don't readily understand is that time matters, not just in the number of days allotted to teaching, but also in the continuity of days. Contrary to many of the teaching evaluation rubrics that situate each lesson as a day, I rarely fit learning into a single class period. Rather our learning flowed more like a natural river, less contained. Learning crossed days adding up to what I could not have named at the beginning.  It was iterative. A learning target that matched those outcomes would have been difficult to state as learning was more about the knowledge the community composed, less about any one self.

A day's interruption cost more than a lesson.

II. Testing in Miami-Dade Public Schools

I was thinking about this a few days ago as my husband read the litany of tests that students from the Miami-Dade Public Schools will take this year.  (Here's a link to the testing calendar. You might want to sit down as the testing calendar runs across three pages.)

My students were assessed daily, but tested rarely. There's so much to be learned from students' work products and conversations that I found myself more often pouring over kids' work wondering what caused x to do y and so on--rather than making paper and pencil tests. Students took on assessment as well, establishing goals and measuring progress.  Leaving assessment matters in teachers'  and students' hands though is not the norm in the United States and it seems certainly not the case in Miami-Dade.

Students there will begin the year sitting for the Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading Assessment (FAIR). FAIR is a progress monitoring assessment that measures reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, word recognition, and syntax knowledge for students in grades 3-10 (11 & 12 as needed) and a separate set of instruments for K-2 children. The 3-10 manual explaining the assessments is 40-pages. By sitting alongside a child and listening to him/her reading, conversing, studying written and art products--I learned about each child.  I can't help but wonder if the researchers who created the progress monitoring assessments for Florida realized how many other assessments the kids would also be taking, especially children performing at levels 1 or 2 on previous assessments.  For those kids the endless series of tests is daunting and disruptive.

Students in grades 3-11  take the FAIR assessment in the fall and they also take District ELA Writing Pre-Test during the same time period. At the close of these assessments it's time for the Interim Assessment Tests (fall) for these subjects:  English/Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry, Biology 1, United States History, and Civics. In the middle of this testing, third graders also take the Grade 3 Mid-Year Promotion assessment. This is part of the series of assessments that include portfolios, which are administered beginning in January. When my husband read this aloud to me I joked that the only thing the kids could put in their portfolio would be tests. Well the joke was more prophetic than funny. The portfolio looks to be nothing more than a collection of reading passage-based tests with the requisite number of narrative and informational texts accounted for a la CCSS and aligned to benchmark standards.  Here's a link to the 26-page portfolio handbook.

This is hardly a portfolio.

III. Making is Different from Taking

I'll stop here as I don't want to belabor the obvious and I want to make two points:

1. the amount of testing disrupts learning in significant ways--ways that those who promulgate testing schedules like Miami-Dade fail to realize; and  
2. what counts as curriculum is not emergent nor can it easily be negotiated as the testing schedule drives instruction. The actual real world is kept apart from school learning when the year is paced and tests are pre-established. A look at the third grade 'portfolio' shows that.

When I think about the students I taught and why they did well there are a number of reasons. 

1. First, they were most often well-cared for children whose housing, medical and dietary needs were met consistently. I realize that since Bush II many of the ed-reform pundits dismiss the well fed child who has a home and whose medical (including dental) needs are met, but those of us who actually work with children know all too well that when such basic needs are consistently unmet, children most often struggle to learn prescribed lessons at school. They are too busy surviving in the richest of countries.
2. A second reason students did well on these state measures is that they more often than not showed up at school able to read. The students who did not, did not do as well. What happens in K-1 most often shapes academic achievement.
3. A third reason is that most students were taught by competent teachers for years before I received them as students and this learning mattered and could matter as the curriculum I taught was one the students and I co-determined. I capitalized on what the students had learned previously as they determined curriculum. One year I had an eighth grade class who decided to run the class as clubs.  Composing can be folded into lots of experiences. We did not need to keep the current world at bay.
4. Students were fairly motivated to learn given that their agency was prized.  
5. Add to that: Uninterrupted time to teach; freedom to compose curriculum as complicated conversations, freedom to collaborate and co-teach, freedom to represent student achievement and the timelines for achievement in idiosyncratic ways; and permission to err repeatedly, repeatedly.

The most important reason the kids did well is that teachers were trusted to teach without having to be perfect.  I learned the value of risk-taking. We were very much a community in which learning was exciting, expected, and desired. I worked with significant educators who mentored me during my early days of teaching. I can recall one observation a superintendent conducted in which I asked 70+ questions in 60 minutes. It was hardly a shining moment. I was a new teacher and at that time teaching was more about what I was doing and less about the learners.  In lieu of a written evaluation, the superintendent invited me to co-teach.  And so we revised the unit I had been teaching about economic scarcity and The Grapes of Wrath and co-taught for a week. He wanted me to learn and believed I was teachable. I learned something about the well-placed question and even more about observing learning.  This experience helped me to begin the important shift from focusing solely on my teaching to focusing on the interplay between teaching and learning.

And so, our value as teachers was not limited to a single state test measure. Value was not determined by student growth objectives. Value was not a number based on a series of evaluations. We were able to teach and learn alongside students and our peers as there was a belief that "people are competent, they have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge" (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005, pp. ix-x). We worked as members of a settled household.

IV. The Matter of Trust & Complexity

It is the absence of trust that teachers can and will do good work that is most daunting, most damning for learners. This is what the ed-reformers simply do not understand or perhaps do not care to understand. In lieu of trusting teachers, learners will suffer.

Instead of trusting teachers to teach and assess, testing calendars and pacing charts like the one from Miami-Dade are imposed. Some years ago I was invited by a central office to confer with the curriculum and instruction staff about their ELA program. There was quite a crowd that afternoon and the assistant superintendent showed me pages of pacing schedules for their 200+ schools that listed what was to be taught, how it was to be taught, and when what was to be learned would be tested. The calendar ran for 40 weeks. Every minute was accounted for.  It was very neat, very orderly, and so very wrong.  I asked why they wanted to plot the year as they did and they talked about poor academic performance and the need to make sure teachers and principals did what was required. These educators posited teaching as a complicated endeavor, not a complex one. 

I suggested that such tight control would lead to less learning as a simple truth, although perhaps uncomfortable,  is that central office cannot create teaching competency through pacing and testing calendars, through purchased products, by retaining children in third and/or seventh grades as a matter of policy, or by mandating homework, home visits, particular lesson or unit plans, etc.

What rests in teachers' and principals' hands deserves our notice, understanding and respect. Anything less will harm children.

I was largely dismissed by the group. After visiting central office and after an opportunity to study with a new 2nd grade teacher, Ms. Sheridan (pseudonym), I would write about professional learning and how it is critically different than professional development. At that time, the school where Ms. Sheridan taught was made to use the Harper Trophies reading program and to follow the 40-week pacing and testing schedule, regardless of what the assessment data yielded.  The march to the end of the 40 weeks was uninterrupted by meaning making.  (Excerpt below)

from Dressing the Corpse (M.A. Reilly, 2009)

In thinking about the countless Ms. Sheridan's I've met, I want to say that we are more than technicians who act out some central office plan.  Ms. Sheridan would have benefitted to have worked in a place that was more like the settled household I was afforded as a beginning teacher and less like an hourly employee at a factory.  The irony is that she will be evaluated as a teacher and the professional environment which shapes her work as teacher will be situated as a neutral entity. This is such folly. (See excerpt below)

from Dressing the Corpse (M.A. Reilly, 2009)

V. A Final Thought

Teaching is a complex act that needs to be supported, not vilified. Investing in teacher work will benefit our children. 

The Party

Screen Shot of Karen Wilson

The Party

             - Paul Laurence Dunbar

Dey had a gread big pahty down to Tom’s de othah night;
Was I dah? You bet! I nevah in my life see sich a sight;
All de folks f’om fou’ plantations was invited, an’ dey come,
Dey come troopin’ thick ez chillun when dey hyeahs a fife an’ drum.
Evahbody dressed deir fines’—Heish yo’ mouf an’ git away,
Ain’t seen no sich fancy dressin’ sence las’ quah’tly meetin’ day;
Gals all dressed in silks an’ satins, not a wrinkle ner a crease,
Eyes a–battin’, teeth a–shinin’, haih breshed back ez slick ez grease;
Sku’ts all tucked an’ puffed an’ ruffled, evah blessed seam an’ stitch;
Ef you ‘d seen ‘em wif deir mistus, could n’t swahed to which was which.
Men all dressed up in Prince Alberts, swaller–tails ‘u’d tek yo’ bref!
I cain’t tell you nothin’ ‘bout it, y’ ought to seen it fu’ yo’se’f.
Who was dah? Now who you askin’? How you ‘spect I gwine to know?
You mus’ think I stood an’ counted evahbody at de do.’
Ole man Babah’s house–boy Isaac, brung dat gal, Malindy Jane,
Huh a–hangin’ to his elbow, him a–struttin’ wif a cane;
My, but Hahvey Jones was jealous! seemed to stick him lak a tho’n;
But he laughed with Viney Cahteh, tryin’ ha’d to not let on,
But a pusson would ‘a’ noticed f’om de d’rection of his look,
Dat he was watchin’ ev’ry step dat Ike an’ Lindy took.
Ike he foun’ a cheer an’ asked huh: “Won’t you set down?” wif a smile,
An’ she answe’d up a–bowin’, “Oh, I reckon ‘t ain’t wuth while.”
Dat was jes’ fu’ Style, I reckon, ‘cause she sot down jes’ de same,
An’ she stayed dah ‘twell he fetched huh fu’ to jine some so’t o’ game;
Den I hyeahd huh sayin’ propah, ez she riz to go away,
“Oh, you raly mus’ excuse me, fu’ I hardly keers to play.”
But I seen huh in a minute wif de othahs on de flo’,
An’ dah wasn’t any one o’ dem a–playin’ any mo’;
Comin’ down de flo’ a–bowin’ an’ a–swayin’ an’ a–swingin’,
Puttin’ on huh high–toned mannahs all de time dat she was singin’:
“Oh, swing Johnny up an’ down, swing him all aroun’,
Swing Johnny up an’ down, swing him all aroun’,
Oh, swing Johnny up an’ down, swing him all aroun’
Fa’ you well, my dahlin’.”
Had to laff at ole man Johnson, he ’s a caution now, you bet—
Hittin’ clost onto a hunderd, but he ’s spry an’ nimble yet;
He ‘lowed how a–so’t o’ gigglin’, “I ain’t ole, I ‘ll let you see,
D’ain’t no use in gittin’ feeble, now you youngstahs jes’ watch me,”
An’ he grabbed ole Aunt Marier—weighs th’ee hunderd mo’ er less,
An’ he spun huh ‘roun’ de cabin swingin’ Johnny lak de res’.
Evahbody laffed an’ hollahed: “Go it! Swing huh, Uncle Jim!”
An’ he swung huh too, I reckon, lak a youngstah, who but him.
Dat was bettah ‘n young Scott Thomas, tryin’ to be so awful smaht.
You know when dey gits to singin’ an’ dey comes to dat ere paht:

“In some lady’s new brick house,
In some lady’s gyahden.
Ef you don’t let me out, I will jump out,
So fa’ you well, my dahlin’.”
Den dey ’s got a circle ‘roun’ you, an’ you’s got to break de line;
Well, dat dahky was so anxious, lak to bust hisse’f a–tryin’;
Kep’ on blund’rin’ ‘roun’ an’ foolin’ ‘twell he giv’ one gread big jump,
Broke de line, an lit head–fo’most in de fiah–place right plump;
Hit ‘ad fiah in it, mind you; well, I thought my soul I ‘d bust,
Tried my best to keep f’om laffin’, but hit seemed like die I must!
Y’ ought to seen dat man a–scramblin’ f’om de ashes an’ de grime.
Did it bu’n him! Sich a question, why he did n’t give it time;
Th’ow’d dem ashes and dem cindahs evah which–a–way I guess,
An’ you nevah did, I reckon, clap yo’ eyes on sich a mess;
Fu’ he sholy made a picter an’ a funny one to boot,
Wif his clothes all full o’ ashes an’ his face all full o’ soot.
Well, hit laked to stopped de pahty, an’ I reckon lak ez not
Dat it would ef Tom’s wife, Mandy, had n’t happened on de spot,
To invite us out to suppah—well, we scrambled to de table,
An’ I ‘d lak to tell you ‘bout it—what we had—but I ain’t able,
Mention jes’ a few things, dough I know I had n’t orter,
Fu’ I know ‘t will staht a hank’rin’ an’ yo’ mouf ‘ll ‘mence to worter.
We had wheat bread white ez cotton an’ a egg pone jes like gol’,
Hog jole, bilin’ hot an’ steamin’ roasted shoat an’ ham sliced cold—
Look out! What’s de mattah wif you? Don’t be fallin’ on de flo’;
Ef it ’s go’n’ to ‘fect you dat way, I won’t tell you nothin’ mo’.
Dah now—well, we had hot chittlin’s—now you ’s tryin’ ag’in to fall,
Cain’t you stan’ to hyeah about it? S’pose you’d been an’ seed it all;
Seed dem gread big sweet pertaters, layin’ by de possum’s side,
Seed dat coon in all his gravy, reckon den you ‘d up and died!
Mandy ‘lowed “you all mus’ ‘scuse me, d’ wa’n’t much upon my she’ves,
But I’s done my bes’ to suit you, so set down an’ he’p yo’se’ves.”
Tom, he ‘lowed: “I don’t b’lieve in ‘pologisin’ an’ perfessin’,
Let ‘em tek it lak dey ketch it. Eldah Thompson, ask de blessin’.”
Wish you ‘d seed dat colo’ed preachah cleah his th’oat an’ bow his head;
One eye shet, an’ one eye open,—dis is evah wud he said:
“Lawd, look down in tendah mussy on sich generous hea’ts ez dese;
Make us truly thankful, amen. Pass dat possum, ef you please!”
Well, we eat and drunk ouah po’tion, ‘twell dah was n’t nothin’ lef,
An’ we felt jes’ like new sausage, we was mos’ nigh stuffed to def!
Tom, he knowed how we ‘d be feelin’, so he had de fiddlah ‘roun’,
An’ he made us cleah de cabin fu’ to dance dat suppah down.
Jim, de fiddlah, chuned his fiddle, put some rosum on his bow,
Set a pine box on de table, mounted it an’ let huh go!
He’s a fiddlah, now I tell you, an’ he made dat fiddle ring,
‘Twell de ol’est an’ de lamest had to give deir feet a fling.
Jigs, cotillions, reels an’ breakdowns, cordrills an’ a waltz er two;
Bless yo’ soul, dat music winged ‘em an’ dem people lak to flew.
Cripple Joe, de old rheumatic, danced dat flo’ f’om side to middle,
Th’owed away his crutch an’ hopped it; what’s rheumatics ‘ginst a fiddle?
Eldah Thompson got so tickled dat he lak to los’ his grace,
Had to tek bofe feet an’ hol’ dem so ’s to keep ‘em in deir place.
An’ de Christuns an’ de sinnahs got so mixed up on dat flo’,
Dat I don’t see how dey ‘d pahted ef de trump had chanced to blow.
Well, we danced dat way an’ capahed in de mos’ redic’lous way,
‘Twell de roostahs in de bahnyard cleahed deir th’oats an’ crowed fu’ day.
Y’ ought to been dah, fu’ I tell you evahthing was rich an’ prime,
An’ dey ain’t no use in talkin’, we jes had one scrumptious time!

Unpacking the Common Core State Standards: Reading/Performing/Writing Yeats

The Golden Apple Tree by Arthur Rackham (from a book of  fairy tales, 1853)

In order to better understand the middle school ELA Common Core State Standards, deconstructing the actions taken when engaging with a literary text can helpful.  In this post,  a series of performance and analysis tasks are explored and this is followed by examining the CCSS in order to see which of the standards were attended to. One of the 'model' texts included in the Common Core is William Butler Yeat's poem, "The Song of the Wandering Aengus."

Note: This post is done in preparation for work I will be doing with literacy coaches in Manhattan.

I. Entering the Literary Text 

1. Hearing the Poem



2.  Hearing/Reading the Poem



3. Examine the image, The Golden Apple Tree, that is at the top of this post.  Tell your partner one or two ways that you can connect the image with the Yeat's poem.


Talk with a partner: How are these performances (audio/video and still image) similar? Different? 


II. Dwelling Inside the Poem


4. Visualizing the Text: Slideshare

Visualizing Meaning

View more presentations from Mary Ann Reilly

6. Chorally Performing the Poem: Slideshare
Note: I will audio tape the performances so you have a record.

Choral Reading

View more presentations from Mary Ann Reilly

7. Annotating the Poem

Here are some examples of ways that others have annotated a poem.
Heaney's Digging.
Out of the Dusk
Annotating the short story Miss Brill

An annotation of a poem are the marginal notes you make while reading and rereading a poem (or any text). For our work, I have given you a few questions to guide this annotation.

Materials Needed:
Copy of the poem (You may want to download this to your computer.)
pen/pencil
Internet search engine

1. Read the title: Does it offer a clue as to what the text may be about? Go ahead & note what you think.
2. Read the whole poem.
3. Reread the poem, this time with a pen at hand. As you read, talk back to the poem. Here are some questions to guide you.

• Who is the speaker? 
• What is the speaker's story? Go ahead a write a line or two in the margin for each stanza about what is happening literally.
• What's the tone of the poem? Does the tone change by stanza? If so, how? Go ahead and make some marginal notes.
• What do you notice about the images you make as you read the poem?
• Are there any patterns you notice? Repetition of words, sounds, phrases, image, motifs? 
• Are there lines/stanzas that confuse you?  What are you wondering?
• What do you notice about the word choice? Are there words you wonder about and/or don't know? Highlight them and look them up in an on-line dictionary. What are you wondering?
• Notice the structure of the poem--3 stanzas. Why do you think Yeats divided the poem into three stanzas? Look at the notes you made about each stanza.
• What's a big idea this poem suggests? Does the structure of the poem connect with the big idea you cited? If you were going to only say two words in response to this poem, what might they be? Go ahead and place them in your marginal notes.

Discuss your annotation with a partner. Note similarities and differences between your work.

8. Quick Writing in Response to the Poem

Review the work you have composed:

• visual renderings of the poem, 
• notes you have made in preparation for the choral reading of the poem, 
• audio file of choral reading
• poem annotation

Make a statement about a theme you think is operating in the poem and support your assertion
by citing evidence from the text. Fashion this work into a paragraph.


Part II. Connecting Our Work to Common Core Standards, Grade 8 (Unpacking the Standards)

1. Open this Google Doc of the Common Core Standards for middle school.  Looking at the list of standards for grade 8, highlight any you noticed that we attended to during our work with the Yeats's poem. 
2. Be ready to discuss the Standards we worked on this morning.

With more time we might connect the poem to the following works:

1. This retold version by Patrick McCully of Wandering Aengus Mac Og

While lying asleep one evening Angus was visited by a fair maiden of the Faery named Caer Ibormeith. So taken with her beauty was he that when she disappeared as he woke he could think of no other, the thought of being without her caused him to fall ill, in essence... Love Sick.

Angus enlisted the help of Bodb and together they managed to track her to a Loch where she was living with 149 other maidens each in the form of a swan. Each Swan Maiden was bound by a silver chain, which as in all good tales could only be released by true love.

To gain her love Angus transformed himself into a Swan upon which the chain that held his love broke in two therefore freeing her. Reunited with Caer Ibormeith the lovers flew around Loch Bel Dracon three times singing a song so sweet all who heard it fell asleep for three days.

Angus is known in Celtic Lore as a God of Love and with his Swan Maiden they are said to have returned to Bruig na Boinne, otherwise known as New Grange.

2. This Inquiry Chart.
3. This Grade 8 ELA Curriculum Aligned to NCTE and Common Core State Standards
4. Grade 8 Units of Study from Common Core Mapping: Units 1 - 6

Semiotic Masks: When Visual and Monologue Meet

After participating at the very end of #IdeaChat on Twitter this morning, I was motivated to get painting. So, I was assembling some paint and paper to do a bit work when I came across a book I made a few years ago.  At that time I was a professor and teaching an arts-based literacy course to graduate students that mixed theory with performance.  I was introducing students to studio-based literacy in place of the more traditional workshop methods that I felt had become largely co-opted by premade/commercial units of study and the like. The organicism had been removed. The text, (un)Masked: Semiotic Masks & Monologues, grew out of the course.

The text chronicled just one of the many arts-based engagements that took place that summer. Students created semiotic masks (Albers 2007) and wrote a response based on this initiating prompt: Think about a time of great emotional intensity. After recalling an intense emotional moment, each student studied her face in a mirror and then worked to create a mask using construction paper, raffia, newspaper, beads, watered glue, and different types of clips. When the masks were complete, some students then wrote a brief monologue/poem that they could perform while being masked. Other students worked between the mask making and the writing, moving between the two as they created. I did not establish a single method for the work and so was interested in observing how students composed.

While my students worked, I photographed them (with their permission).  I was thinking about the interplay between being masked and unmasked.

Here are a few images from the book.

I have made masks with children from as young as third grade through high school, using different types methods and materials including papier-mâché.  The goal though has remained the same throughout the projects.  I wanted to demonstrate transmediation (composing through multiple symbol systems) and what happens to learners when we merge the visual with the written and spoken.


Work Cited:
Albers, Peggy. (2007). Finding the artist within: Creating and reading visual texts in the English language arts classroom. Newark, DE: IRA.

Global, Multicultural Poetry Texts (Print and NonPrint) for Grades 7 - 12

1. Anthology
Carlson, Lori Marie & Oscar Hijuelos. 2006. Burnt Sugar Cana Quemada: Contemporary Cuban Poetry in English and Spanish. NY: Free Press.
Carlson, Lori Marie (Ed). 2008. Voices in First Person: Reflections on Latino Identity. Illustrated by Flavio Morais. Photographs by Manuel Rivera-Ortiz. New York: Atheneum.
------------------------. 2005. Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Being Young and Latino in the United States. New York: Henry Holt. 2006.
Godrej, Dinyar. 2009. Fire in the Soul: 100 Poems for Human Rights. Cornwall, UK: New Internationalist.
Michael, Pamela and Robert Hass (Eds.). 2008. River of Words: Young Poets and Artists on the Nature of Things. Milkweed Editions.

Nye, Naomi Shihab. 1998. The Tree is Older than You Are:A Bilingual Gathering of Poems & Stories from Mexico with Paintings by Mexican Artists. New York: Aladdin.


2. Single Author Titles
Herrera, Juan Felipe. 2011. SkateFate. New York: Rayo.
Mora, Pat. 2000. My Own True Name: New and Selected Poems for Young Adults. Illustrated by Anthony Accardo. Minneapolis, MN: Perfection Learning.
Myers, Water Dean. 2008. Here in Harlem: Poems in Many Voices. New York: Holiday House.
Nelson, Marilyn.  2008. The Freedom Business: Including a Narrative of the Life & Adventures of Ventures, a Native of Africa. Art by Deborah Dancy. Asheville, NC: Front Street. 
-------------------. 2005. A Wreath for Emmett Till. Illustrated by Philippe Lardy. NY: Harcourt.
-------------------. 2004. Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem. Asheville, NC: Front Street.
-------------------. 2001 Carver: A Life in Poems. Asheville, NC: Front Street.
Smith, Hope Anita. 2009. Mother Poems. New York: Henry Holt & Co.


3. Historical Novel as Verse
Bryant, Jan. 2009. Ringside, 1925. New York: Yearling. (1925, Dayton, TN, Scopes Trial)
Engle, Margarita. 2011. Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck. New York: Henry Holt. (1510, Cuba)
--------------------. 2009. Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba. New York: Henry Holt. (Holocaust)
Frost, Helen. 2006. The Braid. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (1850s, Highland Clearances)
Hesse, Karen. 2003. Witness. New York: Scholastic. (1924, Ku Klux Klan)
----------------. 1999. Out of the Dust. New York: Scholastic (1930s, Dust Bowl)
Janeczko, Paul B. 2007. Worlds Afire. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick. (1944, circus fire in Hartford, CT)


4. Biography/Fictional Memoir Told in Verse

Engle, Margarita. 2011. The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano. Illustrated by Sean Qualls. New York: SquareFish.
--------------------. 2010. The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba. New York: Henry Holt.

--------------------. 2010. The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom. New York: Square Fish. 
Weatherford, Carole. 2008. Becoming Billie Holiday. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Honesdale, PA: Wordsong.

5. Novel Told in Verse (Middle School 5 - 8)

Burg, Ann E. 2009. All the Broken Pieces. New York: Scholastic.

Frost, Helen. 2004. Spinning through the Universe. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Glenn, Mel. 1999. Who Killed Mr. Chippendale: A Mystery in Poems. New York: Puffin.

-------------. 1997. Jump Ball: A Basketball Season in Poems. New York: Dutton Juvenile.

Grimes, Nikki. 2003. Bronx Masquerade. New York: Speak.

Hemphill. Stephanie. 2001. Stop Pretending What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. New York: HarperTeen.

Johnson, Angela. 1998. The Other Side: Shorter Poems. New York: Orchard.

Testa, Maria. 2005. Something About America. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.

--------------. 2003. Almost Forever. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.

Woodson, Jacqueline. 2010. Locomotion. New York: Speak.

Yu,  Chun. 2005. Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster.

6. Novels Told in Verse (High School)

Bryant, Jen. 2007. Pieces of Georgia. New York: Yearling.

Frost, Helen. 2009. Crossing Stones. New YorkY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

---------------. 2007. Keesha's House. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Glenn, Mel.1997. The Taking of Room 114: A Hostage Drama in Poems. New York: Dutton Juvenile. 

Grimes, Nikki. 2010. A Girl Named Mister. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

-----------------. 2007. Dark Sons. New York: Hyperion.

Hemphill, Stephanie. 2005. Things Left Unsaid: A Novel in Poems. New York: Hyperion.

Herrick, Steven. 2009. Cold Skin. Asheville, NC: Front Street Press.

-------------------. 2006. By the River. Asheville, NC: Front Street Press.

-------------------. 2004. Love, Ghosts, & Facial Hair. New York: Simon Pulse.

Levithan, David. 2006. The Realm of Possibility. New York: Knopf Books.

Myers, Water Dean. 2007. Street Love. New York: Amistad.

Smith, Kirsten. 2007. The Geography of Girlhood. New York: Little, Brown.

Sones, Sonia. 2003. What My Mother Doesn't Know. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Turner, Ann. 2006. Hard Hit. New York: Scholastic.

Wild, Margaret. 2006. One Night. New York: Laurel Leaf.

------------------. 2004. Jinx. New York: Simon Pulse.

Williams, Julie. 2004. Escaping Tornado Season: A Story in Poems. New York: HarperTeen.

Wolff, Virginia Euwer. 2009. Full House. New York: HarperTeen.

---------------------------. 2006. Make Lemonade. New York: SquareFish.

---------------------------. 2003. True Believer. New York: Simon Pulse.

Yeomans, Ellen. 2007. Rubber Houses. New York: Little, Brown.


7. Online Poetry Magazines For and/or  By Teens

azTeen Magazine
Cicada
The Claremont Review 
Crashtest 
Cyberteens
Frodo's Notebook
Hanging Loose
Merlyn's Pen
New Moon 
Polyphony H.S. 
Skipping Stones: An International Multicultural Magazine

Sparrow Tree Square

Speak Up Press
Stone Soup

Teen Ink 
Teen Smudge Magazine
Teen Voices 
Teens Now Talk
Upwords 
What If?
Writer's Slate

8. Poetry Slam Links
12th Annual NYC Teen Poetry Slam (2010)
13th Annual NYC Teen Poetry Slam (2011) 
Brave New Voices 
Kankakee Public Library Teen Poetry Slam

Poetry Slam @Web English Teacher 
Poetry Slam from Poets.org 
Urban World Poetry World
Young Chicago Authors 

9. Single Performances 

Ay, Ay, Ay de la Grifa Negra by Julia De Burgos read by Glaisma
A Letter of the Law - Conmon 
Brown Dreams - Paul Flores
Digging - Seamus Heaney
Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa read by Michael Lythgoe
The Floral Apron -  Marilyn Chin 
The History of Red and "Other Sister Twin" - Linda Hogan
I Am Offering this Poem - Jimmy Santiago Baca
I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds read by Suzanne Landingham, of Buncombe County Early College
If I Should Have  a Daughter - Sarah Kay (Ted Talk)
Let America Be America Again - Langston Hughes read by Nikki Giovanni
The Mad Poet - Open Your Eyes 
Mao -  Kelly Tsai 
Marriage - Gregory Corso
New American Theater by Sekou Sundiata 
One Boy Told Me - Naomi Shihab Nye
The Party - Paul Laurence Dunbar read by Karen Wilson (Favorite Poem Project) 
Poem for Magic - Quincy Troupe
Politics by William Butler Yeats read by Stephen Conteagüero
Pretty  - Katie Makkai
Somewhere there is  Poem - Gina Loring 
Song to Mothers  - Pat Mora 
St. Kevin and the Blackbird - Seamus Heaney
This Room and Everything in It - Li-Young Lee 
Tomorrow Short film  by Niloufar  Talebi based on a poem by Abbas Saffari
Way of the Water Hyacinth by Zawgee read by Lyn Aye
We Real Cool - Gwendolyn Brooks read by John Ulrich (Favorite Poem Project)
William Carlos Williams Reads Three (The Red Wheelbarrow, Elsie, Queen-Anne's-Lace)

10a. Visual Poems

A Chance of Sunshine (Jimmy Liao)
And Day Brought Back My Night (Geoffrey Brock)
The Country (Billy Collins)
Flashcards (Rita Dove)
Forgetfulness (Billy Collins)
Her Morning Elegance (Oren Lavie)
Mankind is No Island
Mulberry Field (Lucille Clifton)
Some Words Inside Words (Richard Wilbur)
Those Winter Sundays (Robert Hayden)


10b.
Information about Visual Poetry (Rutgers)

Entering Into The Things They Carried through Found Poems, Choral Reading & Reader's Theater

I. Found Poems

1. Create a found poem based on the pages you and your two partners have been assigned from Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Record the poem on chart paper, then take a picture of your poem, and create an audio version of the poem using Evernote. Post image and audio recording to class ning or wiki.

pp. 1-3

pp. 4-6

pp. 7-9

pp. 10-12

pp. 13-15

pp. 16-17

pp. 19-20

pp. 22-23

1b. Post the poem in the hallway in the order it occurs in the first section.

1c. Entire class views the found poems (gallery walk).

1d. Discuss with small group what you anticipate The Things They Carried will be about, who the stories will be about, what tensions will exist in the work, and any other opinions you develop as a result of reading the found poems.

1e. With full class, teacher led activity: Engage students in plotting the work based on the information and impressions generated via the found poems. The teacher might elect to use a plot organizer, character analysis chart to help organize impressions.

Words/Phrases We generated based on Found Poems: Lt. Jimmy Cross Martha Kiowa Mitchell Sanders Ted Lavender Henry Dobbins KIA chopper to hump no strategy or mission American war chest Than Che Burned and trashed village Zapped while Zipping Talked grunt lingo foxhole	Setting	Characters
Goal or Problem	Action	Resolution

 

Example of a found poem from pp. 1-2.

Love

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried

letters folded in plastic

at the bottom of his rucksack.

The letters weighed ten ounces.

They were signed "Love, Martha,".

Love was only a way of signing.

At full dark he would

watch the night and wonder.

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity.

To carry something was to "hump" it.

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped

his love for Martha

up the hills and through the swamps, carried two photographs.
A Kodachrome snapshot signed "Love,"

though he knew better.

An action shot-women's volleyball

and Martha was bent horizontal

to the floor, reaching.

A dark theater, he remembered,

and Martha wore a tweed skirt.

He touched her knee,

she looked at him in a sad, sober way.

What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty.

II. Choral Reading

2a. Students should reread the section assigned and choose a section within those pages and create a choral reading.  Students should compose the choral reading by determine how each line will be read. Students should record their choral reading in Google docs so that everyone in the class has access to it.

2b. Student groups should partner and rehearse their choral poems. Each reader is assigned a # and reads the assigned line based on that number.

2c. Students should perform the poems as podcasts  (or for Mac users) and make them available to the class and community beyond the classroom via a hosting web site or  iTunes.

An example of a Choral  Reading for 8 Voices

Reader(s)

1	First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross
1,2	carried letters from a girl named Martha,
1,2,3	a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey.
4	They were not love letters,
1, 2, 3	but Lieutenant Cross was hoping,
5	so he kept them folded
6-8	in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack.
1	In the late afternoon, after a day's march,
1,2	he would dig his foxhole,
1,2,3	wash his hands under a canteen,
1, 2,3,4	unwrap the letters,
1,2,3,4,5	hold them with the tips of his fingers,
ALL	and spend the last hour of light pretending.
6-8	He would imagine
2	romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire.
6-8	He would sometimes
3	taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there.
4, 6-8	More than anything, he wanted Martha
6-8	to love him as he loved her,
1,3,5	but the letters were mostly
ALL	chatty,
6-8	elusive on the matter of love.
1,2	She was a virgin, he was almost sure.
1,2,3	She was an English major at Mount Sebastian,
4	and she wrote beautifully
5	about her professors and roommates and midterm exams,
2	about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf.
2,3,4	She often quoted lines of poetry;
2,3,4,5	she never mentioned the war,
6-8	except to say,
Female Solo 1	Jimmy, take care of yourself.
2, 3,5,6	The letters weighed ten ounces. They were signed
Female Solo 1	"Love, Martha,"
2, 3	but Lieutenant Cross understood
2, 3, 4,	that Love was only a way of signing
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8	and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant.
6-8	At dusk, he would carefully
5-7	return the letters to his rucksack.
4,5,6	Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up
3,4,5,6	and move among his men,
2,3,4,5,6	checking the perimeter,
ALL	then at full dark
1,2, 3,4,5	he would return to his hole
6-8	and watch the night
6-8	and wonder if Martha was a virgin.
All	The things they carried
1,2,3,4	they carried
5, 6, 7, 8	were largely
7, 8	determined
8	by necessity.

III. Reader's Theater

3a. Working alone or in partnership, students recast a section of the text for reader's theatre.

3b. Students solicit reader's for their performance.

3c. Students practice and record/perform reader's theater.

This is an example that Laura Inman (a former student) created. 

From: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

            In this scene, the Narrator is at Headquarters Company—S-4, which is a battalion supply station out of the unprotected boonies.  He has been transferred there after being wounded.  The soldiers from Alpha Company, the group with whom the Narrator has served in the field, arrive at the Headquarters for a “stand-down”.  The Narrator is glad to be reunited with his buddies; he misses the camaraderie that develops among soldiers in the field.  As they party late into the night, the soldiers tell the Narrator a story about Morty Phillips, one of the soldiers in the Company.  However, the Narrator is so consumed with anger at the young, inexperienced medic, Bobby Jorgenson, who failed to give him proper medical treatment in the field, that his interest in the story about Morty is secondary to his desire to know the whereabouts of Bobby Jorgenson.

Staging:  The characters are sitting in a circle.

Narrator     Norman Bowker     Azar     Dave Jensen     Henry Dobbins

Bowker            Morty Phillips used up his luck

Azar                 Go on.  Tell him everything.

Bowker            Well, that’s about it.  Poor Morty wasted his luck.  Pissed it away.

Azar                  On nothing.  The dummy pisses it away on nothing.

Bowker            It was out by My Khe.  One of those killer hot days, hot-hot, and we’re all                                      popping salt tabs just to stay conscious.  Can’t barely breathe.  Everybody’s lying                          around, just grooving it, and after a while somebody says, ‘Hey where’s Morty?’                           So the lieutenant does a head count, and guess what?  No Morty.

Azar                 Gone.  Poof.   No Morty.

Bowker            By then it’s almost dark.  Lieutenant Cross, he’s ready to have a fit—you know                                      how he gets, right?—and then guess what?  Take a guess.

Narrator          Morty shows.

Bowker            You got it, man.  Morty shows.  We almost chalk him up as MIA, and then bingo,                          he shows.

Azar                Soaking wet.

Bowker            Hey, listen—

Azar                 Okay, but tell it.

Bowker            Soaking wet.  Turns out the moron went for a swim. You believe that?  All alone,                          he just takes off, hikes a couple of klicks, finds himself a river and strips down                                     and hops in and starts doing the goddamn breast stroke or some such fine shit.  No                         security, no nothing.  I mean, the dude goes skinny dipping.

Azar                  A hot day.

Jensen               Not that hot.

Azar                  Hot, though.

Bowker            Get the picture?  This is My Khe we’re talking about, dinks everywhere, and the                          guy goes for a swim.

Narrator            Crazy.

                        (Narrator looks around, wondering if Morty is there.)

Bowker            That’s the kicker, man.  No more Morty.

Narrator           No?

Bowker            Morty’s luck gets used up.  A few days later, maybe a week, he feels real dizzy.                                      Pukes a lot, temperature zooms way up.  I mean, the guy’s sick.  Jorgenson says                                     he must’ve swallowed bad water on that swim.  Swallowed a VC virus or                                     something.

Narrator         Bobby Jorgenson.  Where is he?

Bowker            Be cool.

Narrator          Where’s my good buddy Bobby?

Bowker            You want to hear this? Yes or no?

Narrator           Sure I do.

Bowker            So listen up, then.  Morty gets sick.  Like you never seen nobody so bad off.  Like                         he’s paralyzed.  Polio maybe.

Dobbins            No way.  Not polio.

Bowker            Well, hey, I’m just saying what Jorgenson says.  Maybe polio.  Or that weird                                     elephant disease.  Elephantiasshole or whatever.

Dobbins           Yeah, but not polio.

Azar                 Either way, it goes to show you.  Don’t throw away luck on little stuff.  Save it                                     up.

Sanders            There it is.

Jensen              Morty was due.

Sanders            Overdue.

Bowker            You don’t mess around like that.  You don’t just fritter away all your luck.

Sanders            Amen

(Pause while all sit in silence contemplating Morty and all the ways to die)

Narrator            Where’s Jorgenson?