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Final Inquiry Presentation
Final Inquiry Presentation
Heidy Rodriguez - Inquiry Presentation .mp4Story of My Wondering
Story of My Wondering
I would love to learn more about interdisciplinary studies in relation to the English classroom, specifically in regards to Film. I am drawn to English because of the everlasting quest to linguistically communicate felt-experiences with each other. We hold our truths so close to our hearts and hands that writing becomes a means of understanding another consciousness without trying to usurp it -- rather with the goal of exercising knowledge and empathy.
Everything I’ve just said about English is exactly why I am also drawn to Film. In both, there are narratives that testify to the variations of human experiences. Yet even if we can examine both, only one of these subjects is a requirement in classrooms and the other one is considered an after-school break. I would love to find a way to show how they are in fact each other’s halves, two texts that people read in an effort to understand expression. I want Literature to be accessible through its relationship to Film, and I want Film to be validated as a new means of communication that parallels the artisanship in written works. With carefulness towards amplifying the literary qualities of the classroom (words), I’d like to merge both subjects in practice and show students and teachers alike how much they have in common. I love Film and English and without one or the other it feels like an incomplete experience to me to talk about stories.
Inquiry Origin Story
Inquiry Origin Story
Yesterday's Curiosities, Today's Luminosities
Yesterday's Curiosities, Today's Luminosities
Who I am and what my interests are stem from my adolescent education. I am so thankful to have partaken in these schools' progressive and liberal arts philosophies.
In this catalogue, you will see two English classes that specifically led me into the visual realm. It started off with, "The Rebel in Literature" to what it is now named, "Outsiders in American Film." I took both courses as an upperclassman at Calhoun and their devotion to marginalized minds allowed me to see how English is a gateway to new understanding. Each course complimented the other and fortified my relationship with stories.
Throughout my project, you will see many lesson plans that refer back to the kinds of classes I had as a high school and college student. I have linked course catalogues from each school where you will find a blurb for the classes below. Though there are only three courses listed here, there are countless more that have influenced my inquiry project.
- "The Rebel in Literature" (Calhoun)
- "Outsiders in American Film" (Calhoun)
- "Text and Image" (Vassar)
This detailed effect of self-revelation is exactly what I felt in that literary and cinematic high school class. Given the topic of rebels and outsiders, along with the unfamiliar territory of tearing into the screen as if it were a book, “reading” acquired a whole new meaning. Reading was about assessing an isolated narrative in an effort to add complexity to a world that is too easily insular. Reading means engaging with the lives and productions of others.
I loved so many of my English classes at Vassar and wish I could take them all over again. "Text and Image" is one class that particularly blended the notion reading words with reading images. In this course description, you will see a majority of the readings are graphic novels. This unconventional syllabus also diverges from the usual canonical syllabus by incorporating multiple modalities into the English classroom.
"To think about how we come to see the concept of education differently through film is to think of the study of education as one which requires an aesthetic sensibility and not just a sophisticated capacity for explanation, theorizing, or analytic interpretation of data" (Gibbs, p 15, 2019)
Story of My Question
Story of My Question
My initial question at the end of our first year was,
"How can I incorporate the principles and practices of film studies into my curriculum in order to develop my students' critical reading and writing skills?"
Though I was happy with the focuses in this initial question, it did not contain my specific experience within the classroom, specifically opening up multidisciplinary concepts to a group of freshmen at a preparatory school. As I continued to incorporate lesson plans, I found the context to be a crucial component of understanding my question, which with the help of my inquiry group arrived to the current question,
"What happens when I integrate film terminology into a 9th grade foundational English course?"
This allows for more room for me to observe the results of my inquiry project instead of assuming that the impact will be limited to critical reading or writing skills. These are high school freshmen, some of which may have had a limited amount of time deeply analyzing literature. The context of establishing a foundation for their literary lives is mandatorily involved with my inquiry question. This means that I have to customize my implementation of film to fit into their own educational journeys.
Follow-up Questions
Follow-up Questions
I want to be a well-rounded teacher that will not be limited to what I know now, but be driven by what I want to know more about. I want to learn how to use what I have learned to add dimension to my subject. As technology changes and our methods of communication change, I foresee a change within our Literature classes. Nevertheless, before diving into my inquiry, I thought about the following, smaller questions.
- How can I work some of these ideas into my classroom without straying too far from the established norms for English classes at my school?
- Especially when it comes to departmental differences, how will I know the line between advancing and evolving a discipline vs warping its identity?
- Although I am seeking to open up the English subject, am I actually narrowing it down by drawing such strong connections to Film?
"To approach education via pictures is to remind ourselves that we first discover education both visually and verbally; not intellectually or theoretically" (Gibbs, p 12, 2019)
See Words, Hear Words, Speak Words
See Words, Hear Words, Speak Words
Most of the literature around the presence of film in the English classroom attempts to elucidate the benefits of multimodal classrooms. Yet, some of these assignments are more about incorporating filmic assignments or film clips into the classroom rather than propagating the academic merits of film in high schools. For example, some of the texts I found were about using film as a means of shedding a light on disability, gender, and cultural studies, or adding a new, creative assignment into the syllabus. So although there is information about interdisciplinary lesson plans to include in the classroom, I still needed to figure out how to scaffold this into my classroom and how to customize it for my own age group. Additionally, if my question has to do with more than just incorporating film, but also educating them about film studies, then my trajectory would be slightly different.
In my literature review, I go over a couple of approaches and attempt to assemble supplementary material that does seek to amplify the educational advantages of film studies as an individual but related discipline. Portions of my literature review place the practical lesson plans in conversation with a dissertation that directly addresses the presence of film as a component of literature in the English classroom.
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