Methods

This is how I incorporated my inquiry question, "What happens when I implement film terminology into a 9th grade foundational English course?" into the classroom.

Framing.

Everything has a frame to it.

Even a scenic hike is bound by the limits of our eyes.

Literally and metaphorically, we need frames to help us make sense of what is in front of us.

I chose Film as a frame for English.

After acknowledging my own positionality, I needed to try to step out of my own frame to understand my students' subjectivities.

Coming into the year, I had many preconceived notions about students’ relationship to narratives. I had only briefly considered how my relationship to stories would be different than the ways young adolescents see them. One facet of this challenge has to do with the students’ level of exposure to an interdisciplinary classroom.

Freshman Year English

Not every English classroom involves film studies in its curriculum; in fact, most do not. And even if there is one student who has had experience with this approach, there is still the rest of the class to take into consideration. Freshman year is the time to not only teach them how to better understand literature or write, but to unite students from disparate backgrounds and familiarize them with the upper school environment. This means that although my cross-disciplinary approach may be engaging and educational, it does diverge from the school’s norms in the classroom. As I explored new ways of incorporating new mediums into the classroom, I also had to remember the expectation is that I prepare them for the traditional English classroom in years to come.

Intentional Integration

In addition to integrating film as a second modality into the classroom, I also considered the ways in which I needed to scaffold its inclusion into the classroom. Scaffolding will play a prevalent role in either succeeding with or diverging from my intended results. Many of the instances in which I thought about the purpose of creative assignments -- using backwards design -- ended up working smoothly in the classroom because of clarity. I had a firm understanding of what I wanted and where we were going. Students trusted the process after I gave them specific instructions. Though there are some spontaneous assignments (ones that I included in order to explore something new with minimal scaffolding) that worked well, there was a lack of continuity from those lessons to the next ones. The trust and ease persisted within and because of my longterm lesson planning. Not only did I need to be aware of my entire unit plan and establish the enduring understandings or questions from the literature, but I also needed to do that for the film portion of my class in isolation before incorporating it into my class.

Academic vs Entertainment

Finally, I had to find the right words to talk about my inquiry project. Oftentimes, when I told a curious soul what my inquiry project was going to be about, the immediate response would normally be, “So, you’re going to show movies in the classroom?” or some variation of this. My response to that question: “Yes, and more.” I would try to elaborate on how I was plucking from multiple parts of film -- theory, production, editing, screenwriting, etc… Just like writing, which involves brainstorming, writing, rewriting, and editing, film has a series of steps before arriving at a fleshed out story.

Like any other word, film carries a certain connotation to it. Those connotations may vary depending on one’s subjectivity, yet culture has us believe it is equal to entertainment, that it is the palate cleanser for our brains rather than complex narratives to bite into. Many would consider its presence in the classroom as an “easy day” or “break” from teaching. But if properly scaffolded and dissected, it can be an invaluable compliment to the written text. Film can be and is as rigorously academic as English. English can be and is as refreshingly entertaining as Film.

Artifacts from the Second Year

These lessons, activities, and assignments were specifically created for my Inquiry Project.

Experimental Lesson Plans

In addition to a couple of other lesson plans -- most notably the lesson plan about Memory in My Instructional Strategies Page -- I sometimes experimented with new ways of talking about literary concepts.

What's a meme?

To be clear, a meme is an image that through the use of overlaid words on top takes on a new meaning outside of the image's original intention. In other words, a picture becomes repurposed to fit a number of new situations through decontextualization. It is this reconfiguration that gives the creator more control over the message.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Meme; Pinterest

Form is Meaning... Even in Memes

Memes are not films. Films are not memes.

But both are methods of visual communication. A majority of my students interact with these devices on a daily basis. Acknowledging this, I decided to use memes to a scaffold into speaking about film through visual structures. In scrutinizing the components of the meme, I hoped to acquaint them with abstract thoughts.

What do memes have to do with the concept of "form is meaning" exactly?

Look to the left. Do you know where these images come from? It's no deal breaker if you are unable to find the origins of this photo. It is, however, necessary to read them from top to bottom. We, as viewers, are duped into reading the meme twice and falling into the father's prophecy. Without following this order, the joke falls flat.

Authors strategically guide us through their narratives in this same way. If we keep this in mind, we are better able to cross-reference throughout a text.

Order contributes to the meaning of the text's message. Form is meaning.

Here is my humble attempt to create a basic meme and include the possible variations (in terms of order in which these images may be positioned) at the top through the numbers.

The objective is to show a specific progression within these images... starting off with the eyes, then backing into the face, and finally seeing the cross-armed individual. The impact and proposed meaning would differ if these panels were rearranged.

Board Notes

We then looked at the structure of The Odyssey, which starts with the Telemachy rather than the start of Odysseus' journey.

I went over the literary terms that speak to the chronology of a narrative. Sometimes a story may start from the temporal middle or the end, rather than where things "begin" in the story's time.

I asked my students the following questions...

Why should one encounter the son of the hero before the hero himself?
How might starting this epic in the chronological middle of the story impact the reader?

This emphasis allowed students to understand the ways in which Odysseus is created through other people's experiences. People speak about him as the missing leader and this is our entry point to who he is in this particular epic, rather than the Iliad, which overtly depicts his heroic acts in real time.

The Odyssey, therefore, becomes a story about stories. How is Odysseus remembered? How does he remember himself? What does the organization of his memories (who he used to be, who he is, and who he wanted to be) say about the hero's journey?

Discussion about Representation in Narratives

Conversations about representation were a part of many of my lesson plans, but little did I know that I would be overtly introducing issues of diversity and inclusion to my students.

Since the English department almost unanimously focuses on creating writerly and readerly foundations for the freshmen, I was initially afraid to spend time on issues of representation. But when the curriculum feels so inundated with one particular subjectivity, I thought it necessary to talk about issues of representation in stories.

Filmic Disability Studies within Of Mice and Men

Below is a handout I slightly altered from an educator who used films to teach disability narratives in the classroom. Having taken a Race, Gender, and Disabilities course in college, I felt equipped to touch upon the ableism within Of Mice and Men, a text that features so many farm workers with different types of disabilities. Rather than steeping into advanced disability theory, I took this as an opportunity to talk about characterization. Who gets the detailed introduction? Whose body precedes their personality?

I continued to scaffold my way into visual literacy as we talked about gender studies through comic books once we began The Odyssey.

Characterization Continued in Representations of Disability.pdf

This is a slightly altered version of a lesson plan from Stephen Safran's "Using Movies to Teach Students about Disabilities." Teaching Exceptional Children 32.3 (2000): 44-47. Print.

Gender Studies through Visual Narratives

The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is the measure of representation of women as full characters in stories. What are the qualifications for a text to pass this test?

1. Two women (at least) must talk to each other about something other than a man or men.

2. Those two women must be fleshed out characters in the stories; they must have names.

We considered: How much of a woman's perspective were we getting in The Odyssey?

I used this Boondocks graphic as a springboard to talk about the pressures within masculinity as well as introduce other theories about gendered perspectives to them.

I briefly touched about Laura Mulvey's "The Male Gaze" where she claims that many stories not only center the male experience, but teach us how to read the world in such a way. Being able to reflect a woman's subjectivity, is therefore, transcendent by nature.

The Boondocks

Though we may be prepared to idolize or criticize the protagonist, Odysseus, we must also be able to negotiate the identities of the other characters.

How does the Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate The Odyssey, depict Odysseus's epic compared to the dozens of editions translated by men?
What kinds of personalities do the women within the text possess? Are they fleshed out characters according to the Bechdel test?
What does it mean for Telemachus to reach the point of adulthood, or masculinity especially when he lives in the shadow of his father? How does he define masculinity? How does masculinity define him?
What kind of a man is Odysseus when we first meet him? What kind of man does he want to be?

Assignments

Visualizing Literature

Visualizing Literature Handout

Visualizing Literature Through Camera Shots, Angles, and Movement.pdf

For this assignment, I asked my students to "zoom into" or close-read a passage from The Odyssey, Book 11. This was an exercise in not only being able to analyze a portion of the text deeply, but also how to find the appropriate place for close reading. The analysis profundity would improve with time, so I was mostly hoping for students to close read and pick up on details.

The first page, Camera Shots, Angle and Movement, reminds students that the text does in fact orient us from one moment or location to the next. If we locate an intentionality, we understand another layer within the text. This has similar goals to the meme lesson.

Evidence is the key to any argument, whether written or spoken. Yet, just because you have the perfect piece of evidence does not mean you know how to use it. The argument's success is contingent upon the utilization or analysis of the text.

This assignment, similar to the aforementioned one, had students pinpoint specific passages that they wanted to elaborate upon.

I followed the structure of storyboarding and changed aspects of it in an effort to parallelize it to the structure of an essay. The quotes mimic the logical progression from building up an argument. I had them replace "action" with "context", "dialogue" with "quote", and finally "fx" with "analysis." While the relationship is not perfectly identical, I wanted them to practice quote integration in a novel way.

The peer-editing of one another's storyboard proved to be fruitful because students were able to preach certain points to their peers' work.

Storyboarding: Quote Integration Activity

Visualizing Literature Artifacts.pdf

In-Class Written Prompts

Students' brief responses to...

What happens in your mind when you read?

How do visualize text?

In an effort to more subtly incorporate my inquiry into the classroom, I would incorporate a 5-minute free-write at the start of class. These responses show how students talk about their reading experiences. Being able to explain the process of ingesting words is a reflective skill that I would like for them to continue practicing.

Surveys

Narrative Consumption Surveys

After a couple of lessons into the school year, it dawned on me that my students each had a different relationship to film than I had generalized for their age group. Digital age does not amount to appreciating films or visual narratives. I decided to survey the students to figure out what their relationship to stories are truly like.

Select Narrative Consumption Results for Both Film and Literature

narrative consumption both surveys together .png

Narrative Consumption: Film

This is the individual survey I sent out to my students asking them about their film-viewing and media-consuming habits.

Narrative Consumption: Literature

This is the individual survey I sent out to my students asking them about their reading habits.

Artifacts in Utero: The First Year

These are artifacts from my first year of this program. that I began to prompt in my first year of this program when I had an inkling as to what my question would end up being. I incorporated these lessons and notes into this current year's classes.

Class Lessons

The First Page: An Establishing Shot

Of Mice and Men Framing '19

One of the first film terms I introduced to my classroom was "Establishing Shot." Above is a powerpoint I showed them as I guided them through this term and linked it to our literary discussion.

Every book starts off with a frame, the introduction to how an author wants us to read the book -- what he wants us to pay attention to. In an effort to get students to see this establishing tone, I attempted to concretize this "frame" by showing them the cover of Of Mice and Men with different frames, starting off with a zoomed in, pixelated perspective to a zoomed out one that is the book cover.

This is meant to be a metaphor for how we must engage with the limits that the author writes upon us. John Steinbeck focuses on the land at the start of Of Mice and Men so as we enter the text, we must remember to oscillate from the big picture -- the focus of the first page -- to the the granular components -- word choices that set a tone for the environment we are entering.

In a sense, when we read, certain phrases or evocations of images draw our attention to the details. Sometimes we are drawn to a character's smile, other times the pasture of the setting. We must be aware of the author's orientation.

The First Page- An Establishing Shot Handout.pdf

This is the handout that accompanied the Establishing Shot presentation.

Class Notes

In my first year, there was one student who loved doodling on the desk (worry not -- these desks were made for such artistry). And although at first I thought it was distracting, I soon began to realize how his drawings were helping other students understand what was going on. Crucial scenes from the text, Their Eyes Were Watching God, became clear after he drew them onto the desk or board for others to see. Sometimes when he had misinterpreted the text, we were able to workshop the image together and arrive to an analysis of the moment soon after.

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