Wake by Tim Winton (Reading to Write)

Hi. 

Like many of us, I'm finding the COVID-19 pandemic an incredibly anxious and trying time. I haven't posted much on the blog lately because it's felt like a low priority, especially as society seems to shrink up into a ball of hibernation around us. School doesn't feel like school at the moment, it's surreal and disassociative, and there's so much to unpack in what's happening but it just makes me feel mentally exhausted.

Anyway. 

Earlier this term my Year 11 Advanced English class read Tim Winton's short story 'Wake'. It's about 9 pages long and can be found in Scission, a collection of short stories first published in 1985. We approached the Reading to Write Common Module by looking at various short pieces as I wanted to broaden the scope of things that students may have read up until this point. This is what we looked at this term before everything unravelled:

• 'Introduction to Poetry' by Billy Collins (Poem)
• 'Brooklyn Snow' by Omar Musa (Poem)
• 'Sticks' by George Saunders (Flash Fiction)
• 'Wake' by Tim Winton (Short Story)
• 'B is For Bullshit', extract from The Lucy Family Alphabet by Judith Lucy (Discursive Writing)
• 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place' by Ernest Hemingway (Modernist Short Story)
• 'Our Trip' by Lydia Davis (Postmodern Short Story)
• '2 B R 0 2 B' by Kurt Vonnegut (Science Fiction Short Story)
• 'SJ' by Ellen Van Neerven (Short Story)

After reading 'Wake' we drilled down into some of the techniques and writing mechanics of Winton's piece. It's not anything revolutionary but I think the students found it useful to look at the story up-close in this way, and it would work well if you're currently teaching via Google Classroom or through some other online platform. The PowerPoint attached below covers motifs, use of semicolons, dialogue rules, and pathetic fallacy. Each slide comes with in-built discussion and questions that can be covered after the story has been read.

'Wake' - PPT (Click to Download)
And the story itself - 'Wake' by Tim Winton.

Hope it helps and best wishes to you all :)

Authors and Authority

There's a collection of memes that have retained some currency among teenagers these last few years and they're aimed squarely at the not-so-humble English teacher. In the simplest terms, it goes:

AUTHOR: "The curtains were blue"

ENGLISH TEACHER: *Insert analysis that seems over-the-top and ignores the fact that curtains are sometimes just blue*

At some point, sometimes perhaps only on the most symbolic of levels, the English teacher has to do battle with the senior English student as said student asserts that not everything can be analysed from an English standpoint. This debate can be fun and, in a way, plays right into the teacher's hands as it involves students exercising their critical thinking skills and forming independent opinions. In laying groundwork for the Year 11 'Reading to Write' Common Module, however, it also provides an opportunity to talk about something completely different to the merits of metaphor and analysis: the concept of literary authority. 

On this subject, the French semiotician Roland Barthes famously said,

"The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author"

We can use this quote to introduce students to the concepts of post-modernism and literary authority. The idea that an author doesn't get the final say on what they write is a genuinely unsettling question for many students to deal with, and the debates that arise from this can be challenging and disruptive to even the teacher's concept of what English is all about. At the heart of this idea though is something that gets to the very core of our role as teachers...

We teach with the aim of relinquishing our authority as knowledge-holders, and we teach to empower the student to become their own authority on the text. 

This isn't a straight-forward exchange or journey, and the success rate inevitably varies, but if even just one of our students becomes confident and equipped enough to develop a contrary opinion backed by their own judiciously-selected evidence... then this is the apotheosis of teaching, is it not?

Perhaps the quote should be:

"The birth of the student must be at the cost of the death of the teacher"

In engaging teenagers with such a challenging idea it becomes necessary to break it down and develop material that will re-contextualise academic theory within a 21st century adolescent space. I've included a PowerPoint below that went some way towards helping my current Year 11 Advanced English students.

• Slide 1 - Students engage with both sides of the debate via the Roland Barthes quote and one of the previously mentioned memes.
• Slide 2 - Students engage with a popular online meme to break down the idea of looking at a text from multiple points of view. This text, supposedly drawn by a young child, gives a straightforward account of a young student's current home life. In isolation, the text can be viewed as an authentic example of the unreliable narrator - a storyteller who is unwilling or unable to relate the reality of the events around them. The point here is that students are asked to consider four separate ways of 'reading' the text; the ultimate goal being to disrupt/challenge the concept of the author having ultimate authority over the meaning of the text. 
• Slide 3 - Examine a range of statements that reposition the concept of authority and authorship. Students are then asked to assign each statement a score based on how much they are in agreement with it. The class can then decide (argue) over the placement of each statement on a line that shows a spectrum of agreement/non-agreement. [Numeracy in English. Nice!]

Here's the PowerPoint: Authors and Authority.

The Lost Boys: A Study Guide

Kylo Ren in his teenage days...

The Lost Boys is a perfect companion to Dracula for use in the Preliminary English Extension 1 Text, Culture and Value module, in that it both parallels and offers alternatives to Bram Stoker's seminal text. Below is a study guide resource that can be used to support teaching The Lost Boys.

The first section of the guide provides a Cast of Characters that will assist students in establishing who's who in the film. There are essentially 9 characters of note (10 if you want to count the rest of David's gang as a single character).

• Michael: The protagonist.
• Sam: The deuteragonist (secondary protagonist) and Michael's younger brother.
• Lucy: Their mother. Note: her name has deliberately been borrowed from Dracula.
• Star: Michael's love interest.
• David: The antagonist and leader of the 'Lost Boys' gang.
• Grandpa: Lucy's father.
• Edgar and Alan Frog: Supporting characters; they are the film's equivalent of Dracula's 'Van Helsing' character.
• Max: Lucy's love interest and quite a significant character in the film's climactic scenes.
• The Lost Boys: David's gang of vampires.

Also featured in the film but not mentioned in the document are:

• Laddie: A boy vampire and companion to Star.
• The Surf Nazis: A local (non-vampire) gang that the Lost Boys feud with throughout the film.
• Nanook: Sam and Michael's dog.
• Thorn: Max's dog. 

The rest of the study guide looks at the film by providing a series of sample shots with accompanying analysis. I've arbitrarily broken the film into 8 sections (a prologue and seven 'chapters') to help students think of the plot elements in regards to the narrative. The analysis is unpacked in the following fashion:

• Example - a shot that can be analysed in reference to the module.
• Description, Techniques - describing what is happening in the shot and what techniques have bee used to communicate ideas to the audience.
• Context, Values - subsequent analysis linked to the film's context both in terms of the vampire myth (Dracula) and its own time/place. In addition, where possible, the film's communication of key values is identified as well.

Example 1

Description, Techniques: Camera pans up as David walks out of the mist between disaffected teenagers riding the merry-go-round. Note his scruffiness, swaggering body language, and the cigarette behind the ear.

Context, Values: David and the other Lost Boys move between the static horses on the merry-go-round, which establishes how they don't quite fit in with other teenagers. David stops at a girlfriend of another local hoodlum and caresses her, echoing the mesmeric effect that Count Dracula and the Weird Sisters have on characters in Dracula. This sequence (and his costume) also demonstrates that David is not bound by social conventions attached to other people.

Example 2

Description, Techniques: Michael struggles to wake up in the morning and now needs sunglasses to protect his eyes against the sunlight. To an outsider he seems hungover, and the idea of teenage surliness in the morning becomes an allegory for his transformation into a vampire.

Context, Values: Note that Michael now has his ear pierced - symbolising his rebellion against adult-enforced gender norms. Sam asks Michael, "Are you freebasing?", a reference to doing cocaine and an echo of the words that many anxious parents ask sullen teenage boys exhibiting drastic changes in behaviour. In this case, as with previous examples, Michael's anti-social behaviour is in reality a result of vampirism. This is exemplified further when Michael is rude to his grandfather.

Resource: the full Study Guide can be found here.

This Looper-created video above is also helpful for providing some analysis of the film's context and how this shaped its representation of the era's values. Not all of the video will be completely relevant but students may still find it of interest. 

That Bloodsucka Blackfella Dance!: A Study Guide for Chapters 1-3

I'll preface this post by saying that I think, without a doubt, that this might be the most obscure resource I've ever made and shared on this blog. 

The attached resources concern That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! by D. Bruno Starrs, a vampire text recommended by NSW English teacher Bernadette Therese (see here for a Youtube channel, and here for a Twitter account). The relevance of the text pertains to the Year 11 Extension English 1 module Texts, Culture and Value as a reiteration of Dracula's vampire myth that manages to parallel and challenge Stoker's narrative. Starrs is an academic writer of Aboriginal and European background, and he offers a contemporary Indigenous take on the vampire mythos. His irreverent novel That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! can be found in the usual places - Amazon, Bookdepository, etc. - and tracks the journey of complex gym junkie and would-be academic Sterling de Bortoli from the streets of Melbourne to the sweltering marketplaces of Morocco. The resources below concern the Prologue and first three chapters (this extract is all I covered with my class, hopefully leaving enough time to cover other texts in comparison to Dracula).

Resource 1

Here is a study guide. The analysis is broken into four columns: Example > Technique and Analysis > Cultural Value > Maintained or Changed?  

• Example: Quote or textual example that demonstrates the way the text reflects its context.
• Technique and Analysis: Some analysis of the example to show the way that Starrs has used language to construct his discussion of theme, cultural value, etc.
• Cultural Value: In what way does the example reflect the values of Starrs' context?
• Maintained or Changed?: How does it compare to the way Dracula deals with the same (or a comparable) contextual value?

Resource 2

Here is a comparison table. Students use their textual knowledge (plus the study guide) to write down their own observations of how That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! compares to Dracula. The table breaks student analysis into six themes that could be broadly linked to both texts, and would allow for the construction of six separate thesis statements based around said themes. These themes are:

• Non-White ethnic groups: I'm loath to characterise Aboriginality as one and the same as the 'foreign other' discussed in Dracula but, then again, that's kind of the point. These two texts deal with non-Anglo cultural groups in very different ways and the way these authors represent these groups can be used as a jumping off point for discussion of what mainstream Western society classifies as 'the other'.  
• The Canon: As a 'canon' text, Dracula commands a certain kind of power, and Starrs' novel deals directly with this through its direct referencing of Stoker's novel.
• Religion: This relates directly to the way That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! deals with Catholicism, as well as Dracula's integration of the Catholic Church into its narrative as the antithesis of vampirism.
• The Spiritual / Supernatural World: Compare Dracula's use of the supernatural through its depiction of superstition and vampiric lore, and Starrs' utilisation of the Dreaming to explore the Indigenous spirit world.
• Science: Stoker positions science as a reflection of the Victorian era's increasing trust in rationalism (note Dr Seward's use of the phonograph, and the blood transfusion technology Van Helsing uses to fight against Dracula's 'infecting' of Lucy and Mina). The theme of science is less obvious in That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! but still appears in figurative form as a motif that Starrs' frequently revisits to describe the world around his protagonist (note the use of terms like 'micro-organisms' to describe the Arabic plane passengers he encounters).

One more note before I go - watch out for the very last page of Chapter 3, which could prompt some challenging conversations. I've included some appropriate analysis in the study guide to help steer the conversation towards relevance.

The Lost Boys - Critical Readings

I'm currently in the midst of teaching Bram Stoker's Dracula for Preliminary HSC Extension English 1 as part of the module Texts, Culture and Value and really enjoying it. At the crux of the course is the idea of exploring a key text (in this case, Dracula) and the subsequent reiterations of its ideas in other media and contexts. For most of Term 1 my class looked at Dracula and a range of critical readings that deal with the vampire myth promulgated by Stoker's text. Finding academic texts related to Dracula wasn't difficult, in fact - the difficult part is sifting through the muck to find those two or three diamonds that fit my educational context and aren't going to just leave my students feeling confused. 

The tricky part is looking at a text that parallels, challenges or offers alternatives to the key text. Vampires are everywhere in our culture, and I settled on the 1987 film The Lost Boys as a different enough take that comes with its own set of values, but then finding some non-fiction writing that explored these values was the harder part.  

Two good ones that present very different interpretations on the film can be found here:

• Boomers, Neglect and 'The Lost Boys' at 25 - this criticism focuses on Lucy's characterisation as a neglectful mother who has been corrupted by the wave of feminism that empowered women in the 1970s and '80s.
• 'The Lost Boys' Subtly Radical Vision of Family - an opposing and more positive viewpoint offered on the same online news source, albeit published five years later.

Here's another piece that discusses the way the film uses vampires to explore the values of its time:

The Lost Boys as Dark Future: The Anxieties of the 1980s Immortalised

The film's prologue plays out like a silent film with its minimal dialogue, broad action conveyed through body language, and self-contained narrative. It also acts as a summary of one of the film's overarching themes; society's increasing fear of wayward youth, exemplified by this sequences's depiction of David's gangs of 'Lost Boys' as violent, animalistic, scruffy, uncontrollable, and (with their long hair, piercings, and midriff-baring tanktops) somewhat gender-fluid.

The anxiety of the older generation had been on the rise ever since teens had emerged in the 1950s with an explosion of motorbikes, leather jackets, rock 'n' roll, and the apathetic retort of "what have you got?" when asked what they were, exactly, rebelling against. In the 1980s this fear hit an all new high with the skyrocketing divorce rates of America's post-feminist landscape provoking increased concern over the demise of the traditional family structure. Suddenly youth culture never seemed more dangerous.

Lucy and her two sons, Michael and Sam, arrive in Santa Carla (the supposed 'murder capital' of the world), in a freshly father-free state. Mention is made of an unpleasant separation and neither boy  seems overly concerned with the absence of their dad, though both seem resentful of having to move in with their Grandpa. The film's theme of disaffected youth becomes amplified during the opening credits as the viewer is treated to a montage of unkempt and nameless teenagers lazily holding up walls while smoking cigarettes and aggressively gazing off into the middle of nowhere. This is quickly followed by some shots of a wall plastered in a multitude of missing posters - a sad but familiar sight to Americans living in the Reagan era with ubiquitous materialistic pressure and rising crime rates.

By night, Santa Carla transforms into a heaving mass of teenage flesh, hundreds of bodies pressing against each other in an insatiable urge to party while a muscular chain-wearing saxophonist gyrates suggestively on a stage. It's a mildly disturbing sight, perhaps for all the wrong reasons, but the sexual undertones are made obvious enough to highlight every parent's worst nightmare regarding letting their teenage kids out at night. It's all too much for Michael and he becomes mesmerised by Star, a homeless girl with mysterious connections to the Lost Boys. In the words of his younger brother, he is now at the mercy of his sex glands.

From here, Michael is lured into David's gang of vampires through a series of initiation rites that mimic the bonding rituals of teenage boys. Step by step, David pushes Michael closer to becoming a vampire - testing his resolve in an allegorical fashion that demonstrates the seductive power of peer pressure. Michael is unable to resist and he becomes a vampire. He gets his ear pierced and, much to the annoyance of his mother, begins wearing sunglasses inside. (This is where divorce will lead you! Your kid will become a vampire!) The relationship between mother and son becomes strained, and the distance between them grows as Michael becomes closer with David and Star.

Nearly every element in The Lost Boys can be seen as reflective of the breakdown of the nuclear family. The Lost Boys are the metaphorical forgotten boys of parents no longer able to able to provide guidance or responsible supervision; a twisted take on the Peter Pan narrative that sees David and his crew taking great delight in flying from victim in exchange for staying young forever. When local video store owner Max comes on the scene as a potential suitor for Lucy, her younger son Sam becomes obsessed with trying to prove that the man is a vampire, an allegory for the resent felt by children for adults who seek to replace their absent parents. The idea of the blended family - a unit made up of two single parents and their own sets of kids - is revealed as the ultimate horror in the film's final scenes. And the role of Grandpa in saving the day at the very end of the film also demonstrates the shifting nature of the family unit, with those in extended family roles now playing a bigger part in the lives of their children - helping to care for their grandchildren while single parents work to make ends meet.

As far as new takes on the vampire myth go, The Lost Boys provides a new perspective that represents the concerns of its time. David both adheres to an subverts the conventions associated with the vampire, providing the gender-fluid mesmerism of Count Dracula whilst subverting the stoic nature of such a character. These 1980s vampires are immortalised in teenage form, and so it makes perfect sense for the Lost Boys to seek nothing more than to party every night and revel in being forever young. The seductive nature of this lifestyle is understandable and makes it easy for the audience to buy into Michael's quick transformation. 

What's less palatable, however, is the idea that a single parent automatically seals the fate of their children as doomed figures. The fact that Michael's redemption at the film's end primarily comes thanks to the intervention of his younger brother and grandfather speaks volumes about the filmmakers' lack of faith in the ability of teenagers to advocate for themselves in this bold landscape of crumbling morality. Lucy's resignation to becoming undead when faced with the threat of vampirism is also similarly problematic.

The above reading is provided here as a PDF. Students can read this as a 'primer' before watching the film so that they might actively look out for particular values and ideas while they watch.

Dracula: Texts, Culture and Value

1902 edition of Dracula

Hello and Happy New Year!

This year I find myself teaching Extension English 1 for the first time, and it's quite an exciting prospect. The Preliminary Module 'Texts, Culture and Value' pertains to the study of a core text and its replication across the ages in various manifestations. These manifestations are defined further in the syllabus as texts that have been 'carried forward', 'borrowed from', or 'appropriated into more recent culture'.

After a brief dalliance with Jane Eyre, I've jumped on board wholeheartedly with Dracula (which seems to be the popular option as we move into the new syllabus for the first time).

The way I see it, the reasons for choosing Dracula are:

• It's a good practice run for Frankenstein, which is one of the texts in the Elective I'm looking at doing for the HSC.
• There is a near-infinite variety of texts to look at that reinterpret, reinvent, and 'borrow from' from Dracula.
• The Victorian context of Bram Stoker's seminal horror novel is more than ripe for the sort of analysis needed to look at the 'values' part of the module. 
• Lots of other teachers in NSW are doing this option, which is very helpful for purposes of collegiality - which is not to be underestimated when tackling a brand new syllabus!

Over the last week or so I've been reading the novel to start off my programming. I finished it a couple of days ago, and I've made a chapter-by-chapter table of my annotations, which can be found here:

Dracula Notes - PDF

I've arranged the notes into three columns;

1. Example / Quote
2. A brief summary or identification of the techniques and what is happening in said example
3. Further notes explaining the author's purpose and/or the context and/or anything else that I thought was interesting

Reflection

I think it's important to model this sort of stuff for the students straight off the bat so they can see what they should or could be aiming for, especially when they're entering into a subject like Extension English 1. The table also assists with giving the students reference points for their own reading... I don't want the reading of Dracula to be unnecessarily difficult, I want it to be an illuminating experience that will serve as a jumping off point for wider reading and analysis. At this point, in a public system Western Sydney context, I see the name of the game as primarily being one of engagement and encouragement.

I saw American educator Ron Berger speak at the iOnTheFuture conference in 2016, and something he spoke about that was really inspirational was models of excellence. I mean, he spoke about a lot that I found inspirational (including feedback and the growth mindset - check out 'Austin's Butterfly' on Youtube to see what I mean) but his ideas around modelling helped me to better articulate one of the key parts of my practice as a teacher. 

I'd been submitting student assignments under fake names for a couple of years by that point and then using them as samples with classes, but that's a story for another day. The point is: in order to get students delivering work of high quality we first need to show them we expect.

The idea of making all the answers 'secret' flies in the face of everything we know about creating excellence in students. If we want someone to be good at something, we show them a model. For example, to be a good musician you need to see and listen to musicians performing. To be a good illustrator you need to look at drawings. Athletes study other athletes. So why is it, in English and other school subjects, that we often hold back on showing students what the 'answers' looks like? It's been great to see the idea of exposing students to exemplars become more and more predominant in education throughout the 21st Century, and it's something that's continuing to develop in some interesting ways. 

Anyway. In short, I want students to look at the attached table and the core text of Dracula and use it as an example of the level I want to see them working at. It's not intended as perfection, and I hope to show them other models as I find more of them, but, hopefully it's a good starting point. Students will be able to take this information and then use it to practise skills in constructing extended responses and other higher order forms of expression.

Making Feedback a Big Rock

One of my mentors, a History/English teacher named Yvette Woodrow, once told me to "Pick what you want to be good at". There's a lot to consider when it comes to being a teacher in the 21st century; first and foremost are our students - teaching them, assessing them, assisting them in their journeys through school, and fulfilling our duty of care as their legal supervisors. Then there are other elements of our job (and I don't think I could ever successfully list all of these here without missing something) so here's just a few:

• Administration pertaining to student attendance
• Programming / writing resources
• Building behaviour management protocols that can be used beyond the immediate time and place
• Monitoring and assisting in the welfare of students, also beyond the immediate time and place of the classroom
• Professional learning 
• Collecting data in support of whole school initiatives and student growth
• Timetabling classes and playground duties
• Organising excursions 
• Report writing and parent-teacher evenings
• Year Advising
• Working in conjunction for Federation to support issues such as staff wellbeing and Gonski funding
• Whole school programs separate to our assigned classes, such as: Literacy and Numeracy initiatives, supporting AIME and other diversity-specific mentoring, after-school homework assistance programs, Gifted and Talented projects, sports coaching, student-led discussion and special interest groups, Positive Behaviour for Learning, learning support, leadership programs, community links, debating and public speaking, Tournament of the Minds, music and dance and drama performance evenings, etc.

You would be hard pressed to be doing all of these things well all of the time. So when I went to the Project Zero 2017 Sydney Conference a few weeks back and was shown a particular video I found myself thinking of what Yvette said: pick what you want to be good at.

The video in question is Stephen Covey's philosophy on 'Big Rocks'...

This clip was used by Rachel Merhebi, a HSIE teacher from the Ku-ring-gai High School Action Research Team, in support of a session titled 'Making Feedback a Big Rock'. It put me in mind of Yvette's maxim because we can't do everything as teachers, just as we can't in life. We have to work out the priorities first and then make these the 'big rocks'.

Okay. Metaphor over.

Ms. Merhebi took us through a few ideas centered around feedback, some of which were influenced by the texts Power of Protocol by McDonald, Mohr, Dichter, and McDonald, and Feedback edited by Robbie M. Sutton. The driving question for this professional learning was: How can I help my students become more disposed to seeking feedback?

Part of this process is establishing the kind of feedback we want to provide for our students, and Ms. Merhebi drew the conclusion that feedback should be:

• Descriptive
• Goal-oriented
• Specific
• Actionable
• Constructive
• Timely

In the case of peer feedback, the main areas to focus on should for it to be specific and constructive. The reason for concentrating the feedback in this way is that when peer assessment is involved we want to keep in mind that it's just as useful for the student giving the feedback as it is for the student who receives it. I've found that engaging my Advanced English students in the process of giving feedback has been an effective activity in directing their focus towards discrete essay writing skills.

For the Preliminary and HSC Advanced English comparative study modules I've made use of a peer editing proforma as part of the essay writing process. These modules are: Animal Farm and Elysium for Year 11, and the 1984 and Metropolis option for Year 12. In order for students to meet the 'reflection' requirements of the assessment task (for both modules) they need to have at least two students complete peer editing proformas for their work.

The proforma they use is here.

In addition to this I was inspired by Ms. Merhebi's session to make use of one of the many strategies she outlined. This particular approach comes from Creative Cultures of Thinking educator Simon Brooks and involves running individual feedback sessions for students. The basic gist is that the student comes along to a pre-arranged appointment, receives feedback from the teacher on the spot as the teacher marks the piece of writing right there, and then walks away with specific goals.

Simon Brooks - Professional Development guru

It sounds fairly straightforward and, really, it is - but I also found it to be quite empowering for the students, and immensely practical for me.

Putting it into Practice

The reason I waited until now to write this blog (rather than writing it directly after the Project Zero conference) was that I wanted to see how this approach went.

There are so many great ideas at professional learning conferences like Project Zero that it's just about impossible to put all of these ideas into practice. This brings us back to Yvette's wisdom and the 'big rocks' approach. Whilst sitting in Rachel Merhebi's workshop I decided to zone in on just this one strategy as something I'd like to try. I picked something and ran with it, rather than tried to note all the things. That might just sound like commonsense to some of you... for me it's a piece of advice that I need to constantly keep in mind so I don't drown in trying to do too much.

Anyway, here's my recount of how this feedback approach went down:

1. I had students undertake a past HSC Creative Writing question in exam conditions during class time. It was something I wanted to provide some meaningful feedback on as I find it difficult to embed creative writing into the set modules for the HSC.
2. I collected the responses and then put made available a booking sheet where up to 5 students could book in to see me in one of six times (a couple of my lunchtimes and non-teaching periods that overlapped with their own study periods). 
3. The students then came to see me in groups of 1-5 and I sat them down independently for ten minutes at a time.
4. Before this point I didn't even read the responses. The key idea that Ms. Merhebi spoke about was that it should be assessed in front of the students so they can see what the process is. The bonus of doing it in this way is that I'm also not spending time marking responses for those senior students who aren't interested, which is very practical when it comes to non-formally assessed tasks. 
5. While sitting with the student I read the piece and talk them through what works and what doesn't, show them the HSC criteria, and give them an idea of what needs to be aimed for the next time they write a creative piece under the same conditions. Something that many of the students struggled with was to sustain their idea across at least three to four pages within the time limit given, so the advice could include a goal in the sense that they should aim to increase the length of their piece by a page each time we undertake a past HSC Discovery Creative question.

 And so ends this freewheeling account of professional learning and feedback ideas.

English Studies - What it Was, and Where it's Going.

This weekend I trekked up the countryside to the Hunter Region to attend #EnglishStudiesDay2016; a wonderful collegial experience driven by passionate English Studies advocate Sam Schroder; one of the architects of the English Studies course during its piloting stage.

One thing that set the tone of the day was the welcome to country provided by a local student, a young Worimi man, who conducted it in his people's language. I don't think I've ever seen a welcome or acknowledgement of country given so beautifully. It really struck a chord with me.   

Anyway, aside from getting the opportunity to network with other teachers, teachers who have such positive opinions of the English Studies course as a forum for authentic engagement with English, the day provided a real moment of clarity in which Sam Schroder provided an overview of what the English Studies course is. Where it came from. Where it's going.

If you're a new teacher you may very well find yourself allocated to the English Studies course, and knowing where it is has come from and how it's continuing to develop is something that will be pertinent to you. And if you're not teaching English Studies, well, it might still be of interest to you anyway because maybe you're awesome like that.

The Birth of English Studies

Prior to English Studies, there was the 2 Unit Contemporary English course. From 1997-1999, the Contemporary English course was phased out to usher in the increasingly complexity of the Standard and Advanced courses. Many teachers were happy to see Contemporary English go as it was widely perceived as a 'dumbing down' of the English course and did not benefit those preparing for university study. Standard English grew out a response to this as a course for students who weren't suited to the Advanced course but would still be going to university and needed to be able to engage at an academic level when they got there.

Two more things then also led the way to the development of the English Studies course:

• In a national content, the Melbourne Declaration of 2008 acknowledged that a set of standards should and would be applied to all Australian students, with two specific goals:

• Goal 1 dealt with equity and excellence, the idea that opportunities should be provided to every child, not just those who wanted to become doctors, lawyers, etc.
• Goal 2 was the idea that all young Australians should become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.
  
• The other influential factor was that, on a state level, 2010 saw NSW increase the leaving age from 15 to 17.

This means that even those who aren't equipped for Standard or Advanced English should be able to have a scope for success in English, and that's where English Studies comes in. English Studies should be a forum for students to be taught how to be critical thinkers; active citizens who question what they see and are able to communicate their opinions.

How it Happened

In 2009, BOSTES invited submissions for the creation of the English Studies course. 76 schools were selected to pilot the course in 2010, and students at some of these schools had to apply for the class and were considered 'lucky' to get in. This was followed by extensive evaluation, and the Department of Education then invested in the writing of units to support the course. In 2011, the course was rolled out across the state.

After this, things become a little hazy... there is some feeling that the course hasn't been given the support it needs. Non-government sectors have expressed no interest in developing resources, and some schools opt not to run the course in the belief that a non-ATAR version of English has no validity to their communities. The RAP data, however, shows that English Studies is, essentially, doing the job it was designed to do - students who would have gotten Band 1 and Band 2 marks in Standard are instead catered for in the English Studies course.

How it Works Now

There are two mandatory modules. In the Preliminary course this is Achieving Through English, which focuses on the worlds of education, careers and community, and in the HSC course it is We Are Australians, which takes the form of studies on citizenship, community and cultural identity. There is a possibility of crossover with the subject of Work Studies in terms of resume writing (which forms a crucial part of Achieving Through English), however, Sam Schroder suggests that this is a perfect opportunity to engineer cross-curricular study between English Studies and Work Studies, which allows for team teaching and the avoidance of unnecessary repetition across subject areas.

The other modules are elective, with scope for 1 self-developed module in the Preliminary year, preferably something that is appropriate for your school's context. Examples given by some of the teachers in attendance at #EnglishStudiesDay2016:

• Surfing (a coastal school)
• Pig-shooting (a school way out west)
• Indigenous studies (a school with a large indigenous community)

Where it's Heading

The proposed syllabus is currently slated to begin in 2018 with an exam option that allows English Studies to achieve an ATAR, something that (judging from anecdotal and empirical evidence) is unlikely to change before it rolls out. Working in tandem with this is the introduction of a common module across English Studies, Standard English and Advanced English, which is the element of the course that will enable this ATAR option.

Your mileage may vary as far as whether this is a good idea or not. I'm not against it, but I'm also not particularly passionate about it. In fact, I tend to feel this way about most things before they happen - I reserve judgement for when I see things in action. We'll see what happens. What I will say though is that students often change their minds, change their goals, and anything could happen in a student's life between the commencement of Year 11 and the time in which they finish up their high school education - so, therefore, it follows that we shouldn't be locking students out of opportunities just because they've committed to English Studies at the end of Year 10. The allowance of an ATAR option means that students can, right up until the day of the HSC examination, choose if they want to do this or not.

I'm looking forward to seeing how everything goes in 2018. 

Elysium: To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores...

The theme of this year's English Teachers Association Conference was one of exploration and discovery. Coming off the back of the emergence of the completed English Textual Concepts framework and the oncoming new senior English syllabuses, presenters were encouraged to match the rhetoric of the Shakespeare quote "To unpathed waters, undreamed shores".

I had a few ideas for presentations but the one that fit this concept most readily was Elysium, the 2013 Neill Blomkamp science fiction film, which works rather well when paired with George Orwell's Animal Farm in a Preliminary HSC Comparative Study. 

The PowerPoint Presentation on Elysium can be found here:

Resource: ETA 2016 Elysium PPT.

The majority of the Elysium part of the Comparative Study has been included on this blog with explanations of the resources and programming. These can be found on the links below, with each resource attached at the bottom of each post:

Link: An Introduction to the Comparative Study of Elysium and Animal Farm

Link: Elysium - Comprehension and Analysis

Link: The Language of Elysium - Connotation and Invented Lexicon

Link: Elysium - Characterisation and Representation

Link: Elysium - Allegory, Allusion, and Satire

Elysium - Characterisation and Representation of Ideas

The first shot of Max establishes a few things: the cramped nature of his house, his criminal or low socio-economic background (reflected in the Latino-styled tattoos), and the dated technology in his home juxtaposed against the robots and space station outside.

I'm a big believer in advocating for students who might not be harnessing their gifts to their fullest potential. In English, this means those students who are naturally gifted in terms of critical thinking and analysis, although they may not have the skills to formulate these gifts into the traditional modes of English communication (writing, representing, reading, etc.) So, with this in mind, I think there's still a lot of room in Preliminary Advanced English for scaffolding students. I don't want to assume that a student comes into Advanced English already knowing everything, and that includes knowing all the "how to" skills. What would be the point of that? If a student already knows what you're teaching and how to do it, then they should be skipping grades and looking for early entrance to university!

I've spoken about using Elysium as part of a comparative study on dystopian texts here, here and here, so I wanted to extend this a little further to show how students can analyse the way characterisation reflects the themes and context of the film.

My first-year teaching self would have just asked the students to look at a character and tell me what they represent. I would have left it open-ended in the belief that an Advanced English student could pour their magic mojo on it and interpret the characters independently. My time teaching a multiplicity of students and diverse student-types has taught me that this approach only achieves one thing: it gets answers out of those who already know how to do it. 

The mercenary Kruger is modeled after the notorious rogue soldiers known as 32 Battalion, who served in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. The shot above, where he uses a samurai sword to BBQ meat on a rooftop, reflects the ease and confidence in which he moves within the dangerous favelas.

In recent years I've been taking a different approach to high-achieving students. Why not just give them all the information they need, and therefore force them to focus more explicitly on the skills rather than the content? This isn't a new idea... it's reflected in flipped classrooms, project-based learning, scaffolding, etc., so it's not so much an epiphany as just a reinforcement of where I want to push the students.

The lesson below features character profiles of the major figures in Elysium - Max, Frey, Delacourt, Kruger, Spider, and Carlyle. Each profile contains some basic shot analysis, explanations of the etymology of the character's name, and additional context that links to what writer-director Neill Blomkamp was aiming for in his stylistic choices for how the characters are represented. It's all there for the students. They wouldn't know this stuff automatically; I had to arrive at the contextual knowledge through my own research and analysis so it would be silly to assume that the students could come up with this deep knowledge of content on the spot during the lesson.

The point is to instead discuss and read this stuff with the students and then get them to deconstruct the character with a higher order question (EG. 'In what way...', 'What is the significance...'). The student takes the information given to them and uses it to formulate their own response. It's okay for the information to be explicitly given to them because they're essentially doing what a university student does, which is working with a reading or text to bring a diverse array of content into their own hands as they put pen to paper. The more they do this, the wider and deeper their personal knowledge of the subject will become. It's not a radical concept; I just wanted to share the resource below and explain how it works :)

Resource - Representation/Characterisation in Elysium

Comparative Study: Elysium Comprehension Questions

In this post I outlined my thinking for teaching a Comparative Study on Animal Farm and Elysium. Whilst there isn't much point in presenting resources on Animal Farm (there are plenty of activities on Orwell's fable already out there), I do think there is a niche to fill on Elysium resources. My previous post detailed the contextual elements that Elysium draws on, so the next logical point from here is to have students work through some study guide questions that get them to engage with the text on a more immediate level. 

The resource below presents a mix of comprehension and visual analysis questions, and requires students to interact with the film on literal, figurative and contextual levels.  I recommend projecting it onto the whiteboard so students can see the screenshots in full colour.

Resource - Elysium Student Guide (click to download).

I've also included a teacher version for ease of delivery, which gives possible answers. If you use this, please don't feel restricted by my answers. I actually composed most of these answers via whole class discussion with my Year 11 Advanced English students, and there are no doubt a whole bunch of other interpretations that would work in response to the questions as well.

Resource - Elysium Teacher Guide (click to download).

Happy Dystopias!

Comparative Study: Elysium and Animal Farm

Concept art for the film Elysium

This term I'm teaching Animal Farm to Preliminary Advanced English as part of a comparative study. I had every intention of teaching it alongside V For Vendetta (which is how I've usually seen it paired) but, for a couple of reasons, I changed my mind when I was programming/planning. Here are the reasons:

1. I like V For Vendetta but I hadn't seen it for a long time, so it wasn't all that 'big' in my mind.
2. A recent bit of professional learning with the delightful folks at Into English reminded me that, if I have the option, I should jump on the opportunity to teach a dystopian text of my own choosing. 
3. My choice of text was Elysium - which I feel is much more current and relevant than V For Vendetta.
4. I had recently read Alan Moore's dense and highly literate graphic novel V For Vendetta, which only served to highlight the ways in which the film betrays his vision of post-Thatcherite fascism. I have no actual problem with the film version an an entity of its own, but what I do find problematic is the idea of teaching a text that has a sense of conflicted duality (a film version vs. the original version), especially when I'm already seeking to compare it to another text altogether; Animal Farm. 
5. Elysium, on the other hand, is an original film with a context entirely of its own - it's not an adaptation or an appropriation. It's a film that reflects the now and isn't beholden to a graphic novel. It's that rare thing - a modern sci-fi film that isn't based on another text.
6. I really like Elysium. It's not without its flaws, but few texts are.

The world of Elysium looks very familiar to anyone who's visited or seen images of Latin American slums.

The starting point for looking at Elysium is introducing the students to some of the context. The basis of my comparative study is 'Texts in Time', the comparative module used in the HSC 2009-2014 syllabus. This involves first examining Animal Farm and the political and social context that fuels Orwell's powerfully allegorical satire. The comparison then moves to Elysium, where students are required to recognise the way an entirely different dystopian society reflects a more contemporary context. By the end of the module, students will be assessed on their ability to compose an essay that ties both texts together as reflections of their times. 

The Elysium part is kicked off with a PowerPoint that introduces and familiarises students with the political ideas and events that shaped Neill Blomkamp's Elysium. As the film is incredibly current (filmed in 2013, it was interpreted at the time as a direct partial allegory for the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011), it can be difficult to pull the various influencing threads out of it. Hindsight is, after all, something that can only truly be achieved with some degree of distance. I have therefore done my best to track backwards from the film's release to show a possible line of contextual cause and effect.

The PowerPoint covers the following:

• Neill Blomkamp's South African background and his previous film, the similarly satirical District 9.
• The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011-2013.
• "We are the 99%" - the idea that influenced the Wall Street protests, and continues to fuel economic and political debate today.
• The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 that highlighted economic injustice and brought the '99%' debate into sharp focus for most Americans.
• The Arab Spring - not as important as most of the other things here, but still an influential factor for the Occupy Wall Street movement - the term 'Arab Spring' refers to the series of social media-led revolutions that radically changed the political climate of Northern Africa and the Middle East in 2011.
• Obamacare - the Affordable Care Act that made public healthcare an issue of debate in the U.S. from 2010 onward.
• Asylum Seekers - a worldwide issue that has continued to grow from 2001 to the present day, with increasing security in Western countries seeming to contravene the civil rights established by the United Nations.
• 9/11 - the 2001 tragedy that reflected and continues to shape America's strained foreign policy, and links to larger ideas of the West's impact on the Third World (particularly Africa and the Middle East), such as Nigerian bank scams and data theft, African mercenaries and war lords, use of drone technology, international commercial exploitation by large corporations, puppet governments, imperialism, and terrorism.

There's a lot there and I like to make the point to students that they don't need to know all of it. What they do need to know is some of it, and in well enough detail to draw links between the text and the real world, and then again from text to text. 

The PowerPoint ends with a couple of thinking questions on terrorism and how this phenomenon can reflect unequal power relationships, and then a prediction activity where students are asked to imagine how a science fiction film could allegorically represent all these points of context. Ideally, students will have seen Elysium before they work through this PowerPoint and can try and draw links themselves, but the activity should have some merit either way.

A good follow-up activity is to then reinforce student knowledge (or teach it to them for the first time) about the Left and Right wings of politics. This involves getting the students to draw a line and then plotting a series of ideas and events on the line from left to right - things like private healthcare, the Occupy Wall Street movement, drone surveillance, etc. Of course, some of these things are debatable in where they would sit on the spectrum, but then - that's half the fun, right? If you can get your students arguing about this then you've succeeded in engaging them in becoming more aware about politics and political context.

Resources:
1. Elysium - Context (PowerPoint)
2. Spectrum Plotting (Activity sheet)

Matching Russian Timeline to Animal Farm

How great is Animal Farm? That's a rhetorical question, of course, but feel free to let me know how great you think it is anyway. 

I've just finished putting together all my resources for an Animal Farm/Elysium comparative study. I'm doing this with my Preliminary Advanced class for Term 2, and I'm looking forward to teaching it and discussing it and doing all those teacherly things.

A lot of the comparative study is context-driven, which means talking about Orwell, class divisions, allegory, fables, etc. Perhaps the most significant contextual element when it comes to Animal Farm is 20th Century Russian history; it would certainly be very difficult indeed to teach the allegorical function of Orwell's modern 'fairy story' without drawing comparisons between it and the Russian Revolution. 

The resource below pulls together a series of characters and plot points from Animal Farm and comparable events/people from Russian history. Students read through the sheet and must decide for themselves which elements from Russia fit with Orwell's text. 

Animal Farm and Russian History - Mix and Match Activity

Here are the answers for teacher-reference.

A. Karl Marx formulates the theory of Communism matches with Old Major comes up with the philosophy of Animalism.

B. Tsar Nicholas II's poor leadership leads to famine and food shortages matches with Mr Jones rules over the farm and forgets to feed his livestock. 

C. The aristocracy (upper class) exploits the peasants and workers matches with Man does not produce anything, and instead lives off the work of the animals.

D. Stalin makes a deal with Hitler, who then invades Russia. England does not help because they see Stalin as evil matches with Napoleon makes a deal with his enemy, Frederick. The farmer then betrays him. Meanwhile, the other farmer, Pilkington refuses to help after being treated poorly by Animal Farm in the past.

E. Stalin encourages a 'cult of personality' wherein he is worshipped by the Russian people matches with Napoleon is worshiped as the 'Father of All Animals'.

F. Stalin pushes the Russian people to complete his 'Five Year Plans' so that Russia can become more modern matches with The animals are put to work with the extremely difficult goal of building a windmill. 

G. The Tsar is kicked off the throne after the Russian Revolution matches with The animals take over the farm and chase Mr Jones out. 

H. Marxism teaches that labour should be divided equally by all people matches with The animals decide that all work should be shared by all. 

I. Stalin is not a particularly popular leader but he excels at playing people off against each other matches with Napoleon is not charismatic but is able to use certain other animals to his advantage.

J. The Russian peasants and workers (the proletariat) live in very poor conditions matches with The animals' lives are "miserable, laborious and short".

K. Stalin forces his enemies to confess in public 'show trials' before executing them. This is known as 'The Purges' matches with Animals are forced to confess to false crimes before being executed.

L. Stalin makes use of the NKVD (Russian secret police) to punish his enemies matches with Napoleon trains the pups to be his loyal and vicious servants. 

M. Other countries and former allies of the Tsar attack the communists in the Russian Civil War matches with The other farmers attack Animal Farm to try and take it back from the animals.

N. The Communist leader Trotsky wants to spread Marxism throughout the world matches with Snowball wants to spread Animalism to other farms.

O. Stalin wants to concentrate on preserving Communism in Russia and doesn't care about spreading Marxism to other countries matches with Napoleon wants to concentrate on protecting and defending Animalism in just Animal Farm. 

P. Communist Russia becomes a totalitarian regime matches with Animal Farm becomes the thing it rebelled again.

Q. There is a power struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, ending with Trotsky being exiled from Russia matches with There is a power struggle between Napoleon and Snowball ending with Snowball's expulsion from Animal Farm.

R. The Five Year Plans fail after being interrupted by WWII matches with The windmill remains unbuilt after so much effort.

S. The perfect worker Stakhanov is used in propaganda to inspire other Russian workers matches with Boxer's motto of 'I will work harder' inspires the other animals.

T. The Communist Party uses propaganda and censorship to influence the Russian people matches with Squealer feeds the animal misinformation in order to manipulate them.

U. Stalin decides to start trading with the rest of Europe matches with Napoleon decides to start trading with the farmers.

V. Stalin blame Trotsky for all of Russia's problems matches with The absent Snowball is blamed for the destruction of the windmill. 

W. Eastern Orthodox priests pacify the Russian people with tales of Heaven and Jesus, and have close ties with the Tsar of Russia matches with Moses tells the animals stories of 'Sugarcandy Mountain', a paradise that animals go to after they die, and is looked after by Mr Jones. 

X. Lenin's body is displayed in Moscow for the Russian people to pay their respects to matches with Old Major's skull is displayed in a central location for all the animals to see.

Technique Revision - Focus on Connotation

I started teaching a Preliminary Advanced English class this year and they're an absolutely fantastic bunch of students. As with all new classes, however, there needs to be some diagnostic testing (or pre-testing, if you prefer that term). Not all of this kind of 'testing' needs to be formalised and markable, oft-times it can just be something I've used to gather information that will influence the direction I take my class in over the next few weeks.

At the moment, we're looking at the Area of Study (Belonging) with a Prescribed Text (Immigrant Chronicle by Peter Skrzynecki). To get the ball rolling I decided to go over a big list of techniques and ascertain which ones the students were familiar with. So I put the list up on the board, like so:

Then an idea hit me. I told each student to rank each term out of 3 to show how well they knew them, with a score of '1' indicating that it was a term they didn't know at all. Then I ran around the class collecting all the 1s onto my own copy of the sheet, resulting in this:

The hand-scribbled term on the bottom right is 'enjambment', which I added after we had covered it in the poem St. Patrick's College.

Now I know which techniques we should be revising. I've been working through these over the last few days; just with a few asides where I put up some quotes on the board with the title of the technique and then asked the students to try and work out what the technique was. Here's an example that went quite well, where we discussed 'Connotation' and what it meant:

I forgot to take a photo before I started drawing all over it and editing bits of it. Sorry.

I started with two sentences:

• "Corporal Jones squeezed the trigger and removed the enemy"
• "Corporal Jones squeezed the trigger and murdered the enemy"

Then asked the question, what does connotation mean in relation to these sentences? The students started offering answers, most of them quite pertinent. We talked about the associations we made with the two different words:

• Removed = Good guy, tactical, in war.
• Murdered = Harsher, modal (emotional reaction)

And then, as a class, we came up with our own definition for Connotation: "The associations a reader makes with certain words".

After this, it was time to link it to our Prescribed Text, so I trotted out the poem Feliks Skrzynecki and eagled in on the word 'father'. What are the connotations of this term? What if it were a different term that essentially meant the same thing?

I put up these words:

• Father:
• Dad:
• Patriarch:
• Daddy:
• Guardian:

And asked students to fill in their own word associations, with some interesting results:

As these are senior students, I decided not to censor their association of the word 'Daddy' with 'sexual' and 'fetish'. Their minds went there and this is meant to be about word-association. It is what it is; that's the whole point of connotation. Plus there's far 'worse' in some of the HSC Prescribed Texts.

After we had finished brainstorming each of the terms, we established that 'Father' had a more formal connotation that set up a distance between the poet and Feliks.

Buoyed by how successful this quick exercise was, I decided to plough on a little further with the quote "They dug cancer out of his foot".

This went well too, with connections made between 'dug' with visceral language and gardening. Meanwhile, 'took' implied something far less painful than, say, 'scraped'.

Here's the technique sheet below if you'd like an electronic copy:
Techniques List