Overview
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.1
Robert Kennedy best articulated the concept of social action in the preceding quote. The idea that every human being has the opportunity to effect change in the world through positive social action is exciting and empowering. However, one must first be aware of injustice and develop a social consciousness before one can take action.
As a teacher, I have an old fashioned, ethical view that it is not merely my job to educate my students in the content area but also to provide a measure of character education. I firmly believe that I can impart outstanding and engaging classroom instruction while simultaneously raising the social consciousness of my students.
Through this unit, my tenth grade English Language Arts students will acquire an appreciation for other cultures and respect the differences inherent in them. Building understanding, making connections, and developing empathy among diverse populations of students will enhance their ability to interact in a successful manner with our global community. This unit will be especially effective for high school students who have little experience of global cultures and lack the resources or incentive to explore those cultures on their own. The unit is intended for a tenth grade English Language Arts classroom but could easily be used by a social studies teacher to teach culture or geography.
Unit Synopsis
This unit is a nine-week comprehensive non-fiction unit that correlates films about social issues with nonfiction texts. I will present social pressures and problems that are common to families in four nations. The nonfiction texts will inform students as well as provide an opportunity for explicit reading instruction. I will then use fictional films to bring the non-fiction to life. My approach to this unit will allow my students to create a system for approaching and appreciating other cultures. Students will learn that culture is explicitly expressed by things like food, language and clothing and implicitly expressed through communication style, beliefs, attitudes, values and perceptions.
I chose to focus on issues related to family because my students will readily identify with the basic family structure and the issues common to it. Through a better understanding of a family in a foreign nation, students will become familiar with a social issue. The complexity of approaching social issues in an alien culture is made less daunting to students when they approach it from the familiar ground of the family. Utilizing the theme of issues related to the family will allow students to make comparisons to the structures and functions with which they are familiar. Focusing on South Africa, Ireland, Afghanistan and China will provide a sampling of highly different cultures and issues related to the family that are particular to each.
From its inception, film has captivated audiences and continues to be a significant part of our cultural life. Modern youth are highly visually oriented and respond to the use of technology with far greater receptiveness than any prior generation.2 Using the power of cinema to promote awareness of social issues will help to develop a global social consciousness in my students. Students will reinforce reading strategies as well as begin to develop an understanding of film and the power it has to create a global social consciousness.
Students will become more skilled at reading non-fiction and raise their appreciation for the world in which they live and operate. By reading a variety of nonfiction resources in conjunction with viewing films from different countries, students will be engaged and develop deeper understandings of the issues. I will explicitly teach close reading skills and strategies using a wide range of nonfiction texts. Nonfiction is the broadest literary genre including memoirs, diaries, biographies, travelogues, news articles, speeches, and informational texts. Each of the texts used in the unit was selected to serve as a representative sample of the types of nonfiction literature adults should be familiar with and which will inform them as concerned global citizens in the future. Using these texts to explore strategies like determining the author's purpose, visualizing, making connections, and responding to the text will create active and informed readers. I will explicitly teach reading and comprehension strategies to increase student reading ability. Reading instruction about something that actually matters in the "real world" will provide students with incentive to succeed. Once they succeed at reading, the intrinsic rewards of being a good reader will enrich their perspective for the rest of their lives.
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