Purpose
Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post discusses our need to know more about others in an article about Nigel Hamilton's Biography. He raises a wonderful question: "Is the purpose of biography to celebrate the lives of the famous and notable and thus to provide exemplars for the rest of us, or to reduce them to their mere humanity and thus to comfort us in the knowledge that they too are imperfect?" 1 This question is the basis of my unit and guides my class's process of writing about the lives of others, particularly students.
The purpose of this unit is to use literary biography to help students utilize lessons from the lives of others as a means to improve their own. Students view scripted and unscripted biographies each day through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, music, and a plethora of television shows (oh yeah, and a few books, too!) With the overwhelming variety of biographical representations, how are we as an audience utilizing the information gained? How can we determine what useful information is available for personal growth or application?
Technology and media smudge the line that divides reality and fiction. We watch the glamorized lives of others in situations that are often unsavory and expect our students to make productive choices from these examples. Whether we would like to admit it or not, our failure to teach students critical thinking skills as students engage in new found connections with influential images is a problem. Our students are seeking role models and finding them in entertainment media and social networking sites. Minimally equipped to discern between appropriate and inappropriate solutions, students often rely on what is familiar. With the goal of interjecting successful, productive lives as a conventional reference point, I welcome the opportunity for students to discover the potential that lies in personal life stories students have to tell.
The unit offers a brief history of biography, a discussion of biography in the media, and strategies and activities for use of biography in our lives. The setting for the unit's implementation is a high school with students of senior classification. Activities will be completed throughout the school year and in conjunction with the English teacher. The unit includes specifications regarding content and local and state standards. Strategies are adaptable across grade levels and curriculum and creative allowances are encouraged as students research and emerge as biographers.
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