Sample Daily Lessons
Getting Started
The homework assignment prior to the first day of the unit is the life road map. Students will bring this to class to share (if they so choose) with their classmates and to begin to see their lives as a series of events and choices. I will ask students to choose three events on their road map and answer the following journal questions–What did you learn from this event? How did you change following this event?
Following the journal writing, students will follow the images as I read "The Bear that Wasn't Aloud." I will prepare them for the story with the quote from the Talmud, "We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are." After reading the story, we will return to the quote in pairs first to discuss how they are similar. Students are always ready to explain how they have been misunderstood or misrepresented. This story opens the pathway for such statements and encourages class participation.
The final reading for the class period is Linda Wallace article on cultural lenses. It is a short article and directly relevant to my students. I will ask students to consider how the bear story and the lens article are similar. What are the dangers of cultural lenses? How do cultural lenses develop? How can we begin to deconstruct our lenses and open our minds? From this article and these questions, students will begin to posit ideas for how to define cultural lenses and how to help understand them? This strategy is meant to build momentum and student interest for the rest of the unit.
Making the Unfamiliar Familiar
In an effort to challenge my students, who are often budding relativists, I am going to use the National Geographic series called Taboo to examine three different cultural perspectives on handling the dead. The episode highlights very different cultural traditions from digging up the dead only to rebury them to the small Hindu sect that eats the deceased. The stories will force students to confront their own beliefs and provide an opportunity to practice reserving judgment to gather the facts and make a reasoned argument. Students watching the video will take notes with a T-chart divided by practices and beliefs (similar to what they did on the first day of the unit). Using this chart as our guide, students will discuss first how they feel about the practices present and try to explain what in their past has made them feel that way.
Following that students will journal from the perspective of one of the people interviewed in the film defending their religion and practice. Students will have five minutes to brainstorm and ten minutes to write. The final exercise will ask students to read another students journal entry in defense of the practice and look for ways it would be similar if you were defending your own religion or beliefs.
Seeing with New Eyes
Through "reading" magazine and television advertisements that send gendered messages, I aim to help students understand that all advertisements sell more than a product; it is selling culture. Using a collection of images, I have gathered over the years student pairs examine them by using the media literacy strategy described above (we will do one advertisement together to model the detail and deliberation required). Following the description, student pairs explain the argument that the advertisement is making and what that argument may tell use about how our society views gender. Since gender will have already been defined along with student ideas about what makes someone masculine and feminine (see Human Sculptures in strategies section), the question students will discuss is: How do we learn gender norms? When did you know what masculine and feminine meant?
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