Introduction and Rationale
One Saturday evening in March, a few of my colleagues and I welcomed some students to a viewing of Alvin Ailey's "Four Corners" by Ronald K. Brown as well as "Revelations" at the Auditorium Building of Chicago. The space spoke to us. Fascination swelled for us educators and students alike as we walked through the vomitoria, which compressed us as a community and then released us into the expansive and ornate interior before sitting in front of the transformative proscenium stage. It was not only the magnetic and eloquent bodywork of the performers who moved us by telling their story, though that would have provided more than enough eye candy, but the place we were in—a palace full of persuasive ornateness and the strength of a fortress simultaneously.
The Auditorium Building embodies rhetoric for equal opportunity, for the people, for community, for labors of love, for monumental permanence, for acceptance of diversity, for change which is ever-flowing and constant. The Chicagoan influence is realness. I mean, can you get a more blood and guts, desperately human city than Chi-town? And my students are Chicago. They need to know her and she them.
I want students to understand the importance of eloquence and the meaning of rhetoric. When you make a good argument for something, be it logical (logos), emotional (pathos), or ethical (ethos-out of character), people will listen to you. When people listen to you, and the argument is good, they may believe in what you're saying. If people believe what you want them to believe, action happens; change happens. Our students need to believe that change is possible.
I also want students to understand the history and politics behind the conception of a place like this one. Chicago's Auditorium Building was built for them, for The Public based on democratic ideals. This was true in the time of its original construction, from 1886-1889, and in its reopening and reconstruction, from 1957-1967. After studying the Civil War, my students will begin to study the historical content of this unit. They will be ready to understand the democratic ideals of equal opportunity and the acceptance of diversity from the point of view of knowing the consequences of neglecting those ideals.
The design of the building provides continuing effectiveness. I want students to understand that the process for creating a democratic place is never easy and is necessarily complex. Compromise is involved and always important. Finally, I want students to understand that a building can embody and provide witness to rhetoric. If the plan is good, the space will speak. If it's really good, the space will also listen and be reinvented as culture shifts around it. The students I teach and learn from will benefit greatly from learning elements of history, politics, design, writing argumentatively, and speaking with purpose about their hometown. I would argue that all learners would benefit from the critical depth of intellectually excavating a Chicago space some named a wonder of the world after the World's Fair of 1893. It is increasingly important for our students to be able to communicate their ideas eloquently, both to express themselves and to synthesize information for a new understanding of history. Using the lens of rhetoric will focus my students on learning basic compositional information that comprises the foundations for the facts of present-day realities. As they develop such an understanding my students will be lead far down a path to responsible citizenship.
I have taught at National Teachers Academy (NTA) for three years, and I will continue in the fall. NTA is located on the south side of Chicago in the South Loop community. We have 540 students in grades Pre-K through eighth. Over 91% of our students qualify for free/reduced lunch. Our student population, racially, is 90% African American. We have a large percentage of displaced african american families who once lived in project housing that has since been demolished who reside with friends, family members, and/or in shelter-housing. There is high gang activity in and around our neighborhood.
Our neighborhood is at an apex between Chinatown, McCormick Place, Downtown, and Bronzeville. Last year NTA welcomed an additional 85 students as a result of the Chicago Public School (CPS) neighborhood school closings. We continue to experience shifts from gentrification on the northeast end of our community. One effect of those shifts is NTA's acceptance of a Regional Gifted Center (RGC). The RGC started in kindergarten and first grade last year and will have a second grade classroom as well this coming school year. The RGC brings in a more diverse population. The shape-shifting of our school community requires communication about these changes.
Rhetoric can be defined simply as the art of persuasion, be it in speaking, writing, or design. Chicago's Auditorium Building is a prime example of persuasion through architectural design. As Joseph R. Roach (Sterling Professor of Theater and English at Yale University) helped me to understand, "There are ways of thinking specifically about rhetorical tropes—such as allusion, synecdoche, etc.—and architectural expressiveness. This is particularly true of the decorative surfaces of a building like this one (Chicago's Auditorium Building), which was meant to make an argument." As influenced by the readings and activities of our seminar titled "Eloquence" for the Yale National Initiative (led by Roach), my students and I will read, discuss, and memorize powerfully persuasive words, but we will also imagine/look at/listen to some spaces as if they were rhetorical texts.
One of the central ideas of this narrative curriculum unit focuses on figures of speech, or "any artful deviations from the ordinary mode of speaking or writing," as explained in Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. We'll identify schemes (Greek schema, form, shape) as a transference of order and tropes (Greek tropein, to turn) as a transference of meaning. Some of the figures of speech that we'll use as parallels to design elements are allusion (a brief reference to a moment in history, a piece of art, an entity, etc.), allegory (characters or events in a literary, visual, or musical art form represent or symbolize ideas), oxymoron (a contradiction that oddly makes sense), and antithesis (places one item, such as an emotion or action, against its opposite).
Students will be exposed to the strategic design-story of the Auditorium. That story begins with the master minds Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan who worked as a team in collaboration with visual artists and interior designers to create a space of relaxation, contemplation, and inspiration for The Public, based on democratic ideals, such as equality, justice, political participation, compromise and negotiation. The creators have stories just as the building has a story, but more importantly, the creators had strong life purposes just as the building continues to have a strong purpose for The Public. The conceptual jump being made for students, adds an artistic and intellectual edge to the unit that I believe creates a new perspective for our students. It is this type of flexibility in our minds that allows for empathy, but the kids have to feel the connection. What's the way in? I would argue that it's direct experience and this unit is full of exposure to the Auditorium Building that aims to speak to all who enter it.
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