Analyzing Literature Using Grad at Grad Descriptors

1. Analyzing Literature Using Grad at Grad Descriptors Elaine Clark Fairfield College Preparatory School

2. Context • Jesuit Educators Academy • Portfolio Process • New Text Book- Mirrors and Windows Connecting with Literature • Authors of Color • Female Authors

3. Creation of the Matrix • Backward Design • More overtly teach the Grad at Grad • Make it easier to incorporate the descriptors in the daily classroom experience

4. The Matrix

5. Questions and Realizations • Even if students can rattle off the 5 key elements of the grad at grad, do they really understand them? • Am I really teaching the Grad at Grad or am I just paying “lip service” to it? Am I leaving too much to my colleagues in Theology? • Is the Grad at Grad woven into my curriculum or is it just an add on or an after thought?

6. Practice Makes Permanent • Use the descriptors as every day tools to analyze literature. • Using the descriptors on fictional characters allows the students the practice and familiarity they need to be able to apply the descriptors to themselves. • Over time, students will have an intrinsic knowledge of the descriptors and what we are all striving to be

7. Practice • All Quiet on the Western Front- Erich Remarque • Context- Paul, the young German soldier, must guard Russian prisoners. • A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends. At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly the world’s condemnation and severest penalty fall, becomes our highest aim. But who can draw such a distinction when he looks at these quiet men with their childlike faces and apostles’ beards. Any non-commissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, than they are to us. And yet we would shoot at them again and they at us if they were free. (Remarque 194)

8. All Quiet on the Western Front-Cont • It is distressing to watch them take their afternoon meal thus; one would like to crack them over their thick pates. They rarely give anything away. How little we understand one another. (Remarque 192) • After reading these passages, what Grad at Grad descriptors, describe Paul and why?

9. Romeo and Juliet-Shakespeare • (Act 5 lines 68-74 and 80-84) • Context- Romeo has just learned of Juliet’s “death”. He hurries to buy the poison he will use to kill himself. • Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,/And fearest to die?/Famine is in thy cheeks,/Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,/Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back;/The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law,/The world affords no law to make thee rich;/Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

10. Romeo and Juliet-Cont • There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls,/Doing more murther in this loathsome world,/Than these poor compounds that thou mayest not sell./I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none./Farewell! Buy food, and get thyself in flesh. • After reading these passages, which Grad at Grad descriptors describe Romeo and why? Which descriptors are present and which are missing?

11. Thank You, M’am- Hughes • Context- A young boy named Roger attempts to steal Mrs. Jones’ purse. Instead of sending him to the police, she brings him home and cooks him dinner. She ultimately gives him the money to buy the blue suede shoes that he wants. • The woman was sitting on the daybed. After a while she said, “I were young once and I wanted things I could not get.” There was another long pause. The boy’s mouth opened. Then he frowned, not knowing he frowned. The woman said, “Um-hum! You thought I was going to say but, didn’t you? You thought I was going to say, but I didn’t snatch people’s pocketbooks. Well, I wasn’t going to say that.” Pause. Silence. “I have done things, too, which I would not tell you, son-neither tell God, if He didn’t already know. Everybody’s got something in common. (Hughes 8) • Which descriptors describe Mrs. Jones and why?

12. The Interlopers-Saki • Context- Gradwitz and Znaeym are in a feud over a piece of forest land. Neither man knows really why they hate one another, only that their families have been locked in this bitter feud for years. Each man is out to murder the other if they find them trespassing! • The two enemies stood glaring at one another for a long silent moment. Each had a rifle in his hand, each had hate in his heart and murder uppermost in his mind. The chance had come to give full play to the passions of a lifetime. (Saki 17) • To avoid conflict, which elements of the Grad at Grad are most needed?

13. From Fictional to Real • Move away from fictional to every day conflicts which call us to be the type of person the Grad at Grad describes • Use contemporary pieces. • Two suggestions: • This Is Not Who We Are by Naomi Nye • Saying Yes by Diana Chang