Alden's+Design

Alden's Design

Aiming SPECIFICALLY for these results… Have the students circle up (ancillary, I know, but this face-to-face interaction will become import during the “attack” and the “defense”) and each read one line from the poem in succession, according to how they “feel” the line should be read and inflected. Ideally having the entire poem read aloud with every line being subject to each reader’s individual control all while still reading collectively and hopefully cohesively.

__The teacher will NOT read the poem.__

Have every student “respond” (subjective prompt) to the poem in private. Have them reflect in private how they will “respond.” Leave the “response” ambiguously open…spoken, unspoken, written, drawn, etc. Have them leave the circle and go where the please to work on their “response.”

After the students have had time to “respond” in private (i.e. on their own whether they’ve written an interpretation down on paper unseen by the milieu or come up with verbal response in their mind without divulging it to the milieu) ask them to rejoin the milieu in the circle. Go around the circle and ask every student to share their “response.”

THE ATTACK: After every student has shared their “response” start with one student’s response and have the rest in the circle go around and argue why the student’s “response” is WRONG. Emphasize and reiterate that regardless of whether an “attacker” genuinely does agree with certain aspects of the “attacked” “response” they must present an argument wholeheartedly dismissing the “attacked’s” “response.” The “attacked” does not speak or offer rebuttals but rather takes every criticism in silence.

Continue the attack around the circle until every student has been attacked by every other student. After the attack, have the students leave the circle and write they feel that they are satisfied with their original “response” to the poem after the experience of being attacked by each of their peers, or if their “response” has now changed. Have the students come back to the milieu and the circle.

THE DEFENSE: Have the students go around the circle telling the milieu whether or not their “response” has changed from the initial exercise. Have them defend their positions, this time the milieu is silent while the “defender” has the floor. Why did the “response” change? Why did it not?  Ideally, if again this is our SPECIFIC desired result, this lesson will indirectly and implicitly place the students in an intellectual situation where they have to entertain oppositional viewpoints, endure critique (whether sincere or fabricated) of their ideas, and experience the staunch determination needed to hold fast to a subjective individualism in the midst of collective and group resistance (or realign to group dynamics).