Extended Analysis: dramatic readings of a slaveowner's diary
ContextI have been very excited to see students’ enthusiasm for course material pique when experimenting with use of the first person in debates and simulations that occur in front of the whole class. The successes of certain aspects of two recent lessons encourage my exploration of this topic through the design and implementation of additional in-class dramatizations this spring. In this analysis, I analyze one dramatic reading exercise.
The artifacts supporting this analysis are my own observation notes. The lesson took place in my 10th grade African American History classes, the first during a unit on the evolution of the definition of Race in the U.S. over time, and the other during a unit on past and present Slavery in the U.S.. I made the mistake of not recording audio or video of this lesson, so will use the evidence I have from my notes. My explanation of what happened is subject to the biases of my own perspective, so I recognize that I may be introducing a layer of fallacy for which I will be unable to correct. That said, the analysis of my own notes holds true. In this activity, students prepared dramatic readings of the diary of William Byrd, a southern slave owner whose diary reveals both relish and disaffection in his account of beating and torturing his own slaves. The purpose of the dramatic reading was for students to identify the emotional characteristics necessary to dramatize Byrd’s notes, which on the page seem somewhat quotidian. While the activity is a model I plan to use again in the future, the purpose of this analysis is to identify the moments of perceived “success,” and areas where I can improve the structure and implementation of my instruction. |
Analysis & Connection to InquiryIn my adoption of various teaching techniques to use to help facilitate my students’ learning of history, I am constantly balancing my desire to use methods in which I am competent—particularly as a novice teacher—with my desire to implement activities that meet my students’ learning needs. At the start of the year I hesitated to use dramatizations because I do not have significant experience with acting or improvisation, and doubted my ability to facilitate it. At the same time, I have been excited by the lesson ideas I find in History Alive! and other TCI materials, and recognize the significant body of research supporting the pedagogical utility of dramatizations in the classroom (Beach, 2010; TCI, 2004; Zipes, 1995.) It’s a model that fits naturally with my line of inquiry, but it has taken me quite a few months to figure out how to make dramatization activities my own.
The activity to present dramatic readings of William Byrd’s diary was developed by my Classroom Mentor, whose teaching activities I have borrowed to varying extents throughout the year. The challenge in the assignment is the intra-personal issue of negotiating between perspectives for individual students: How, when I believe that slavery is inhumane and necessarily wrong, can I pretend to enjoy it? I believe the learning takes place at the point of this negotiation, and that students can learn about each perspective by examining its counterpoint. Beach et al (2010) write: “Dramatic improvisation can create imagined spaces in which cultural assumptions can be questioned when teachers collaboratively assist young people to explore previously unconsidered identifications so that they may reconsider their agency.” So by taking on the words of a slaveowner with a taste for the sadistic, students in the audience can witness their peer speaking about slaves as if they were animals, and the student in character can take on—and then break—the character. In this way, both the student actor, and the audience, can experiment with figuring out not only that the slaveowner treated his slaves poorly—but get a sense for the taste in his mouth as he wrote in his daily diary about them. On the first day of the lesson, students responded to the following Warm Up: Who is your favorite dramatic actor, or what is your favorite dramatic movie? Why? Students debriefed their responses as a full group, then shared out to the full class. We created a list of characteristics that describe different kinds of “drama,” such as emotional, passionate, really convincing, serious, funny, and animated. Students were excited to describe what they enjoy about different dramatic performances, which served as a lucrative hook into the day’s activity. Next, students read through a collection of excerpts of William Byrd’s diary, and selected three to prepare. They copied the short entries into their own notebooks, to help them internalize the messages. First working individually, and then in groups, students underlined words and phrases they thought they should emphasize for dramatic effect, and then began to practice. We didn’t spend a significant amount of time practicing or memorizing the passages—my emphasis was on identifying what to dramatize, and how. Students’ presentations of the dramatic readings filled in the gaps. In one class, a student shouted his entire selection. In the same class, another student read gleefully. In another class, a student read hers as if she were reading a grocery list, characterizing the quotidian nature of Byrd’s habit of forcing his slaves to drink their own urine. For one reason or another, students in one of my two classes were more daring in their portrayal of Byrd than in the other—perhaps the difference between a first and a seventh period meeting time. It was fascinating for me to watch the students take on Byrd’s persona with great nuance after fairly minimal full-class discussion about how Byrd conceived of his slaves. The purpose for our close reading of Byrd was that his portrayal of the social position of slaves marked a conception of race that was more distinctly defined by skin-color than previously in history. We had examined many earlier examples of legal and social loopholes to the classification of race as indicated by skin-color alone: court cases where a black person is pardoned because they are a “good Christian,” or cases that maintain a black person’s rights to inherited property—something that disappears in court records by Byrd’s time. Byrd shows students a moment in U.S. history when slaves are so deeply devalued that a treating enslaved people as if they were animals appears permissible, in Byrd’s unabashed account. Consider this excerpt from my weekly reading reflection for EDUC657 Advanced Methods in Secondary Social Studies: Another reading strategy came up this week in my AAH class in the Magnet Program at my school, where students have been reading the diary of an 18th century slaveowner, William Byrd. The purpose of reading was to determine what the meaning of “race” was at the time of race-based slavery. Byrd’s diary reveals a man who took pleasure in owning slaves, and recounts him beating them and forcing them to drink their own urine. Students’ assignment was to prepare and present a “dramatic reading” of a short selection from Byrd’s diary, demonstrating Byrd’s sentiments about his slaves in the way they deliver the lines. I taught this lesson over the course of 1.5 days, and watched my CM teach it in two other classes, and was very excited to see two outcomes: some student readers revealed a keen ability to critique Byrd’s attitude towards slaves by emphasizing the pleasure and frustration he felt at his slaves expense; and students in the audience learned directly from their peers’ interpretations. This is a critical reading strategy I will use again. If we had studied Byrd in the more conventional third person, I believe that students would have felt the message, but more mildly. I was impressed that taking on Byrd’s persona appeared not to threaten the social norms of the classroom: students expressed disgust at Byrd’s character, but not at the individuals portraying Byrd in a given rendition. Beach et al writes: “Teachers also affect student agency when they create spaces for students’ competent performances of the use of various literacy tools. When young people create, present, and/or watch each others’ performances, they are engaged in key literacy social practices of composing, making public, and interpreting texts. Yet at the same time they are both using and developing their identities” (2010).
The activity was a powerful encouragement, to me, for many reasons. Students who are less talkative expressed fantastic insight into Byrd’s character via natural performativity, which they might not have been able to articulate if I had simply asked them to “talk about” Byrd’s diary. Also, my lack of personal experience with dramatizations, or instructing students how to do them, proved to be a nonissue. My lesson arc provided a hook and academic context for the activity, and students’ imaginations bridged the gap. |