 |
LITR 4370
TRAGEDY
Final Exam Samples 2017 (final exam assignment)
Model Answers to Part 3. |
 |
Part 3. Complete Research Report
Calyssa Rosene
Teenagers and Tragedy
Literature has always been a huge passion of mine. While other little
girls dreamt of being Disney princesses, I dreamt of having the library
collection from Beauty and the Beast that Belle had access to. As a future high
school English teacher, one of the main challenges I will be facing is getting
my students excited about reading literature they normally wouldn’t choose. I
used to be very close-minded when I was in high school. While I loved to read,
there were some genres I couldn’t stand and tragedy was actually one of them.
Coming into this class with that mindset really opened my eyes to how wrong I
was about the genre, because the main thing I learned is that tragedy is easily
connected to the modern world through emotions and certain events.
We
looked over so many works with different situations and somehow I was able to
relate to most of them. However, these connections wouldn’t have been made had
it not been for the teaching strategies made by Dr. White. He made us dive into
the texts and discuss things instead of only giving us the assignment to read
with some form of a quiz attached. We had to discuss our feelings about the
texts in class and present information we took away from them, and while it is
usually difficult for me to be social in front of a class, making the
presentations was easy because I was never told my ideas were wrong. They were
accepted as my own, and Dr. White or my classmates would build off of them or
offer further advice. This brought a connection to an online article I read
discussing ways that teachers can show their students that they care. One of the
ways was asking students for feedback. The article states “By considering their
feedback, you are showing students that you value their opinions and
experiences. It also creates a classroom culture where students feel safe to ask
questions and take chances, which will help them grow academically”. As someone
who deals with heavy social anxiety, it was extremely easy for me to discuss the
course material with the class because it was a very welcoming environment.
That’s one important thing I want to offer to my students, especially when I
teach tragedy because it will be crucial for them to be able to ask questions
due to the more difficult content in order to receive feedback from me or other
students who were able to grasp it. If a student feels comfortable and safe in
their learning environment, it’s easier to get their attention and it helps them
to focus on the content rather than ignore it to avoid feeling incompetent.
Apart from creating a welcoming learning environment, I have to show my
students how tragedy is modernized and how it can be relatable. I used to think
that would be my main problem in teaching the subject of tragedy, but after
taking this course I have found that it’s surprisingly simple to get students to
connect to the content and works done in tragedy. As educators we have to find
ways to make any content relatable to the students so they will grasp it and
understand the ins and outs of it. I recall during my freshman year English
class, one of the largest issues my teacher, Mr. Deboard, had was trying to get
us excited about learning Shakespeare in the form of
Romeo and Juliet. We all knew how it
ended and we could see the reading assignment coming from a mile away, but in
order to make it more modernized and relatable for us he showed us the Baz
Luhrman production of the play that was set in modern times and we were able to
make the modern connections to it. After letting us have class discussions about
the play, such as Dr. White did in our course, my fellow students and I became
excited to learn more about the content.
I reached out to the teacher mentioned above on Facebook and asked him
questions on how he would come up with ways to get students interested in
learning about literature, more specifically tragedy. He told me that the first
main part to teaching anything to anyone, is trying to figure out what that
person’s interests are. When he showed us the modern movie adaptation of Romeo
and Juliet, he assumed we would know who the actors were, the songs throughout
the movie, and that we would be able to keep up with the dialogue if it was
shown in a modern world. He was correct in assuming so. When I asked how he
would go about teaching ancient Greek tragedy to students, he said something
similar to what I’ve heard Dr. White mention. He said “Not every student is
going to understand it, and not every student is going to care, but there will
be students who try to understand it and when they finally do they can
appreciate the beauty and hard work that these playwrights put into making these
masterpieces. If you can even find one student who appreciates the work, that’s
enough to make your day because you know you’ve made a difference in at least
one student’s life.”
While it’s important to make a difference in even one student’s life, I
also reflect on strategies I very recently learned from a woman named Sarah who
came into our classroom from the Actors of the London Stage theater group. She
made sure that we all worked together as a team to understand an excerpt she
brought in from Antigone, a powerful speech delivered by Creon. I’ll be
completely honest with myself when I say that it was hard to stay focused when
originally reading Antigone. I didn’t understand much of the dialogue because it
didn’t interest me, but then Sarah walked in and within an hour opened my eyes
to multiple teaching strategies. The one that stuck with me the most was one she
called “hot seating”, in which she chose one person from our class to be Creon
while the rest of us were his followers ready to ask him questions in a pretend
panel. The student designated as Creon had to quickly get into character and
provide quick fire answers to the questions we asked them. After reading the
speech throughout the hour over and over in different exercises, I became
comfortable with the dialogue and understood why the speech was such a large
part of the work itself as well as the character development of Creon. It was
also a fun way to interact with my classmates, whom I wasn’t quite involved with
prior to these exercises. I believe that using exercises like those Sarah taught
us will definitely help me teach my students smoothly in content areas that they
may find tiring or boring, helping them to better create connections with the
content.
Continuing my search for helpful learning strategies such as those I’ve
learned from Dr. White, Mr. DeBoard, and Sarah, I came across a model assignment
written on my same research topic really caught my eye. Kaitlin Jaschek states
“Tragedy does not worry with passing events or popular culture; instead, it
concerns itself with essential human problems. Tragedy raises questions
about justice and morality for individuals and the world.” Tragedy won’t always
be relatable to students in terms of the events per say, but tragedy can be
relatable in terms of the emotions that certain characters experience. Kaitlin
also states “To effectively and enjoyably explore Tragedy, teachers need to
create the desire within students by providing understanding of the above
benefits and importance within the genre.” I can help my students understand
this by taking away the strategies I’ve learned from Dr. White, Sarah and Mr.
DeBoard because they can all come together and work as a good structured way to
get the content across in a more simple process.
All of these resources have one thing in common; get the students to
relate to the emotion and it will be easier to relate to the content. I will
have a strong setting to do this as I plan on teaching at a high school English
level. High school is full of obstacles and emotions that the students will
encounter, and most of them are unavoidable. There’s pressure, stress, anxiety,
sadness, anger, you name it. In a research study done by the Palo Alto Medical
Facility, 34.2% of students say their biggest concern about their mental health
is a struggle with depression, with the second highest concern being academic
stress at 12%. This is where it’s important to once again create a safe and
welcoming learning environment for the students. This is where I can step in and
create classroom discussions with my students, or do fun exercises so they can
step into the lives of these characters and really feel what they’re feeling.
It’s also a step towards having them relate emotionally to the content, because
in tragedy there are many characters who struggle with the same emotions as
these teenagers do on an everyday basis whether they know it or not.
Pain is the strongest teacher, it impresses our imagination and memory
more strongly than pleasant situations or outcomes, and that’s what I look
forward to making tragedy for my students. Not just a school lesson, but a life
lesson. As we have reached the end of the semester, I have a much better
understanding of how tragedy has been modernized, and how I can make it
relatable to my students. I would like to dive deeper into the genre as a whole
outside of the class, and possibly look into taking any other classes that would
give me insight to the genre of tragedy so I can learn more information and
appreciate it further. I am certain five months is not nearly enough time to
learn all of the greatness that lies behind tragedy, but taking this course has
opened my eyes to a whole new world of literature, and my future goals is to be
able to do the same for my own students.
Works
Cited
Kaitlin Jaschek. "LITR 4370 Tragedy UHCL 2015 Midterm Samples." LITR 4370
Tragedy UHCL 2015 Midterm Samples. N.p., 2015. Web. 28 Mar. 2017.
White, Craig. "Terms & Themes-Comedy." Terms & Themes. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar.
2017.
White, Craig. "Terms & Themes-Tragedy." Terms & Themes. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar.
2017.
White, Craig. "Terms & Themes-Romance." Terms & Themes. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar.
2017.
White, Craig. "Introduction to Genres." Critical Sources. N.p., n.d. Web. 28
Mar. 2017.
Craig, White. "Aristotle’s Poetics." Critical Sources. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar.
2017.
White, Craig. "Oedipal Complex." Terms & Themes. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2017.
White, Craig. "Birth Of Tragedy Notes." Critical Sources. N.p., n.d. Web. 28
Mar. 2017.
White, Craig. "Terms & Themes-Sitcom." Terms & Themes. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar.
2017
"Four
Ways Teachers Can Show They Care." Greater Good. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 May 2017.
Foundation, Palo Alto Medical. "Emotions & Life." California Teen Health | Teen
Health Information. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 May 2017.
|
|
|
|
|
|
