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The students would see the graphic pictures and read of the
atrocities when they worked on their research paper, but I
wanted the classroom to be centered as much as possible on
presenting the victims as real human beings before they
became victims.
The second commitment was to make a conscious effort
when presenting the chronology or viewing maps, to discuss
and show photographs and/or relate a story from places
where Jewish cultures had thrived such as Lithuania, Poland,
Russia, etc. I found the book Memories of My Life in a Polish
Village 1930-1949 by Toby Knobel Fluek to be very useful in
introducing many aspects of Jewish life to middle school
students.
The third commitment in this area was to use the film
Camera of My Family in my instruction. This film fit very
well with my idea of using images in writing responses since
the photographer, Catherine Hanf Noren (through the
narrator), discussed the images of her family that she had
discovered and asked the questions that all of us ask.
Questions such as Who am I?, Where do I come from?, To
whom do I belong? The film is especially pertinent for 8th
graders who are reaching the age when they begin to look at
their own family history a little more deeply than in the past.
This change in the atmosphere of the classroom created a
space in which the second major change in the unit could
flourish.
Our only hope will lie in the frail web of
understanding of one person for the pain of
another
–John Dos Passos
The second shift in focus was the decision to use poetry and
poetic images to help students move beyond knowledge to
the affective domain and allow them better to internalize
what they were learning. I knew that 8th grade students
would not respond well to an assignment to write a poem
without a lot of preparation, without creating a fertile ground
for poetic images to emerge relating to what they had
learned in their research and readings throughout the unit. I
struggled a bit on what techniques or methods I could use to
help them create this fertile ground. Finally, I decided to
use a variety of poem patterns to begin the process. I had a
hunch that the restrictive nature of using patterns would
force the students to delve much more deeply for
meaningful images and increase their ability to express
more by saying less. I did not expect that the poems
produced by the patterns would be the students’ best work,
but that they would serve to begin the process and lead the
students into their own individual style of poetic writing. I
had no idea if this method would work, and I worried a bit
about ensuring that this process did not become trivial and
remained appropriate for the topic. I must say that I was
very encouraged by the results. As you might expect, the
restrictions of the patterns brought many complaints from
the students, as well as a lot of intense support from me,
but slowly the students began to recognize the rich images
that were creeping into their work, and it was heart warming
to see how they began to share their images with me and
each other. When the time came to begin work on their
individual poems using free verse, rhyming, narrative, or
whatever form they chose, I was amazed at how quickly
they went to work, how deeply they were delving, and how
seriously they were taking their own work. I was
overwhelmed by their results.
The primary objective in all of the poetic writing
assignments was to create a poetic response to a written or
visual image. Although coming up with a poem that was
correctly written was a part of the exercises, the main
emphasis was on creating an honest and meaningful
connection between the student and the image to which
they were responding. Sometimes just a simple poetic
image that touched the student who was writing as well as
the other members of the class became more important
than the overall work. I read once that every true poem has
that “aha” moment when a word or image takes the reader
into a different realm–a mysterious realm that connects the
writer and the reader to something beyond. You may notice
in some of the poems, therefore, that there may be a
problem in such areas as structure or rhythm.