<p><strong><em></em></strong><strong>Rationale:</strong> This is an opening activity for a mini-unit in my Film as Dramatic Literature Class, a semester-long senior elective that meets every other day. In the unit, the students explore how  Debra Granik's film <em>Winter's Bone </em>explores the impact of environment, social class,  and gender on the coming of age of a young female protagonist, Ree Dolley (played by Jennifer Lawrence). To help the students empathize with Ree, a young woman who comes from an environment that more privileged viewers may see as ugly, brutal, and -- in the words of one reviewer-- "post apocalyptic"-- I selected several photographs that feature abandoned environments. While many feature urban spaces ,rather than <em>Winter's Bone's </em>more rural setting, they are valuable for the way they all imbue isolation or desolation with beauty and pride.</p> <p><strong>Process: </strong></p> <p>1) The students will work in groups and each group will receive a print-out of one image to work with.</p> <p>2) In these groups, the students will engage in the "Beauty and Truth" thinking routine: Where do you see beauty in these spaces? Where do you find truth? Students will use specific evidence from there thinking and make their understanding visible by recording their ideas on post-it notes on the images.</p> <p>3) We will hang the images in the classroom so that students can re-consider and continue to think about their understandings as the unit proceeds</p> <p><strong>Outcomes: </strong>Hopefully, by deliberately looking for  and reflecting on the beauty in such spaces, students can understand why the young protagonist of the film is so loyal to her struggling community.</p>

<p><strong>Rationale:</strong> Midway through watching<em> Winter's Bone</em>, I will ask the students to pause, step back, and imagine the buried histories of the people who live in Ree's world.</p> <p>The students will use the "Step In, Step Out, Step Back," and "Unveiling Stories" thinking routines to imagine the inner lives of the subjects of the photos (taken from two different photographic portfolios at SAAM: Roger Minick's <em>Ozark Portfolio</em> and Terry Evans <em>Kansas  Documentary Survey portfolio</em>). They can even  assign an identity of a film character to the images: for example, perhaps the young girl holding chickens is pre-teen Merab, or maybe the young boy glancing shyly out of the shadows is young Teardrop.</p> <p><strong>Process:</strong></p><p><strong>"Step In, Step Out, Step Back" Directions</strong></p><p>1) Choose. Identify a person or agent in the situation.<br />2) Step-in. Given what you see and know at this time, what do you think this person might experience, feel, believe, or know?<br />3) Step-out. What else would you like (or need) to learn in order to understand this person's perspective better?<br />4) Step-back. Given your exploration of this perspective so far, what doyou notice about your own perspective and what it takes to take somebody else's?</p><p><strong>Unveiling Stories</strong></p><p>The questions to ask include:</p> <ol><li>What is <em><u>the</u></em> story?</li><li>What is the human story?</li><li>What is the new story?</li><li>What is the world story?</li><li>What is the untold story?</li></ol><p><strong>Wrap Up: </strong>After engaging in these thinking dispositions, students are invited to use Sharpie to mark up the images (with words or text) to add this additional information and to capture some of the "hidden" or "obscured" information or factors which might inform these characters' lives.</p>

<p>Hughes, Spring 2019</p>

<p>My unit focuses on an exploration of motifs in August Wilson’s play Gem of the Ocean. Chronologically first in Wilson’s “Century Cycle”-- a series of ten plays each meant to represent a decade of African-American life in the 20th century, Gem of the Ocean is set in 1904 Pittsburgh. However, the play examines also history, legacy, and ancestral/family trauma through a metaphysical journey back to the Maafa or Middle Passage.</p> <p>Wilson develops his meaning through a variety of dramatic motifs-- especially fire, water, the stars, quilts, and walking sticks. While my students will track these motifs throughout the play in order to develop arguments about how each contributes to  and complicates the meaning of the work as a whole, this Learning Lab collection will collect images related to these motifs to engage students in a “close-reading” of visual text to provoke initial understanding of their power as symbols.</p> <p><br>NOTE: I have also included some additional images that I would add as resources and points of discussion for my daily GoogleSide decks on the play. Some are meant to illustrate historical background relevant to specific references in the play (ex: images of Cinque and the Amistad, tintype portraits to help visualize main characters), while others act as provocations to begin discussion (the Sankofa symbols).</p>