Character Portraits
If a student responds to questions about character or plot with statements like, "Well, I don't know because the author doesn't tell us," it shows she is reading from an efferent stance of looking for information, rather than an aesthetic stance of "living the book." On the other hand, if a student is able to "fill in the gaps" of a story - that is, when she can imagine details that are not explicitly stated - it shows active participation in the transactional meaning-making process and can be taken as evidence of an aesthetic stance. With this in mind, I asked my sophomores to create portraits of characters from Lord of the Flies. The assignment included efferent skills such as coming up with character traits based on textual evidence (quotes), but I thought that by having them create a visual representation of the character, I might be able to elicit an aesthetic reading, as well. Since the text provides little explicit physical description of the characters, the images students created would be based on their personal readings of the character.
On the the Teacher Report Card I had students fill out on the last day of class, several students wrote that they found the character portraits to be unhelpful. One student called them "unnecessary," stating that "there may be better ways to understand the character" (above). This tells me that the activity did little to shift students' attention to an aesthetic experience of the text - it was not even clear to students that they were meant to be building their own meaning rather that merely combing for information.
In their discussion on using art to support an aesthetic reading stance in the classroom, Short et al. describe the process as "not drawing an illustration of the book's plot, but rather a quick sketch of the connections and images the book raises in [students'] minds" (2000, p. 163). Moving forward, this is an important distinction to consider. Having students illustrate a character, even if it means imagining traits that are not explicitly stated in the text, still implies a "correct answer" - that is, a picture of a person. If, instead, I were to ask students to spend time and draw whatever images came to mind upon reading a section of the text, it would allow them to focus on the personal connections and tentative thinking that define an aesthetic stance. To follow up, as Short et al. conclude, I would have "not only to listen carefully and accept student responses without judgment, but also to ask questions that allow [me] to understand their connections" (p. 163). As with other activities I have experimented with throughout this inquiry, I believe it would also behoove me, in repeating a similar activity in the future, to be more transparent with my students about my intentions, especially since most of them have become used to academic expectations grounded in efferent skills. They may feel like it is "against the rules" to explore and construct personal meanings when reading. Thus, it might be necessary for me need to "give them permission" to do so.
In their discussion on using art to support an aesthetic reading stance in the classroom, Short et al. describe the process as "not drawing an illustration of the book's plot, but rather a quick sketch of the connections and images the book raises in [students'] minds" (2000, p. 163). Moving forward, this is an important distinction to consider. Having students illustrate a character, even if it means imagining traits that are not explicitly stated in the text, still implies a "correct answer" - that is, a picture of a person. If, instead, I were to ask students to spend time and draw whatever images came to mind upon reading a section of the text, it would allow them to focus on the personal connections and tentative thinking that define an aesthetic stance. To follow up, as Short et al. conclude, I would have "not only to listen carefully and accept student responses without judgment, but also to ask questions that allow [me] to understand their connections" (p. 163). As with other activities I have experimented with throughout this inquiry, I believe it would also behoove me, in repeating a similar activity in the future, to be more transparent with my students about my intentions, especially since most of them have become used to academic expectations grounded in efferent skills. They may feel like it is "against the rules" to explore and construct personal meanings when reading. Thus, it might be necessary for me need to "give them permission" to do so.