It's the last day of summer school! In your comment, make a list of 3 things you learned about policing in America, prisons in America, or Beyonce's emotional journey through being the victim of adultery and 3 more things you accomplished this summer.
I'm nervous about today. When there are only two days left in summer school, usually students get very anxious about passing, especially the students who haven't been working their hardest all summer. They know they might not pass, and they have a lot of emotions about that - confusion, sadness, anger, frustration - and they often direct all those negative feelings at the teacher, the class, the assignments, or the topics we are studying. They'll say things like "I hate Beyonce! Why do we need to even do this shit?" or "this class is mad hard for summer school, why does Feinberg have to make everything so complicated?". It doesn't help them pass, but they do it anyway.
And that's why I'm nervous. Many students NEED to work their hardest AND they might pass if they do work hard, but instead, a lot of those students might choose to complain, argue, quit, or work the same, slow pace that they've been working all summer. And I'm nervous because it's hard for me to convince them to change if they are determined to stay the same. I can say words, I can show compassion, I can help them with what confuses them, but if they don't help themselves by completing assignments, then all my efforts end up being useless. So today and tomorrow, I really hope that all my students work as hard as they can. If they can get a passing or high grade in this class, it can help them catch up in their credits, raise their Grade Point Average (GPA), graduate on time, and feel like they accomplished something great. I probably should have started Lemonade earlier. It's hard, because when summer school started, I wasn't sure if I'd have laptops or not, so I couldn't just dive into Lemonade. And at the same time, it was right after the murders of Philando Castille, Alton Sterling, the 5 Dallas police officers, and the 3 Baton Rouge police officers, so I felt compelled to dive into that too. And I think it was valuable to clarify students knowledge of their rights, police brutality, racial bias, and how the prison system fails to make people better. I also think it was valuable to show them perspectives on policing that we rarely see in the media - how many officers try to do their jobs well, but they are pressured from their commanders to violate people's rights and get arrests, how they suffer from PTSD, and how community policing actually makes police officers better at their jobs and less hated by people.
And for the students that completed all of those assignments, I hope they learned enough to go into the world spreading their knowledge. A lot of people don't have clear facts or multiple perspectives on the situations of policing and prisons in America, and I want my students to be activists by spreading that knowledge. But I also wish that we could spend more time analyzing the themes in Lemonade. Beyonce isn't only talking about infidelity (being cheated on). She's also talking about how sexism and racism affect black women in ways that go back hundreds of years, and how their husbands, boyfriends, and even fathers hurt them in similar ways. She's talking about how black women are often left alive to suffer the impacts of harms in the black community. She's talking about how black women develop traditions and behaviors to cope and deal with this pain, and sometimes they aren't helpful. She's talking about pain in such a deep way that I want my students to spend more time connecting with it. And I think that ten days (20 hours) isn't enough time. If this were a regular school year class, these 20 hours would cover about 25 days of class, 5 weeks. And I'm not sure than 5 weeks of school would be enough to deal with all the themes, images, and amazing lyrics in Lemonade (including the poetry of Warsan Shire, who is a genius). What do you think students? Was it valuable to deal with policing/prisons AND Lemonade? Or should we have only focussed on one or the other? Explain why and be specific about your opinions. 4 days left! Students should have already finished their 6 blog posts about songs they chose, and 8 blog posts about the first 8 emotions in Lemonade. Check in the Day 18 post for more details. Today is your chance to finish writing about Lemonade in three more blog posts about the final three emotions:
For your blog comment today, I'd like you to use your annotations to write three things from Lemonade that you were shocked by - this can be images, words in the narration, words in the lyrics, the style of music, the instrumentation, the guest artists - just 3 elements of the film/album that surprised or shocked you. And for each one, explain why it was shocking or surprising. This is the final stretch! Students are now working hard to write blog posts. Here are the blog posts students should have completed by now:
And if a student has already finished, they should begin writing blog posts about the next four emotions/songs in Lemonade:
Here's what each blog post should look like:
I was so THRILLED when I was watching all the students react to Lemonade. Every student who watched it had some sort of reaction, which means Beyonce did her job well. Personally, I love art that makes me feel something. But when I see a piece of art make EVERYONE who sees it feel something? That's when I know this art is unique and influential.
So now all the students are going to start a difficult task - writing separate blog posts about each of the songs in Lemonade. Each blog post should be about a different emotion from Lemonade and the narration/song that goes with it. Here's what each blog post should look like:
Yesterday we watched Lemonade for the first time, and the reactions were mixed. I gave them a 17 page handout that was a transcript of all the lyrics and narration so they could take notes. Most students were interested enough to watch the whole thing, and I would say about 50% of the students were switching back and forth between watching intently and then reading the lyrics and taking lots of notes. Some students only watched and are going to take notes today during our second viewing. Other students mostly took notes and read, but today are going to watch. And all those students who missed class are going to be seeing it for the first time today.
And there were many students who seemed confused, shocked, impressed, and curious, like they hadn't seen art like this before. Beyonce made videos that were VERY different from her previous ones, and much more thoughtful than most of the music videos you see on TV. I was talking with my wife last night about it, and she said that Lemonade is challenging for anyone who watches it because it's so intelligent and abstract - it's hard to understand all the images, make up, costumes, settings and what they mean, it's hard to immediately understand all the lyrics that are full of metaphors, there's a lot of complex vocabulary that we don't often use in our regular speaking. And when you put all of that together - it's hard to understand all of the songs the first time you watch it. So that's why I'm showing it a second time. In other Beyonce songs, there is one, obvious idea, like how in "Single Ladies" she was saying it's ok to be single and don't stay with a man unless he proves his commitment to you. But Lemonade has layers of understanding - each song has more than one meaning and you need to really understand every word to find those meanings. Today, students will annotate the lyrics and narration with questions and comments before watching Lemonade a second time. Today is the first day I'm going to show the students Lemonade in full. They will end up watching it numerous times, but today will be their first, and based on shows of hands, most of my students have not yet seen the videos for Lemonade. I'm curious to know what they think, especially if they weren't really fans of Beyonce in the past.
I also thought Beyonce was clearly a good dancer and singer, but made pop music for the radio - most of her music didn't really speak to me or make me want to do anything except dance. I put her in the same category of like, Janet Jackson or Madonna - a superstar, but a pop superstar. And then she released "Formation", performed at the Superbowl, and released Lemonade. My opinion of Beyonce changed very quickly - now I think of her more like Lauryn Hill and Eryka Badu. And the more I learned about her, the more impressed I got. Here are just a few facts that made me respect Beyonce more than just being a pop star: 1) she has an all-female band at her concerts - http://vitaminw.co/culture/beyonces-all-female-band-challenges-music-industry-stereotypes 2) She opened a cosmetology training center for women who are recovering from addiction to drugs, that way they learn a job and get real training while they are recovering from addiction - http://www.mtv.com/news/1633329/beyonce-very-proud-to-open-cosmetology-center-in-brooklyn/ 3) She and Jay-Z have given millions of dollars to the Black Lives Matter movement, both in donations to the organization and also paying the bail money for protesters who have been arrested - https://www.good.is/articles/jay-z-beyonce-black-lives-matter-funds 4) She has sold 131 million albums as a solo artist during her solo career and 60 million albums as part of Destiny's Child. Jay-Z has sold 55 million albums in his career. And Jay-Z is where this album began. He cheated on her (repeatedly) while he was married to Beyonce. Now personally, I don't really care if a guy or girl wants to have sex with lots of people - that's their life choice. But why get married? Why be in a relationship if you don't actually want that? I just don't understand people who cheat - you can just break up with the person you're with and go have sex with another person, you don't need to stay in a relationship and they lie and betray someone. When Beyonce found out, she felt many different emotions, and that is what Lemonade is about - a journey through all the emotions she felt from discovering the adultery to eventually repairing her relationship with Jay-Z. Between the lyrics and the visuals and the music, I can't think of anything like this. Maybe Pink Floyd's The Wall comes close to it (a concept album about one idea that was turned into a film), but Lemonade is next level. Some students might be thinking "Why do we need to spend so much time on Beyonce?" or "I don't like Beyonce, why should I have to do this?". But Lemonade is about more than just one woman - it's about trust issues in relationships, not just between men and women, but between anyone who has love for another person (friends, family, and yes, romantic relationships). It's also about how America doesn't value people of color, it's about divisions between rich and poor, it's about dealing with your emotions in healthy and unhealthy ways. It's about feeling loss and betrayal and learning how to re-create yourself after something horrible happening. If you can't find meaning from these songs, you're not thinking hard enough about them. You need to open yourself up to the music, the words, the images, and be able to find meaning in art, no matter what the subject is. That's the point of the second 3 weeks of class - to explore how artists make meaning through art and how YOU, as an individual, find meaning through art. This can be a very rewarding process if you allow yourself to be a part of it. Be brave, be open-minded, and give the next 8 days (16 hours of class) all your effort, and I promise you won't feel worse at the end of it. I'm starting the summer school blog on Day 14 because I wasn't building it in until now. Last year, I used the blog to show students my thinking about class and have them communicate their thoughts to me, but I didn't know if I'd have laptops until 2 days in. By then, it was so chaotic to get the new curriculum running that I just didn't do the blog piece until now.
What I've done for the past 3 weeks is have students practice reading, writing, and research skills by looking at policing and incarceration in America. I've given the students:
I've been really impressed with students' reactions to these sources, open-mindedness in learning new perspectives, and effort in articulating and explaining their ideas clearly. Many who have gone through the multiple draft process have also learned to give and receive criticism in mature and reflective ways. It's been awesome to watch. And now we begin ten days all about music. Mostly it's trying to explore and explain an artists intent with the meaning of a song and then how you (each student) makes meaning from the song. And while 6 of the songs the students analyze are of their own choosing, another 12 are the songs from Beyonce's new album Lemonade. I'm super excited for this. We set up our blogs yesterday (Day 13) while I showed the students how I analyzed "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder. I was really happy when so many people liked Sir Duke, I hope they check out more Stevie Wonder songs, because his music is AMAZING and will blow you away. He is one of the best musicians ever. Today, Day 14, students will need to make 5 new Blog Posts. Each post will be about a different song that falls into each of these five categories:
So 5 posts. For each song you choose, your post should include at least 2 paragraphs
I'm so excited to see the different songs students choose AND how they explain the meaning! Under this blog post, write a comment that includes the name of your weebly site so I can easily find and read your blogs. |
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