The Framework Applied
The power of pairing texts, then, lies in the potential to acknowledge and intentionally build interpretive schema through shared experience, thus structuring a more equitable task of interpretation. It ensures all students can draw upon a common experience, through which narratives and associations can be derived and used in interpretation. In my practice, this necessarily manifested itself on two levels, for my 9th graders and my 11th graders:
On both registers, this conscientious building of theoretical schemata levels the playing field of interpretation. Rather than asking students to use an unacknowledged cultural lens of interpretation, we can construct a shared lens by examining texts in the terms of other texts. This is a more equitable task, as it draws on a shared experience and presents interpretation as a legitimately open ended task. Students are asked to take up a variety of perspectives in guiding their interpretation, granting the existence of a multitude of valid interpretations and breaking the authority of the teacher’s presented interpretation as “official knowledge.” This structured interpretation can be implemented at higher and lower cognitive levels (ranging from “How does Atwood change the character of the siren in her poem?” to “How might we interpret this image through our Marxist lens?”), offering a model of equitably building interpretive skills for students from a range of backgrounds and with a range of ability.
- For 9th graders, this process often took the form of offering a text that existed in tension with the main literary text of the unit. In the example given in the “Paired Texts” section above, students problematized the theme of child soldiers in Ender’s Game by reading a news article on child soldiers in Africa and the Middle East. A tension emerged between these two texts which allowed students to wrestle with the abstract ethical questions underlying the text, such as “Could there be a conflict in which the use of child soldiers is justified?” I’ve used a similar model repeatedly in my unit on The Odyssey, in which I contrast the original text with contemporary allusions in order to structure critical thinking about the way art reflects societal values. For example, placing Margaret Atwood’s reimagining of the sirens in her poem “Siren Song” in tension with their depiction in The Odyssey to facilitate the complex interpretive task of analyzing the text’s broader societal criticism regarding gender roles and female agency. Both of these examples intentionally help students construct interpretive schemata by isolating and structuring interpretive tasks (ex. “Why do you think Atwood selected the siren as the subject of her poem?” “What does the poem include that is absent from The Odyssey?” “How does she change the character of the siren?”).
- 11th graders are more developed cognitively, and thereby can be challenged to wrestle with explicitly theoretical thought. With my 11th graders I have experimented with structuring units around developing theoretical lenses: students read theoretical texts explaining a particular type of interpretive framework, and then practice applying that abstract schema in interpreting other texts with increasing degrees of independence.
On both registers, this conscientious building of theoretical schemata levels the playing field of interpretation. Rather than asking students to use an unacknowledged cultural lens of interpretation, we can construct a shared lens by examining texts in the terms of other texts. This is a more equitable task, as it draws on a shared experience and presents interpretation as a legitimately open ended task. Students are asked to take up a variety of perspectives in guiding their interpretation, granting the existence of a multitude of valid interpretations and breaking the authority of the teacher’s presented interpretation as “official knowledge.” This structured interpretation can be implemented at higher and lower cognitive levels (ranging from “How does Atwood change the character of the siren in her poem?” to “How might we interpret this image through our Marxist lens?”), offering a model of equitably building interpretive skills for students from a range of backgrounds and with a range of ability.