Professional Documents
Culture Documents
5-3-09
TE 408 Borsheim
Multicultural Unit Re-Write
•How do they aid in a student’s understanding and interest in a text, literary or otherwise?
•How does looking at a text through a different lens affect our understanding?
•What is the importance of reading The Kite Runner through these lenses?
•How does the cultural significance of the novel affect the reading of The Kite Runner?
•How will the knowledge of these lenses help with future readings?
•How can you analyze this text in terms of your own life?
•How can you analyze a text “not only from the inside out, but from the outside in?” (Ap-
pleman)
Rationale: As a multicultural unit using critical lenses as the main focus, The Kite Run-
ner is an excellent novel because of its multitude of themes, characters, events, relation-
ships, as well as historical and cultural relevance. Using these critical lenses will be a
good introduction to the students’ future readings and textual analyses. It will also allow
them to be able to critically assess texts surrounding them, other than literary ones. This
can include “cultural texts such as music videos, television ads or programs, print ads,
billboards, or films” (Appleman). When looking at this multicultural text, students will
be able to also take into consideration other viewpoints and perspectives. By encour-
aging students to look at texts through varied ‘perspectives’, some they would normally
not engage with, students will be able to understand how many different angles texts can
be assessed and read. Exposing them to these lenses will foster more critically informed,
open-minded, and culturally aware students. For me, this means challenging students
and starting conversations about cultural and world issues, utilizing multicultural liter-
ature. It is important to expose students to texts like The Kite Runner and multiple per-
spectives so they can learn and grow to become more critically aware. This will allow
students to not be passive members of society, but active thinkers and questioning
members of society who promote and are capable of change.
Each assessment will vary based on the lesson or lens through which they are
looking, but each will aid in helping students to look at the novel, as well as the world in
a different context and understanding there is more to reading, than just a surface read
through their own eyes with blinders on. This unit will help students to remove the
blinders which give them tunnel vision. It will force them to dig a little deeper and go
beyond a superficial understanding.
Objectives: Students will...
•Be able to understand the novel in a variety of ways
•Be able to be critically aware and be able to assess texts that surround them, other than
just those of the literary nature
•Express their opinions of how they saw the novel or certain aspects of the novel though
the lens they are using
•Be able to see how their viewpoints or opinions might have changed
•How certain aspects of the novel fall in and out of focus depending on the lens they are
using
•Understand that even if they are using a lens, it does not necessarily mean they have to
agree with that reading
•Understand the importance of historical context
Journals
Discussion/Participation
Group Work
Written Responses
Reading
Critical thinking
Summative Assessments: At the end of the unit, students will take their knowledge of
the different lenses and readings of texts, especially The Kite Runner and complete an
in-depth analytical essay from one of the lenses discussed in class and apply it to the
text.
Introducing Critical Lenses (2-3 days)
Grade: 11th
Unit: A Critical Look at The Kite Runner
Objectives: Students will...
•Begin to apply these critical lenses to cultural texts they are more familiar with
•See how certain perspectives that may differ from theirs will change the meaning of a
critical text
•See how they might have a completely different perspective than they thought in general,
or on a certain issue (media or otherwise)
Rationale: As this unit is all about critical lenses and applying them to texts, I thought it
would be best for students to have some practice applying any of the lenses, as many of
them have not hear of literary and critical theory before. I thought using texts they were
familiar with and had probably subconsciously been critical of would help to scaffold
them before we took on each lens more in-depth.
I might begin by framing this lesson as being about perspective, it will allow me
to introduce the critical lenses fairy tale activity from Appleman. Appleman’s Chapter 2,
called, appropriately, “Through the Looking Glass: Introducing Multiple Perspectives,”
will show how taking on a different perspective as a reader can change the meaning. I
thought the fairy tale genre was excellent because of its audience of children. Most stu-
dents would never have thought to look at these from a different perspective. This would
be a great engaging and scaffolding activity for students. This activity, although it mostly
focuses on showing that there is more than one side to any issue, will help lead into stu-
dents being able to see “how events, in literature and in life, are multifacented and have
different sides, cast different light, depending on the viewer” and they will be able to see
things “from other viewpoints heartily argue positions that they don’t believe in, inhabit
other ways of being or habits of mind” (Appleman 17).
MI State Standards Addressed: 1.5.1, 1.2.3
Day 1:
Materials: “Little Miss Muffet” by Russel Baker, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, by A.
Wolf
Agenda:
1.Read “Little Miss Muffet” and introduce the story through a variety or perspectives via
Baker’s essay. Ask students why they think we are doing this? What is the point? How is
this going to help our future readings? 10 minutes
2.Divide into groups, then pass out a nursery rhyme to each group. Ask each group for the
next 25 minutes or so to recast the story from a perspective other than that of the one
telling the story, or from the most obvious point of view (maybe someone who’s only
barely mentioned in the story or not even at all). 20-25 minutes
3. Before students present their ideas, read to them The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs for
fun and for one more example of a changing perspective. 10 minutes
4. Have a few group member present one of their ideas from a different perspective. Ask
why they chose that perspective to look at the nursery rhyme from? What kind of experi-
ence was it looking at it from a different point of view? What does this mean for us when
reading other literary texts?
Then ask:
But what if you don’t want to change the meaning, merely look at the text in terms of
only one aspect of the text?
Leave them with this open-ended question, and ask them to bring in a cultural text for
tomorrow, examples being an image, a magazine cover or advertisement, an appropriate
YouTube video, or a short written piece.
Day 2:
Materials: Cultural texts each student will bring in
Agenda:
1.Begin by explaining that most students, when in the classroom, are never taught there
are multiple ways of reading a novel, or any text for that matter. The activities in this les-
son and the lessons that follow, will show that certain perspectives may take more of a
reach, as they will not always stem from personal experience, as in Reader-Response, or
prior knowledge. Each lens offers a different colored tint to the ‘glasses’ you are using to
read. It will make certain aspects of The Kite Runner come into focus, while others fall by
the wayside.
2. Then explain the difference between being critical and criticism. Explain that if you are
being critical it means you are carefully reading and analyzing and not taking the novel
merely at its words, but what the words mean. It doesn’t mean saying, “This book is awful”
or “I hate this book.” I think this might be an important distinction to make, seeing as
some kids might have only heard the word critical with negative connotations.
3.Pass out a handout with the psychoanalysis lens, the Marxist lens, and the feminist lens
definitions and examples. Have students get into groups of 3 or 4 and to apply whichever
lens they choose to their cultural text. For example, if they brought in a n ad with a
scantily clad model, they could use the feminist lens to depict how this is derogatory to
women, or they could push a little further, and use the psychoanalytical lens to see what
this may be doing to the young impressionable minds of the women who are looking at
these ads daily and wishing they could look like them.
4.I would use several examples, either from kids in the class who brought in really good
cultural texts or ones I found on my own, and discuss the application of the different
lenses. Make sure each one is thoroughly touched on.
- What is the significance of the text?
- What lens might you use to help you better understand this cultural text?
How might that lens affect or increase your understanding?
•Engage in discussion relating to The Kite Runner and the relevant Marxist lens
•Convey their understanding of the Marxist lens and its context in the novel through writ-
ing
•Understand how reading and interpreting the text through this lens will help them to bet-
ter understand the political, socioeconomic, and societal context of the novel
•See the ways in which politics and class plays out in the novel
Rationale: Using the Marxist lens when reading a text can make for a more rich and
palpable understanding of the text. Introducing this kind of cultural and class criticism
will encourage them to view literature through a more political mind frame. The Marxist
lens considers power and oppressions topics in text often just taken as the historical or
contemporary system. They help is “to consider the kinds of prevailing ideologies that
help construct the social realities in which we participate (or sometimes become unwill-
ing participants” (Appleman 58). This lens will help touch on background knowledge,
including cultural and historic aspects, especially when dealing with multicultural liter-
ature. Using this lens will also help students to consider the political content of the text,
as well as the historical and sociocultural context of the work. In terms of this multicul-
tural text, how do the student’s own lives and their own positions socially, culturally and
politically relate to that of the novel’s characters? How are they distinctly different? The
Marxist lens provides a great conceptual background knowledge and insight to begin
both the study of lenses and The Kite Runner. This lens also places the study of literat-
ure in the context of important social questions; it also allows students to see past their
individual response, and contextualize their new knowledge in terms larger than them-
selves. They will be able to place their own particular situations and the texts they read
into a larger system or set of beliefs. Using this perspective “students can consider the
issues presented in the text through the lens of the prevailing ideologies of the author’s
political and historical context” (Appleman 61).
MI State Standards Addressed: 2.1.2, 1.1.1, 3.1.5, 3.4.1
Materials: PowerPoint with historical context of Afghanistan, Google Earth
Day 1: Begin with brief historical context as students have begun reading The Kite Run-
ner and will have some questions if they are not familiar with the political and class re-
gime of the Middle East, Afghanistan specifically.
1.Find Afghanistan using Google Earth
2. Ask students what they know about the Middle East (i.e. politics, society, class, gender
roles, patriarchy, Taliban, etc.)
3. Brief history PowerPoint of class issues, economy, political powers, war, political
policies, changing powers, etc. of Afghanistan, concentrating mostly on the time frame
surrounding when Amir is young, the 1970s. (This will include the fall of the monarchy in
Afghanistan through the Soviet invasion, the mass exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the
United States, and the Taliban regime.
Sidenote: Students must then understand that, to use the Marxist lens and to under-
stand the historical situation and economic conditions (material circumstances
(Tyson)), they must understand that all human events and productions have specific
material/historical circumstances. Marxist analysis of human events and productions
focuses on relationships among socioeconomic classes, both within a society and among
societies, and it explains all human activities in terms of the distribution and dynamics
of economic power.
This question can be asked later on in the novel when the Taliban comes to
power: What drives politics? Desire for power? Is it money, ideologies, or hatred and
contempt for people unlike them?
4.Focusing mostly on Amir’s and Hassan’s relationship and how their differences in so-
cioeconomic class divides them, how do we see other divisions in the novel and in our own
contemporary society? i.e. religion, race, class, ethnicity, or gender. Do we think these divi-
sion play such an obvious role in our society? Are some differences acknowledged more
than others? In our world, as we see in The Kite Runner, there is a big difference between
the “Haves” and the “Have-nots,” and Amir points out this is even acknowledged by phys-
ical distinctions such as Hassan’s cleft-lip. What physical distinctions are there in our soci-
ety between the “Haves” and the “Have-nots?” Clothing? Schools? Do you think it’s right to
have a class that controls the politics and the way a society, culture, or even a country is
run/governed? We have class distinctions, but how are they less apparent than those
between Pashtun and Hazara in the novel? Is it right that the members of the highest class
should permit differences in religion, race, ethnicity, or gender to separate them into war-
ring factions that accomplish little or no social change?
5.Define the bourgeoisie class and the proletariat class for the students. Identify these
people in the novel. Determine how the novel depicts each person as belonging to a certain
class using textual evidence. How does the author observe the striking differences in so-
cioeconomic lifestyle among the groups in the novel. How are the members of the lower
class economically oppressed? How are the members of the upper class economically priv-
ileged? Then ask, why doesn’t the economically oppressed fight back? What keeps the
lower classes ‘in their place’ and at the mercy of the wealthy? Why do those in power often
perceive the lower class as a threat to the power structure? Students will journal on these
questions that have been written out on the board.
Assessment: This class period will be about engaging with the Marxist lens more thor-
oughly while looking how it plays out historically and socioeconomically in the novel’s
setting. I will assess the ability to apply the Marxist lens to the novel in discussion and in
their journal entries they will turn in.
Day 2:
Agenda:
1.Begin with a journal answering the following three questions: What are the characterist-
ics of society? What defines class? What is an ideology? 10-15 minutes
2.After discussing the three answers, focus on ideology, as a belief system that is a product
of social conditioning. Provide examples, such as capitalism, communism, and patriotism
(all that have been discussed in prior units or history classes). What ideologies exist in the
book? Classism, that one group of people are better than another? That men are biologic-
ally superior to women? Tell the class that Marxism works to make us constantly aware of
all the ways in which we are products of material/historical circumstances and of the re-
pressive ideologies that serve to blind us to this fact in order to keep us subservient to the
ruling system. Discuss. What ideologies exist in the mind of Amir? Hassan? Amir’s father?
Assef? Are their ideologies consistent with their socioeconomic status? Their age? 20
minutes
3.Watch clip of The Kite Runner when Amir and Hassan come across Assef. Also, look at
one depicting the relationship between Amir and Hassan. In both scenes, who knows they
have the power? Who does not? What happens as a result? 10 minutes
4. For homework have students read the handout on the Psychoanalysis lens, and ask
when they are reading for homework, to try to apply the lens to the reading having a spe-
cific character in mind. I could go over the handout in class as well. 5-10 minutes.
Assessment: Discussion mainly.
•Consciously read through this lens and see how characters may be unconscious of their
issues
•Assess a character’s issues even if the story is not told through their point of view?
•Identify the reasons different characters behave, act out, or relate to others
•Identify the emotional symptoms certain characters have resulting form certain experi-
ences, relationships, and whether or not they have risen above their socioeconomic condi-
tion (whether it is good or bad)
•See the role psychoanalysis plays in the novel, as well as in character analysis
•See how reading through a psychoanalytic lens may help us to internalize an analysis of
our self in relation to our own society and culture
•Be able to more fully engage with the lens of their choice for the final essay
•Be able to participate in an activity that will create a multi-perspective and large-group
discussion venue
•Gain fellow classmates’ assessment of the application of a particular critical lens
Rationale: This lesson will create a safe and comfortable environment for students to
participate in and engage with fellow classmates, making for a more dialogic class than a
monologic one. It will also cut out the teacher mostly from the equation. This will be
most efficient if students have had practice with this before or have seen a model fish-
bowl. This way they will know how to conduct themselves and that everyone must at one
point be in the inner circle. It will help them to establish rules and guidelines for re-
spectfully listening, but also arguing with their peers. They will be able to appreciate
other perspectives and opinions while also soundly advocating for their own. When
done right, fishbowls can be very educational, informative, and good practice for similar
classroom activities.
Agenda:
1.Students create a large circle with their desks with three desks in the middle facing each
other, labeled Marxist, Feminist, and Psychoanalytic for the three lenses we’ve covered.
2.Question/prompts will be given to the three students in the middle and they will begin a
discussion, each student defending it from their chair-assigned literary lens. When a stu-
dent feels they have sad enough or made the point they wanted to make, they can return to
the outer circle, and someone else will take their place. (Only those in the middle can talk,
but everyone is listening).
3.Those in the outside circle should take preparatory notes, keeping track of important
points so they can make direct comments once they are inside the inner circle.
•How does it apply to the novel: history, politics, gender roles, economic situation, cul-
ture/traditions, relationships, character, etc.
•What claim are you making about the lens in relation to the text? What do you want to
argue? (Students will have had thesis statement lessons prior to this unit)
•What textual evidence can you find to support your claim?
•Can you find any outside sources to support your claim as well?
~I decided not to re-do the calendar. I would’ve kept it mostly the same, with only a few
changes.