• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

1 Themes of Confession

Introductory Week Day 1: Basic introductions. If it is a new class, have students play “Two Truths and a Lie” where they say two things that are true about them and one thing that is false. The rest of the class must then guess which are the truths and which is the lie. The only trick is that they must answer WHY they think it’s a lie.

After they have finished the game (should take about 20-30 minutes) have the class do a brief 5- 7 minute free write. Give them the following prompt: For 5-7 minutes, make me a list of everything you are. Begin every sentences/list item with the phrase “I am…” and continue to list from there. Be creative! I want to know all about you! Have those who are willing to share what they have written with the class share their lists. Be sure to write your own with them!

Day 2: StoryJumper project Day 1. Tell students that they are going to be doing a creative project that is all about them. They will be writing four short pieces about themselves and putting those pieces, along with pictures of themselves, into a digital book. Hand out information packets that include explanations of all of the writing they will be doing. Include instructions for the “My Name” assignment and the template for the “Where I’m From” poem. Talk through each component of the packet and explain that students either have to write a “Where I’m From” poem or complete the “My Name” assignment.

Start with an introduction to StoryJumper. Show an exemplar so the class has an idea where they are going. Explain each writing assignment in detail, taking any questions as they arise.

Once the entire packet has been explained, tell students they have the rest of the period as well as the next one to work on their writing in class. Anything that isn’t done in class must be done for homework.

Have students check in after they have completed each component as a way of assuring that they are actually getting something accomplished during class. Students must complete AT LEAST 1 written assignment each day.

Day 3: StoryJumper project Day 2. Work day. Allow students most of the day to work on their writing. Begin class by answering any questions that may have arisen since the following day. Students should spend most of the period working on their creative writing pieces.

Again, they should be checking in throughout the day. The remaining free writes should be completed by the start of Day 4. Whatever students haven’t completed will be done for homework. Remind students to look for pictures of themselves to use in their project and to get them digitally into school in some way (perhaps on an Edmodo page or simply put onto a flash drive.)

Day 4: StoryJumper project Day 3 2 Themes of Confession

Computer lab, laptop cart, etc. Work day 2. Students should be given access to some kind of digital work studio for the period. Give a brief overview of StoryJumper and how to use it. Tell students they have the remainder of the period as well as most of the next day to complete the assignment.

Day 5: StoryJumper project day 4 Computer lab, laptop cart etc. Work day 3. Project should be completed by the end of the period today. The links to the digital storybooks should be submitted either via e-mail, through the school’s networking system or through some other mode of digital transfer, depending on how the school is set up.

My Story 3 Themes of Confession

What are you doing: Creating digital storybook introducing yourself. The storybook will be creative on storyjumper.com and will be approximately 10 pages in length. This project is going to take us most of the rest of the week. If you manage your time wisely, you should be able to get the project done entirely in class.

How will you be doing it: You will be completing FIVE different writing pieces. Some are very creative and other should be a bit more formal. They are all very short but powerful pieces. These five pieces, along with AT LEAST FIVE pictures of yourself and/or important aspects of your life should also be included in the project.

What will you be writing: 1. A Where I’m From poem about your childhood and where you grew up (see attached template) OR 2. A poem or short story about your name (see attached explanation 3. No less than 100 words about what you want to be when you grow up and why. Do you want to go to college? If so, where? What do you want to study while you’re there? Where would you like to live? 4. Approximately 200 words explaining what kind of English student you are. What are your strength and weaknesses in English class? What do you like about English? What don’t you like? What would you like to improve on this year? What are your contributions going to be to this class and how can your peers learn from you? 5. You will be editing your I Am free write. Turn the bullet points into complete sentences and create either a poem or a short story out of them.

Your writing should be original and creative. Don’t be afraid to take risks and do things you wouldn’t normally do when you write. Only number 3 and number 4 will be graded for grammar and punctuation. Be creative with the rest! This is your time to tell me anything you want me to know about YOU! I look forward to reading all of your wonderful stories. How will this be graded: The following rubric will be used to grade your project: 4 Themes of Confession

Where I’m From OR My Comments: Name: Written in a creative manner and completed.

____/10 What I Want to Be: Comments: Writing meets the length requirement and completely answers all questions. ____/10

English Strengths: Writing Comments: meets the length requirement and answers all questions fully. I Am Edits: Piece has ____/10 changed from it’s original form. Conventions: Writing is Comments: done in complete sentences (where needed) and with proper spelling and punctuation (where ____/10 needed).

Storybook: Book is Comments: completed. Creativity and originality is evident. Includes 5 pictures and 10 ____/10 pages.

TOTAL GRADE FOR PROJECT: ______/50

“Where I’m From” Poem

Using the template below for suggestions create your own “Where I’m From” poem. You do not have to follow the template exactly; it is just a guideline to help you get started. Try to include as many childhood memories as you can especially those that are the most important to you. I have included an example that may help you (but you can do better than this!).

The WHERE I'M FROM Template

I am from ______(specific ordinary item), from ______(product name) and ______. 5 Themes of Confession

I am from the ______(home description... adjective, adjective, sensory detail).

I am from the ______(plant, flower, natural item), the ______(plant, flower, natural detail)

I am from ______(family tradition) and ______(family trait), from ______(name of family member) and ______(another family name) and ______(family name).

I am from the ______(description of family tendency) and ______(another one).

From ______(something you were told as a child) and ______(another).

I am from (representation of religion, or lack of it). Further description.

I'm from ______(place of birth and family ancestry), ______(two food items representing your family).

From the ______(specific family story about a specific person and detail), the ______(another detail, and the ______(another detail about another family member).

I am from ______(location of family pictures, mementos, archives and several more lines indicating their worth).

My Name The following is an excerpt from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Ciscernos where she discuses the importance of her name: what it means, where it comes from and what it means to her. Create something that tells us about your name. It can be written in prose like Sandra’s or it could be a poem or a combination of the two. Be creative! Be original! Have fun!

In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing. It was my great- grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse--which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female-but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong.

My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it.

And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window. 6 Themes of Confession

At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister's name Magdalena--which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least- -can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza. would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.

Unit Rationale: The idea of confession came to me while reading Best American Nonrequired Reading. I began to consider confession, its literary development and adaptation throughout history. I also began to consider how simply confessing something does not always imply understanding, or learning. I also linked the ideas of power and guilt to confession – historically, religiously, textually, and in one’s own life. In Godsey’s article, he addresses the age-old debate on the reliability of confession, particularly in law. He opens the connection between power and confession and the fact that confession can occur in large or small scale situations. My unit will be broken into several lessons focusing on historical and modern events, and how these relate to students’ lives. I will also address philosophical movements and modern and contemporary works of fiction. The purpose of this project is to become acquainted with literary texts including classic literature, contemporary short fiction. We will also look at several short stories, each addressing confession in a different way, for example, In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried considers confession as a woman’s way of coming to terms with her guilt. There is no outside power in this story, rather it is internal. We will continue to look at the different sides of confession through text, changes in history, and through student work. It is important to talk about confession because of the many tiers to it. It is healthy to understand it, and to be able to apply it to one’s life. Being honest with oneself is the only way to live, and in doing so, we must learn to recognize our guilt, remove ourselves from outside religious/political/emotional/relational abuses of power before we are able to confess, analyze and understand the situation before accepting, embracing, and growing from our experience. I find this process healthy, daily, one that requires constant thought and consideration in order to remain an honest person. Margaret Klenck explains the importance and affects of confession from multiple points of view, ultimately describing it as a means to build relationships with others and the self through a process of self examination. We will be focusing on questions like, “does an honest confession have to be public, spoken or written, or can it remain internal?” “What is the difference between confessing something, and truly understanding something? Are we able to truly understand another’s experience just by learning from their confession?” Students will become aware of this process in their own lives. They will be able to recognize peers’ and family member’s movements through these stages, and apply it to their lives, making them aware of their own learning. Confession (and everything that comes along with it) is a powerful tool that has been a part of our history for centuries. It was utilized to maintain political and religious control over people, and is still used today, when a child confesses it was he who let the dog lose. Confessions appear as a result to little or massive impact situations, but regardless, they affect the lives of those involved. It will change its appearance, its medium, its pattern, but confession will never leave us. 7 Themes of Confession

This unit will be beneficial to John, a transfer student from Vietnam, as he learns to socially adapt and find parallels across cultures. He will be able to share with his classmates the surprising differences and provide insight to universal truths about our unit. As we look at writing as a stylistic development, he will improve his written prose; similarly, as we practice and explore reading out loud, he will be able to hear others and himself so that he is able to improve reading with enthusiasm, recognition of punctuation, and with a clear understanding of the English language. Anna will also benefit from this unit. A bright, active student, Anna will benefit from the activities which allow her to move around. She will be able to act out different roles, participate in timed station work and challenge her thinking with partner, group and individual work. This unit will also require Anna to take initiative and do work outside of class. She will have to practice self discipline to complete reading assignments, which are often short. Weekly journal entries and at-home work devoted to her unit-long project will also require that she gives herself allotted time. Because we have check-ups in class, Anna will be held accountable for these review and work times which will also allow the instructor time to gauge student progress.

Theme: Students will explore the theme of confession and sensory detail-rich writing in several pre-selected texts. They will apply the same methods of exploratory thinking and evaluation of characters and themes to their own lives so that they become aware of their relationship to their studied characters and become aware of themselves and of their own learning.

Hook: I will creates a compilation of film clips exhibiting acts of confession ranging in effect to include religious scenes, historical, genuine, desperate, irrational, emotional, as well as scenes of power and control, guilt and acceptance of self. I will include clips that will allow for a following discussion to challenge the actors’ motives and identities, and paths/choices that led them to that “scene” or point in their lives. I’ll use clips from modern and contemporary films, throw in a few classics, as well as contemporary television series.

Class Profiles: In a 10th grade English class, overpopulated with male classmates, Anna, a young female coming from a life of poverty, makes herself known with her loud, passionate personality. While many of her male peers still appear very young in stature, she towers over them in her Pittsburgh Steelers football jersey. She sits halfway from the front of the room, against a wall, and jokes with several of her male friends. She uses their hard, masculine language with a bright smile, laughing, clearly accepted into their social group as “one of the guys.” Able to study at a private school on a scholarship, Anna was removed from her poverty stricken, urban home and school system. Here, she lives in a dorm room for nine months of the year, knowing that she must maintain a particular grade point average for her scholarship to remain in tack. Capable of producing meaningful writing drafts in class, Anna demonstrates her strong understanding of life, literature, and the culture of her life away from home. Although she is capable and hard working, the moment she completes an assignment in class, her lack of ability to follow directions, combined with her fun personality, she begins to distract several of her male friends around her. She draws them off task, talking about sports, books, and cracking several inappropriate jokes. While Anna is smart and clearly has the ability to apply herself to what she 8 Themes of Confession involved in, she often gets into “trouble” as a result of boredom, or completing assignments early. In an ELL class, John, is a wealthy, brand new transfer student from Vietnam. He came to America hoping to fulfill not only his high school diploma, but also his college education. His parents remain in Vietnam, speak only their native language, and John speaks very little English. He is an eleventh grade student, and there are seven other students in his class, ranging from grades 9-12. He sits in the front row, speaks very little, and relies on his student language translator device more than some of the other students in class. While the rest of the class appear bored learning the English language, and while they are soft spoken, there is a general disruption from the male students to use the restroom or get a drink, John does not take part in these activities. He is taller than all but one of his classmates, making him an outcast. His silence in class is not to be assumed to be a desire to learn, but perhaps more out of confusion. The teacher often initiates John’s acquiring of class materials, and information. Hopefully, as the semester wears on, John will become more accustomed with the English language, and learn to adapt socially to his new environment.

Understandings: Students will be able to recognize the interdependency of our studied themes. Students will, through guided instruction and on their own, measure, compare and examine the themes of power struggle, guilt, acceptance, confession, understanding, and embracing change in the characters of our pre-selected texts. They will be able to apply these same forms of comparison and evaluation to their own experiences in relationship to the main characters. Through these explorations, students will identify writing techniques that they will apply to strengthen their writing and to engage their readers while they reflect upon and tell of their own experiences within our theme of confession.

Goals: By studying diverse characters’ experiences, students will be able to study their own. They will not only discover the interdependency of our studied themes in our texts, but they will begin to see these themes in their own lives. Students will also understand and begin to incorporate rich sensory detail into their writing to enhance its visual quality and its ability to be related to.

Essential Questions:  What is confession?  How do guilt, power, understanding and growth participate in confession?  Where have we seen/how have we seen confession used historically?  What is the difference between confessing something and understanding something?  Can we understand, grow and learn another’s confession? Can others learn from ours?  Can we explore and evaluate our own experiences like we explore and evaluate the experiences of the characters in our texts? How can we?

WHERE: W: What and Why: Students will be equipped with literature and activities to enhance their writing and critical thinking abilities. They will also engage in a deeper exploration of the themes of power struggles, guilt, acceptance, confession, understanding and embracing change, 9 Themes of Confession

and how they are all interrelated. Students will be able to recognize these themes and know how to deal with them in their own lives because of the skills they will learn from observing characters in text. Teacher Activities Student Enterprises H: Hook or Prior I will create a compilation of Have students respond during Knowledge film clips exhibiting acts of the video on paper, What confession, power and control, could have led these characters guilt and acceptance. I will to these moments of struggle include clips that challenge the actors’ motives and identities, or growth? What triggers and paths/choices that led growth and power struggles? them to that or point in their In what ways are these people lives. I’ll use clips from confessing? Does their modern and contemporary confession promise a change films, throw in a few classics, or personal growth? as well as contemporary Follow up with a classroom television series. discussion. E: Explore, experience, We will read Dr. Faustus, As a class, we will create a equip Heat, and In the Cemetery flow chart of themes Where Al Jolsen is Buried and surrounding our focus, participate in guided Confession. This flow chart discussion and analysis of the will act as a backbone to the themes of power struggle, unit, allowing for students to guilt, acceptance, confession, match plot events to themes, understanding and embracing and to compare the different change through the use of texts we read. They will also guided class debates, play use this flow chart to examine acting, and peer review and evaluate their own journey exercises. with confession. R: Rethink, revise, revisit, The instructor will guide the Weekly journals, Reflection reflect students to discovery and help Handout and Reflection them make cross connections Paragraph in response to in the texts being used by Digital Storybook, self asking reflective questions evaluations and explanations relating to the EQs of the during Intro Week as well as lesson. The instructor will also during the Digital Storybook guide students through their personal prose-narrative first mini project Digital Storybook which will act as a practice of revision, writing, reading, creative connections, self exploration and reflection before they complete their final unit summative short story project. 10 Themes of Confession

E: Evaluate, extend Summative assessment: unit- Students will have the course long assessment project that of the unit to complete this encompasses weekly journal assignment on their own time. entries (reflective and Little class time will be creative), use of technology, devoted to it, but as it is just and writing a short story based an expansion of the earlier on one of our studied themes Digital Storybook, students of confession. should be equipped to create it. Texts:  Primary: Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe (Drama/Play)  Secondary: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolsen is Buried, Amy Hempel (S.S.)  Secondary: Heat, Joyce Carol Oates (S.S.)  Secondary: Video clip from television series The Walking Dead  Secondary: Picture book The Elephant and the Tree

Standards: 1.1.10.A: Apply appropriate strategies to analyze, interpret, and evaluate author’s technique(s) in terms of both substance and style as related to supporting the intended purpose using grade level text.

1.3.10.B: Analyze the characteristics of different genres and compare works that express a universal theme and provide evidence to support the views expressed in each work.

1.3.10.D: Evaluate the significance of various literary devices in various genre, and explain their appeal. Sound (alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme scheme, consonance, assonance); Form (ballad, sonnet, heroic couplets); Figurative language (personification, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, symbolism); and Dramatic structure

1.4.10.A:Write poems, short stories, and plays. Apply various organizational methods. Write with an awareness of tone, mood, and elements of style. Include literary elements and devices.

1.5.10.E: Review, evaluate, revise, edit, and proofread writing to improve style, word choice, sentence variety, and subtlety of meaning.

1.5.10.F: Use grade appropriate conventions of language when writing and editing. Spell common, frequently used words correctly. Use capital letters correctly. Punctuate correctly. Use correct grammar and sentence formation. 1.6.10.A: Listen critically and respond to others in small and large group situations. Respond with grade level appropriate questions, ideas, information or opinions.

1.7.10.A: Analyze the role and place of standard American English in speech, writing, and literature. Evaluate as a reader how an author’s choice of words advances the theme or purpose 11 Themes of Confession of a work. Choose words appropriately, when writing, to advance the theme or purpose of a work.

1.9.10.A: Use media and technology resources for research and problem solving in content learning. Identify complexities and inconsistencies in the information and the different perspectives found in each medium.

Formative Assessment Tools: 1. Weekly journals with minimal of two entries. One must contain a critical analysis or question regarding the assigned reading. This can be the students own ideas, any research they come across or something they connected to the class text. The second entry may be regarding past/current experiences/observations with confession/power/guilt/acceptance or anything the student wants to write about. No page requirements. Content, not length, is emphasized. While these are not collected and reviewed by the teacher until the end of the unit, they will help students to develop ideas and have discussions with themselves as they work out issues with their summative assessment project. The journals done that are worked on in class will have more developed ideas as they are often somehow incorporated with class or partner discussion. The teacher will be able to follow a student’s thought process and watch the development of their final project. 2. Teacher, partner and group conferences designed to focus on crafting and building ideas. The teacher will be able to gage student work outside of class by what they have to present in class. The teacher will also be able to monitor student understanding. 3. Class and partner discussions will encourage participation and building ideas. 4. Acting out scenes of stories will challenge students to consider the emotions of their character. The students will have to 5. Peer editing not only helps the student whose work is being edited, but requires the editor to be actively engaged in the story they are reading. As they ask questions to their peer’s work, they will have the opportunity to retain those same critical questions when returning to their own work. 6. Class debate. This is designed to have students reflect on their reading and will challenge them to research into the story as they seek textual evidence to back their points of view. The teacher will be able to monitor student emotional response to the story as well as their ability to draw on textual evidence and apply it in a debate. 7. Stationed differentiated instruction. The three stations that students will rotate through are timed, and focus on different areas of learning. One station will require students to practice reading out loud while their peers supply feedback, another will require students to read their peers’ work on laptops and comment/ask questions accordingly, and the third station will allow students to either list or draw a scene from their peers’ work. All the stations will require that students edit for creativity, specific literary techniques, and sensory detail. These exercises will allow for each student to confidently supply feedback to a peer, and will allow each student to benefit from the suggestions and review of their classmates.

Summative Assessment: 12 Themes of Confession

This is an ongoing assessment that will be built up to throughout the entire unit. Students will be given two options.

Project Description: The class will look at the following texts: Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried by Amy Hempel and Heat by Joyce Carol Oates. These texts, encompassing a dramatic play, and two short stories will give students grounds for discovering, examining, and applying confession and its affects to their own life. The final project will include an option for students. They will be able to 1.) Choose an historical event where confession or power was used to control people. Rewrite history and create an alternative outcome in the format of a short story. 2.) Write a short story drawing from a personal experience, based one of our themes of power, guilt, acceptance, confession, understanding or embracing. Regardless of which option students choose, they will create an online publishing project. Choosing from either a wiki, where they will post five journal entries and a short story, or a comic strip where they will visually recreate five scenes from two different classroom texts and include an explanation of their artistic and literary choices.

Assessment Plan: Students will be given two options: 1. Choose an historical event where confession or power was used to control people. Rewrite history and create an alternative outcome in the format of a short story. Steps: 1. Research your event. Have at least five journal entries (which should be building up throughout the unit) concerning people, place, and action. Dive into the main character’s lives. Who were they? Who were their parents? Did they fall from wealth, come from another part of the world to where they instigated this event, were they well known/liked? Male? Female? Who did they know and operate with? How did the masses respond to them? Remember – this event does not have to be royalty vs. commoner; were there reverse events? Dr. Faust was a scientist, a professor, and yet his choices had grand affects on his students and fellows of the court. 2. Rewrite the story. This is your chance to change history. Consider the processes of confession – power, guilt, acceptance, confession, understanding, embracing. Do your characters experience all of these? What is left out? Most importantly, be sure to show how the choices and actions of those involved shape the world around them. 3. Write a response, no longer than one page, explaining how the world today would be different if your story were true. Why would it be different?

2. Think about a time when you were directly involved in power, guilt, acceptance, confession, understanding, embracing. Write a short story drawing from your own experiences, based around one of our themes. Steps: 1. Review your journal entries from the unit. What are YOU trying to say about these themes? When was the last confession you made? What was your first? How has 13 Themes of Confession

power been exerted over you, and how have you exerted power over someone you knew or did not know? Have you ever been able to learn from someone else’s confession? Can you say you truly understand what they experienced? When have you desired a confession but never heard it? Consider the texts we read in class. Remember the literary devices and techniques explored, and practice using them in your own writing. In Heat, we do not expect a confession to come at the end of the story – why does it? How is it relevant to the plot and characters? 2. Write your story. There is no page or word requirement, however the story should be complete by demonstrating your use of one of our themes (power, guilt, acceptance, understanding or embracing learning.) Build your characters based on real life observation and traits, techniques you have observed in our studied texts. 3. Write a response, maximum of one page, explaining your theme or themes utilized in the story. How are they intertwined? Why did you make the major plot and character choices that you did?

3. Regardless of the final assessment chosen, each student will have to create an online display of their work.

Students can choose from one of the following online publishing systems: 1. A wikispace. Post five journal entries and a short story. Display the story with seven or more photographs/paintings of the historical characters, or imaginary characters – what famous actor would have the leading man’s role? 2. Create an online graphic novel representation of their short story at Pixton.com of at least ten different image boxes/templates. Or, students may create a comic strip of five scenes from two different classroom texts and include an explanation of their artistic and literary choices. In addition to this, create a visual representation of three scenes from their short story.

Lesson Plan One (Week One): Day 1: Welcome to Confession - Arrange classroom into horseshoe seating to easily guide a discussion following the unit hook. Present the unit hook to students: watch a video I created that has clips from classic and contemporary TV shows and films which present characters in moments exhibiting acts of confession ranging in effect to include religious scenes, historical, genuine, desperate, irrational, emotional, as well as scenes of power and control, guilt and acceptance of self. (7 mins) - Have students respond during the video on paper, What could have led these characters to these moments of struggle or growth? What triggers 14 Themes of Confession

growth and power struggles? In what ways are these people confessing? Does their confession promise a change or personal growth? - After the video, open the classroom discussion with these open-ended questions. List some ideas (definition, themes, etc) on the board. Create together a definition of confession, and design a flow chart (power struggle – guilt – acceptance – confession – understanding – embracing change). (33 mins) - Do 1st journal entry of the weekly two. This in-class journal response may count as their critical response entry if they choose to reflect on the class discussion. (10 mins) - Overview of unit-long project and summative assessment, emphasize that there will be little to no time in class to write their stories – these are at- home projects to be completed. We will be doing peer editing, and outside help is encouraged, but class time is limited. *Point out that the journal they just wrote counts towards their two homework journals for that week. Give overview of the coming three pieces of lit to be covered and mini projects that will go with them. (10 mins) - Hand in exit card (notebook paper of ideas from video) while leaving class Day 2: The Beginning of Dr. Faustus and Power Struggles - Hook: How are we affected by power struggles? Brainstorm on the chalkboard. As students enter class, have them write a word or phrase that they relate to power struggles in their lives. They can branch off of a word that is already written. Begin class discussion on the power struggles they face: political, parental, sports, peer, etc. Watch youtube video on bullies and follow with class discussion. In what ways do we witness bullying in and outside of class? What are some of the things bullies look for in a target? How can we respond if we are being bullied, or if we witness it occurring? (http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=fY83wTIkha4&feature=BFa&list=WL919BFE4293203A69&lf=BFp followed by: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=TGcY_ip3w7g&feature=BFp&list=WL919BFE4293203A69 ) - Transition to text: We’re going to explore how power struggles can arise in different ways. In Faustus, there is still the push-pull of peer pressure, as well as political and educational. - Have an acting circle where volunteer students will act out Act 1 Scene 3 of the play. While these students act, their “voices” will be the voices of other volunteer classmates who will read their lines. The rest of the class will follow along on a photocopy of the scene. This scene will open a conversation about using threat, political/religious/intelligence as power to control others. (20 mins) 15 Themes of Confession

- Return to Socratic Seminar seating and read through Act One as a class. Assign Act Two for homework. (35 mins) - Exit card is a Word Wall. As students leave, write one word they didn’t understand from Act One. Or, a word whose translation was interesting or funny to them. Day 3: Examination of and Playing with Language - Return to Word Wall to discuss the words from previous day. Define the undefined; discuss evolution of language and translation. (5 mins) - Review Act Two. Arranged in horseshoe seating, discuss major plot elements and map them on the board. Students write two reflective questions regarding the plot events and how they tie in with our theme of confession and its surrounding components. Students are allowed to create questions with elbow partner. (15 mins) - Read Act Three in class, volunteers taking the roles of characters. Wear hats/capes/minimal props provided. (20 mins) - Talk about the role of power – political and religious. Propose a journal entry reflecting on this topic. (20 mins) - Exit card is the 3 questions created regarding the plot. Read Act Four for homework. Day 4: Power and Guilt as Tools for Control - Entering class, each student is handed a number on a folded piece or paper which will divide them into groups of four. The teacher has prepared approximately three questions out of the ones handed in at the end of the previous day. The students will work within their small groups to discuss them before returning to Socratic Seminar to discuss as a class. This discussion aims to invoke deeper exploration and thinking into the ideas of confession and its components. By this point in our conversations, we will be returning to elements of character, plot, and voice and exploring them in relationship to confession. Making general statements and connecting to real life. Predict where the story will go; characters’ fates and talk about the effects on certain characters regarding our themes (in particular power and guilt). (20 mins) - Pull out the flow chart created on Day 1 and add plot events from Act 4 and add critical questions around them. What is the role of the masks worn? How does this conceal or reveal? Can the masks be used to reveal truth and discovery? Who is being tricked, deceived, if anyone? Is deception a way to invoke fear and control? (10 mins)

- Read Act 5 as a class, using volunteers to dress the part like the day previous. An additional volunteer student will play/control sound clips 16 Themes of Confession

when thunder rolls and when the clock strikes, adding to the intensity of the performance. (20 mins)

- At the end of the play, before any class discussion, have students write a list of words, scribble colors on a paper, or freewrite about an idea, create their own prose, rant, etc. This will be their exit ticket – an emotional response to the literature. For homework, they must be sure their two journals are complete for the week. (10 mins)

Day 5: Genuine Confession vs. Desperation

- Have a video clip from the television series, The Walking Dead (episode one, season two) where zombies have driven survivors into the woods. A small church is found and several characters who until this point expressed no belief in religion beg god to save them. Have small group discussion (groups of four from the previous day) on the confessions observed in the clip. Were they genuine? Does someone who claims not to believe in god deserve to ask god for life and protection, and are they even able to, if they do not believe? In other words, if a person does not believe in god, who are they asking for life, and why are they? Are they experiencing a change in their beliefs or are they reacting in a conditioned way in a time of a crisis? How does this relate to Faustus’ pleading for his soul? (20 mins)

- Return to Socratic Seminar to share ideas (10 mins)

- Discuss Act Five and the controversy around Faust’s actions at the end of the play. Where does he stand on our class flow chart? What was his last action that caused him to stop moving through the chart, if any, or does he truly complete it? Draw on text (plot, language, motives). (10 mins)

- Talk about Marlowe’s motivation behind the play.

- Read short story In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried for HW

Lesson Plan Two (Week Two): Day 1: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried, and Our Own Confessions - Hook: Writing Prompt: From the Word Wall created last week, pick one word and write about it. What does it mean to you? To others? How and why has its meaning changed, if at all? How does this word relate to confession, power or guilt? Keep this in journal, may count toward required two of the week. (10 mins) 17 Themes of Confession

- Pull out In the Cemetery for class discussion. As a class, identify phrases in the text that portray the speaker’s journey with confession. (15 mins)  What is she confessing?  Does she follow our class flow chart?  What are the driving forces of power and her guilt? - Work with elbow partner to match up plot events with our class flow chart (2 mins) - Return to class conversation to share/elaborate on these ideas (10 mins) - Re-read outline class created for Faustus.  Propose question: Both main characters feel guilt, but how do they experience and deal with it differently? In what ways do the stories draw on the readers emotions? Why does one impact you more than the other? What does the author do differently in each story to draw on our emotions? Why is making a personal, emotional connection with a reader a positive thing? After discussion, how can we adapt this into our writing? How can we engage our reader’s emotions? (Imagery, dramatic change, sensory detail, relate to reader’s life, use of literary devices) (10 mins) - Independently, create a Type-1 list of ten ideas in response to prompt (3 mins)  Prompt: List ten situations where you felt similar to the speaker in this story. When have you ever lied to yourself to feel better? Been angry at a force out of your control? Felt guilty? - Share list with elbow partner and “*” top three events on their list that they want to write about (1 min) - Begin Type-3 writing and finish for HW. Tell your memory in the form of a narrative. You may use fake names, embellish, and focus on sensory detail. (9 mins) Day 2: Our Own Confession: A Mini Digital Storybook Project - Enter class with Type-3 completed opened on their laptop. By tomorrow, this will be a Type-4. - Project Hook: listen to audio “book” of my own recording of my personal prose narrative on my published final glog. How did I attempt to engage my listener? (imagery, narrator’s thoughts) What theme – power struggle, guilt or confession – is evident in my story? How do you know? (power struggle, guilt?) What theme is evident in your story, and what should your reader learn? (7 minutes) - Differentiated Instruction:  Break students into pre-arranged groups of six – combine levels of understanding so that they can challenge one another. Break into 18 Themes of Confession

five stations. Change stations every fifteen minutes. Instructor to jump into each group and participate in tasks, answer questions, monitor growth: (45 mins) o 1.) Group members will take turns reading out loud (6-inch voices). Each of the participating members will record one question or suggestion for the reader’s speaking style, one question or suggestion remarking on the content of their story – does it relate to our themes? And one technique that was successful in hooking listeners/entertaining listeners. Do not read out loud after the reader finishes, but give comments to the reader so that he may explore them during his revision process. o 2.) Group members will use laptops to read each other’s stories, typing their questions, comments, suggestions in red colored font. Spend four minutes at each computer, and begin reading/commenting where the final prior “red ink” was noted. o 3.) Group members will trade copies of their story with one person in their group. After reading the story, students will do one of two things: create a list of details that stuck out to them. They will also include a description of pictures they would like to see paired with the story on the glog. OR, students may use provided colored pencils to draw a picture of a scene they pictured while reading the story. - Finally, each student will find a place in the room where they feel comfortable (desk, floor, different side of the room, etc) and read their own story out loud in a whisper to themselves to feel the fluency and rhythm to their writing. (6 mins) - Remind students of requirements checklist located in their project handout and assign hw. (2 mins) - Homework: Revise stories and find five images that reinforce the theme and emotion of the prose. Record audio of story. Bring a rough first copy of unit short story for peer review tomorrow. Day 3: Completing Mini Project - Hook: Collect all first copies from students as they enter the classroom. Without reading the author’s name, read the opening sentence of each paper to the class before randomly handing the draft to a student (who is not the author.) This student will be required to peer edit this paper as hw, due in two days. (4 mins) 19 Themes of Confession

- After all opening sentences are read, ask the students which ones they remember, which ones stood out? Why? What sort of language was used in this opening statement that grabbed your attention? (colorful, sensory, detail oriented) Emphasize that as they are editing this draft, they will look for the same things that they looked for the day before – sensory detail, imagery, colorful language and relationship to theme. (6 mins) - Students will work on classroom set of laptops to compile their glog. They will refer to their given checklist of requirements as they create it so that they are sure they meet all standards. During this time, the instructor will meet briefly with each student to answer any questions relating directly to their assignment, and to continue monitoring student progress. (30 mins) - With 20 mins remaining, have students shut down laptops and pass out a blank piece of paper to them. On the overhead, have a copy of the class flow chart and ask students to create a flow chart for their story like we created for Faustus and In the Cemetery using plot or imagery as evidence for each of the themes. (10 mins) - Write 1-3 paragraphs explaining your story and how it relates to our class flow chart and to your audience. Include this with your Project Reflection Handout that is to be turned in when project is presented. Complete as hw. (10 mins) - Homework: complete any final touches for Digital Storybook, Reflection Handout and reflection paragraph. Begin peer review Day 4: Presentations - Present first half of the class’ videos. Presenters chosen at random so that everyone is prepared for today. Collect Reflection Handout and Reflection paragraph before each student presents. (59 mins) - Homework: Continue peer editing of Draft One to be returned to peer tomorrow at beginning of class.

Day 5: Presentations - Complete giving presentations. - Homework: Continue working on short story projects.

Lesson Plan Three (Week Three): Day 1: Heat, by Joyce Carol Oates - Writing prompt: “The heat was gauzy; you had to push your way through like swimming. On their bicycles Rhea and Rhoda flew through it hardly noticing, from their grandmother's place on Main Street to the end of 20 Themes of Confession

South Main where the paved road turned to gravel leaving town. That was the summer before seventh grade, when they died. Death was coming for them, but they didn't know.”  Directions: Continue writing where the text ends. Every three minutes pass the paper to the left where the next student continues on your paper. These will be collected at end of class as Exit Tickets. (13 minutes) - In Socratic seminar, return to prompt and discuss its visual descriptions and hypothesize where the story is headed, in regards to our theme of confession and its surrounding themes. How can we incorporate these visual senses into our own writing? What are the benefits of visual writing? How does the author engage us? Can we see where confession and its sister themes may appear in this story? (7 mins) - Pass out Heat and read as a class, in horseshoe arrangement. (30 mins)  8 Narrators (change when font style changes, which was prearranged by teacher) - With elbow partner, discuss questions about the text. (2 mins) - Return to horse shoe seating and volunteers will share questions that a volunteer will record on the board. 5-10 questions total about the text, and what we want to know more about. (8 mins) - Homework: Type-1 writing (list) including 5 textual pieces of evidence to suggest who killed the girls, and 5 pieces of evidence to support your opinion on what the narrator is confessing to. Day 2: Debate - Upon entering class, each student will reach into a hat and pull out a question (there will be an even number of questions – 15 relating to the plot murder and 15 relating to the confession theme). (2 mins) - Students will divide into two stations according to their thematic question where two separate debates will be held. Before beginning the debate, choose a spokesperson who will take notes and summarize to the other half of the class later in the period. The questions drawn at the beginning of class are designed to get the debate started, keep it on track or to guide it through moments of confusion. (43 mins)  Station A: Regarding the murder o Who is the killer? Is justice served? How do you know? How is the murder related to the narrator’s confession?  Station B: Regarding the narrator’s confession o Does the narrator feel guilty? Of what? Why is she confessing? How is her confession related to the murder? 21 Themes of Confession

- Return to Socratic seminar where spokesperson from each debate will summarize their debate, any unresolved questions and any solutions reached to the other half of the class (15 mins) Day 3: Comparing Flowcharts - Upon entering class, students will be handed back their original writing prompts from our writing circle two days ago. These may be inserted into students’ journals and counted as one of the weekly required two. (2 mins) - Begin class with recall questions, move into prediction/analysis: What kinds of confession have we already examined in Faustus and In the Cemetery? We have looked at Faustus’ desperate confession as a response to a power struggle which was not genuine, and we remember we know it wasn’t genuine because he knew of his fate and chose to act the way he did regardless. He also perishes. Because of his death, we know that in the physical world, he does not have the chance to continue down our flow chart. The narrator from In the Cemetery introduced us to a guilt-induced confession, and her doubting her own actions and making suggestions to her future behavior tell us that she is in a fit of guilt and remorse over the loss of a friend. We also can see and feel her grief and rage in the choppy sentences and aggressive imagery. We can predict where her journey will take her on our flowchart. Now, what do we know about the confession in Heat? How is it different from both of these two? Create a flow chart for Heat like we did for the last two texts (15 mins) - Arrange all three flowcharts that the class has created in front of the class and do a Type 1 Writing: 5 differences and 5 similarities regarding the three flow charts. (3 mins) - Share with elbow partner (2 min) - Come up with 5-5 differences and similarities as a class (3 mins) - Socratic Seminar discussion: What do these similarities and differences tell us about literature? What conclusions can we draw about these characters? How can we apply that same logic to humankind? Ourselves? (15 mins) - Type-2 Writing: How can I recognize my own actions in day-to-day life? What patterns have we identified in these characters, and where do they appear in my own life? (10 mins) - Type-1 Writing: How can I recognize others’ actions on a daily basis, in regards to our flow chart? What can I do to help them, or help myself when they are affecting me in a negative way? (5 mins) - Share ideas with elbow partner, create list of 5 ideas as exit ticket. (5 mins) 22 Themes of Confession

- Homework: Work on final project. Story and journals should be complete by this time and Bring materials to work on final project tomorrow Day 4: Class Time for Final Project - Show students a final presentation of a wikispace (http://confessionshortstories.wikispaces.com) and of a graphic novel published online so that they are reminded of final expectations and of the direction they should be moving in with their final projects (5 mins) - Divide class into two groups for remainder of the period: (55 mins)  One group will consist of students who struggled with the first draft of their story. They will be paired up with volunteer partners who are nearly completed with their projects (including the online publishing part). Together, they will work on the struggling students’ story in regards to the prompt.  The second group will consist of the remaining students who are not working with a partner or meeting with the instructor. They will be working on their own projects. Laptop access provided for online publishing. - Teacher meets briefly with each student to monitor progress/answer questions (2 mins each) - Homework: Come to class with project nearly completed. Tomorrow is our last day to work on it. Assignment due first thing the following class period. Day 5: Completion of Unit, Completion of Summative Assessment - Complete working on project. - Teacher moves around the class again to spend (2 mins) with each student to address goals and questions. - Homework: Final project is due at the beginning of the next class (which will most likely be a Monday, giving students the weekend to finish.) 23 Themes of Confession 24 Themes of Confession

Collection of: 3 Detailed Lesson Plans Including DI, Project Information, Teacher Handouts, Student Handouts, Grading Rubrics and Short Stories

FIVE TYPES OF WRITING 25 Themes of Confession

from the Collins Writing Program, John Collins, Ed. D.

Type 1: Capture Ideas  Gets ideas onto paper – brainstorming  Times and requires a minimum number of items or lines  Questions and/or guesses are permitted  Evaluated with a check or minus Type 2: Respond Correctly  Shows writer’s ability to recall correct answer or to draw conclusions based on recalling correct information  A correct response to a specific question  One draft  Graded as a quiz (out of approx 5-10 points) Type 3: Edit  Has substantive content  Read out loud and reviewed to meet following criteria: completes assignment, flow/readability, meets classroom standards for grammatical correctness.  Revision and editing are done to original copy, which is only draft  Graded Type 4: Peer Edit  Type Three writing that is read out loud  Critiqued by another  Two drafts  Graded Type 5: Publish  Error free  Publishable quality  Critiqued by at least one other person  Multiple drafts  Graded

Flowchart for Confession 26 Themes of Confession

Power Struggle Guilt

Acceptance Confession Understanding

Embracing Change

Project Overview for Unit Summative Assessment Project

Teacher Handout 27 Themes of Confession

Project Title: Confession: Our Historical, Fictional, and Everyday Experiences

Learning Goal/Objectives: Students will be able to describe what the term confession means to them based on their own personal experiences. They will be able to describe what it means to the characters in the studied texts. Using concrete details from the classroom texts, they will also be able to relate confession to power, guilt, control, understanding, application, and learning. They will be able to explain how these terms are their own separate entities as well as how they work together. Students will use historical-fiction texts to examine how confession and its sister qualities were used to control mass populations; by rewriting history, students will see the long and short term effects of confession. Students will discuss, journal, and examine texts to discover the difference between a verbal/written confession and true understanding of it. In contrast to examining their own experiences, and fictional characters, students will discuss and evaluate how others’ confessions effect them, and whether or not outsiders are capable of understanding, applying and learning from others’ experiences.

State Standards: Grade 10

1.1.10.A: Apply appropriate strategies to analyze, interpret, and evaluate author’s technique(s) in terms of both substance and style as related to supporting the intended purpose using grade level text. 1.3.10.B: Analyze the characteristics of different genres and compare works that express a universal theme and provide evidence to support the views expressed in each work. 1.3.10.D: Evaluate the significance of various literary devices in various genre, and explain their appeal. Sound (alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme scheme, consonance, assonance); Form (ballad, sonnet, heroic couplets); Figurative language (personification, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, symbolism); and Dramatic structure 1.4.10.A:Write poems, short stories, and plays. Apply various organizational methods. Write with an awareness of tone, mood, and elements of style. Include literary elements and devices. 1.5.10.E: Review, evaluate, revise, edit, and proofread writing to improve style, word choice, sentence variety, and subtlety of meaning. 1.5.10.F: Use grade appropriate conventions of language when writing and editing. Spell common, frequently used words correctly. Use capital letters correctly. Punctuate correctly. Use correct grammar and sentence formation. 1.6.10.A: Listen critically and respond to others in small and large group situations. Respond with grade level appropriate questions, ideas, information or opinions. 1.7.10.A: Analyze the role and place of standard American English in speech, writing, and literature. Evaluate as a reader how an author’s choice of words advances the theme or purpose of a work. Choose words appropriately, when writing, to advance the theme or purpose of a work. 1.9.10.A: Use media and technology resources for research and problem solving in content learning. Identify complexities and inconsistencies in the information and the different perspectives found in each medium.

Project Description: The class will look at the following texts: Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, In the Cemetery Where Al Jolsen is Buried by Amy Hempel, Heat by Joyce Carol 28 Themes of Confession

Oates. These texts, encompassing a dramatic play and two short stories, will give students grounds for discovering, examining, and applying confession and its affects to their own life. The final project will include an option for students. They will be able to 1.) Choose an historical event where confession or power was used to control people. Rewrite history and create an alternative outcome in the format of a short story. 2.) Write a short story drawing from their own experiences, based around one of our themes of power, guilt, acceptance, understanding or embracing. Regardless of which option students choose, they will create an online publishing project – a wiki or a Pixton.com comic strip. On their wiki, they will post five journal entries and a short story. Pixton will allow two choices – create an online graphic novel representation of their short story. Include ten scenes from their story which reflects at least one of our themes around confession. Or, create a comic strip of five total scenes from two different classroom texts and include an explanation of artistic and literary choices. In addition to this, create a visual representation of three scenes from their short story.

Summative Assessment: This is an ongoing assessment that will be built up to throughout the entire unit. Students will be given two options.

Project Description: The class will look at the following texts: Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried by Amy Hempel and Heat by Joyce Carol Oates. These texts, encompassing a dramatic play, two short stories, a poem and a novella, will give students grounds for discovering, examining, and applying confession and its affects to their own life. The final project will include an option for students. They will be able to 1.) Choose an historical event where confession or power was used to control people. Rewrite history and create an alternative outcome in the format of a short story. 2.) Write a short story drawing from a personal experience, based one of our themes of power, guilt, acceptance, confession, understanding or embracing. Regardless of which option students choose, they will create an online publishing project. Choosing from either a wiki, where they will post five journal entries and a short story, or a comic strip where they will visually recreate five scenes from two different classroom texts and include an explanation of their artistic and literary choices.

Assessment Plan: Students will be given two options: 4. Choose an historical event where confession or power was used to control people. Rewrite history and create an alternative outcome in the format of a short story. Steps: 4. Research your event. Have at least five journal entries (which should be building up throughout the unit) concerning people, place, and action. Dive into the main character’s lives. Who were they? Who were their parents? Did they fall from wealth, come from another part of the world to where they instigated this event, were they well known/liked? Male? Female? Who did they know and operate with? How did the masses respond to them? Remember – this event does not have to be royalty 29 Themes of Confession

vs. commoner; were there reverse events? Dr. Faust was a scientist, a professor, and yet his choices had grand affects on his students and fellows of the court. 5. Rewrite the story. This is your chance to change history. Consider the processes of confession – power, guilt, acceptance, confession, understanding, embracing. Do your characters experience all of these? What is left out? Most importantly, be sure to show how the choices and actions of those involved shape the world around them. 6. Write a response, no longer than one page, explaining how the world today would be different if your story were true. Why would it be different?

5. Think about a time when you were directly involved in power, guilt, acceptance, confession, understanding, embracing. Write a short story drawing from your own experiences, based around one of our themes. Steps: 4. Review your journal entries from the unit. What are YOU trying to say about these themes? When was the last confession you made? What was your first? How has power been exerted over you, and how have you exerted power over someone you knew or did not know? Have you ever been able to learn from someone else’s confession? Can you say you truly understand what they experienced? When have you desired a confession but never heard it? Consider the texts we read in class. Remember the literary devices and techniques explored, and practice using them in your own writing. In Heat, we do not expect a confession to come at the end of the story – why does it? How is it relevant to the plot and characters? 5. Write your story. There is no page or word requirement, however the story should be complete by demonstrating your use of one of our themes (power, guilt, acceptance, understanding or embracing learning.) Build your characters based on real life observation and traits, techniques you have observed in our studied texts. 6. Write a response, maximum of one page, explaining your theme or themes utilized in the story. How are they intertwined? Why did you make the major plot and character choices that you did?

6. Regardless of the final assessment chosen, each student will have to create an online display of their work.

Students can choose from one of the following online publishing systems: 3. A wikispace. Post five journal entries and a short story. Display the story with seven or more photographs/paintings of the historical characters, or imaginary characters – what famous actor would have the leading man’s role? 4. Create an online graphic novel representation of their short story at Pixton.com of at least ten different image boxes/templates. Or, students may create a comic strip of five scenes from two different classroom texts and include an explanation of their 30 Themes of Confession

artistic and literary choices. In addition to this, create a visual representation of three scenes from their short story.

Student Handout

Purpose: The purpose of this project is to become acquainted with literary texts including classic literature, contemporary short fiction. We will look at several short stories, each addressing confession in a different way. For example, In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried considers confession as a woman’s way of coming to terms with her guilt. There is no outside power in this story, it is internal. We will continue to look at the different sides of confession through text, changes in history, and through your work. It is important to talk about confession because of the many tiers to it. It is healthy to understand it, and to be able to apply it to your life. Being honest with yourself is the only way to live, and in doing so, we must learn to recognize our guilt, remove ourselves from outside 31 Themes of Confession religious/political/emotional/relational abuses of power before we are able to confess, analyze and understand the situation before accepting, embracing, and growing from our experience. I find this process healthy, daily, one that requires constant thought and consideration in order to remain an honest person. We will be focusing on questions like, “does an honest confession have to be public, spoken or written, or can it remain internal?” “What is the difference between confessing something, and truly understanding something? Are we able to truly understand another’s experience just by learning from their confession?” You will become aware of this process in your own life. You will be able to recognize friends’ and family member’s movements through these stages, and apply it to your life; you will be aware of your own learning. Confession (and everything that comes along with it) is a powerful tool that has been a part of our history for centuries. It was utilized to maintain political and religious control over people, and is still used today, when a child confesses it was he who let the dog lose. Confessions appear as a result to little or massive impact situations, but regardless, they affect the lives of those involved. It will change its appearance, its medium, its pattern, but the idea of confession will never leave us.

Process: Through the use of class and small group discussion, journal entries (personal, classroom reflective, and analysis), and literary analysis and application to their own lives, they will be able to recognize confession, all of its components, and its impact on the individual in in long and short term environments.

Process for online publishing: 1. Students will post or reference their weekly journal entries they have kept throughout the entire unit. Each week the student should have written two entries. One must contain a critical analysis or question regarding the assigned reading. This can be the students own ideas, any research they come across or something they connected to the class text. The second entry may be regarding past/current experiences/observations with confession/power/guilt/acceptance or anything the student wants to write about. No page requirements. Content, not length, is emphasized.

2. Students will complete a short story based on one of the following two options:

 Choose an historical event where confession or power was used to control people. Rewrite history and create an alternative outcome in the format of a short story. Follow these steps:

1. Research your event. Have at least five journal entries (which should be building up throughout the unit) concerning people, place, and action. Dive into the main character’s lives. Who were they? Who were their parents? Did they fall from wealth, come from another part of the world to where they instigated this event, were they well known/liked? Male? Female? Who did they know and operate with? How did the masses respond to them? Remember – this event does not have to be Royalty executing on commoners; were there reverse events? Dr. Faust was a scientist, a professor, and yet his choices had grand affects on his students and fellows of the court. 32 Themes of Confession

2. Rewrite the story. This is your chance to change history. Consider the processes of confession – power, guilt, acceptance, understanding, embracing. Do your characters experience all of these? What is left out? Most importantly, be sure to show how the choices and actions of those involved shape the world around them. 3. Write a response, no longer than one page, explaining how the world today would be different if your story were true. Why would it be different?

 Think about a time when you were directly involved in a confession (or a lack of), or any of its sister components. Write a short story drawing from your own experiences, based around one of our themes of power, guilt, acceptance, understanding or embracing. Follow these steps:

1. Review your journal entries from the unit. What are YOU trying to say about these themes? When was the last confession you made? What was your first? How has power been exerted over you, and how have you exerted power over someone you knew or did not know? Have you ever been able to learn from someone else’s confession? Can you say you truly understand what they experienced? When have you desired a confession but never heard it? Consider the texts we read in class and that were analyzed in your groups. Remember the literary devices and techniques explored, and practice using them in your own writing. In Heat, we do not expect a confession to come at the end of the story – why does it? How is it relevant to the plot and characters? 2. Write your story. There is not page or word requirement, however the story should be complete by demonstrating your use of one of our themes (power, guilt, acceptance, understanding or embracing learning.) Build your characters based on real life observation and techniques you have observed in our studied texts. 3. Write a response, maximum of one page, explaining your theme or themes utilized in the story. How are they intertwined? Why did you make the major plot and character choices that you did?

3 Students will have two websites to choose from to post their short stories: Wikipedia.com or Pixton.com. 1. Wikipedia.com: Post five journal entries and your short story or historical re- write. Display your story with photographs/paintings of the historical characters, or your imaginary characters – what famous actor would have the leading man’s role? Be sure to include an introduction page. 2. Pixton.com: Create a graphic novel to illustrate your own story, or to illustrate your historical re-write. Include at least ten scenes. Or, create a visual representation to recreate five scenes from two different classroom texts, as well as a five scene short story of your own. Include an explanation of your artistic and literary choices. 33 Themes of Confession

Expected Outcome: The final outcome of this project is a visual representation of a student’s story (her written application of her understanding of confession and all of its components). Each student will have worked along, within small groups and large class discussion environments to reach an understanding of materials which is documented in her weekly journals. She will draw on her thoughts, analysis, and ideas in these journals to craft a short story of her own which will then be turned into a wiki or an online comic strip. These activities will demonstrate her critical thinking (journals), her application (story and publishing), and basic knowledge of class material (evident in her ability to apply learned techniques).

Mid-Unit Mini Project: Digital Storybook

Teacher Handout

Project Title: Digital Storybook – Connecting Visual, Audio and Written forms of Prose

Learning goal/objectives: Students will become comfortable reading their own poetry with an expressive voice. They will correctly acknowledge punctuation and use tone and inflection to represent multiple characters. They will also demonstrate their ability to connect visuals to their narrative by creating a visual representation of their project. They will choose from images 34 Themes of Confession collected from the internet or from personal stock and create an online poster on edu.glogster.com which corresponds with their narrative.

Standards: 1.1.10.A: Apply appropriate strategies to analyze, interpret, and evaluate author’s technique(s) in terms of both substance and style as related to supporting the intended purpose using grade level text. 1.3.10.B: Analyze the characteristics of different genres and compare works that express a universal theme and provide evidence to support the views expressed in each work. 1.3.10.D: Evaluate the significance of various literary devices in various genre, and explain their appeal. Sound (alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme scheme, consonance, assonance); Form (ballad, sonnet, heroic couplets); Figurative language (personification, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, symbolism); and Dramatic structure 1.4.10.A:Write poems, short stories, and plays. Apply various organizational methods. Write with an awareness of tone, mood, and elements of style. Include literary elements and devices. 1.5.10.E: Review, evaluate, revise, edit, and proofread writing to improve style, word choice, sentence variety, and subtlety of meaning. 1.5.10.F: Use grade appropriate conventions of language when writing and editing. Spell common, frequently used words correctly. Use capital letters correctly. Punctuate correctly. Use correct grammar and sentence formation. 1.6.10.A: Listen critically and respond to others in small and large group situations. Respond with grade level appropriate questions, ideas, information or opinions. 1.7.10.A: Analyze the role and place of standard American English in speech, writing, and literature. Evaluate as a reader how an author’s choice of words advances the theme or purpose of a work. Choose words appropriately, when writing, to advance the theme or purpose of a work. 1.9.10.A: Use media and technology resources for research and problem solving in content learning. Identify complexities and inconsistencies in the information and the different perspectives found in each medium.

Project Description: Over the course of four days, students will create a visual and audio display of their own poem or short narrative prose. On our first day devoted to the project, we will listen to the beginning of chapter two of the audio book Stargirl, narrated by John Ritter. Here, students will hear how the narrator adjusts his for to create individual characters and to obey punctuation. While listening to the short audio book reading, we will also be following along with a projection of the book on the over-head projector so that students can take notice of the punctuation and how it correlates with the narrator’s expressions. We will follow with a partner and class discussion of what techniques the narrator used to create life-like characters in his voice. After our mini lesson in dialogue, students will create their first draft of a Type-4 writing (see below for Writing Types Handout). A Type-4 writing will have substantive content, is read out loud and reviewed to meet following criteria: completes assignment, flow/readability, meets classroom standards for grammatical correctness. Revision and editing are done by partner to meet classroom standards. Second draft is final draft. This Type-4 writing will eventually be 35 Themes of Confession created into a Glogster, where students will have to include an audio of themselves reading their short prose (3-5 minutes in length). They will also have to include images from the internet or from their own collections that relate to and create a visual display of their story. On the second day of our project, students will work with assigned partners to peer edit according to class requirements. During this time, the teacher will meet briefly with each student to review the process and revision of their Type-4 writing. Days three and four are devoted to creating their glogster.

Assessment Plan:

Formative : Formative assessment will occur in a few places for this project.

 Partner discussion after mini lesson  Class discussion after mini lesson  Peer editing  Self Revision  Teacher conference  Classroom observation during work time

Summative : The summative assessment will be the final glogster project and completion of a reflection handout. Together, the glog, in-class writing and revision, and the reflection worksheet will demonstrate a students’ ability to:

 Defend and explain their work  Edit and craft their prose  Demonstrate their ability to connect a visual image with their displayed written and audio recording of their short prose  Create a Glogster that meets the following requirements: o Title o 5+ images relating to narrative o Two text boxes o An audio clip of 3-5 minute recording of your narrative. . Audio must correctly acknowledge different forms of punctuation (at least 3 different forms) and correctly demonstrate breathing and pauses in their own audio recording . Read with expression

Project Rubric: 36 Themes of Confession

Category: 4 - Exemplary 3 - Satisfactory 2 - Needs 1 - Lacks Improvement Participation: Student utilizes class Student needs to be Attempts to use Student is work time. Provides reminded to stay on class time continually off meaningful feedback task a limited number productively but task and does not to partner and class of times. Provides needs to be provide any during discussions mostly correct input reminded of task constructive and provides correct and unique ideas multiple times. partner and revisions to partner’s during discussions Easily distracted classroom prose. and attempts to revise and provides little discussion points. partner’s prose with or incorrect Student fails to few errors. feedback during aid their partner discussions. during the editing Revisions to process. partner’s prose is nominal. Type-4 Has substantive Prose has few Student has many Does not Writing: content. Is read out grammatical errors grammatical errors complete prompt. loud and reviewed to but revision and and has made little Readability and meet following crafting process improvement flow are criteria: completes demonstrates a strong among drafts. interrupted by assignment, improvement Content of prose unacceptable flow/readability, between drafts. does not meet grammatical meets classroom Student demonstrates classroom errors and does standards for a desire to improve standards and does not consider grammatical prose. Readability not completely partner’s revision correctness. Revision needs little respond to prompt. suggestions. and editing are done improvement. by partner to meet Content is sufficient classroom standards. to complete prompt. Audio: 3-5 minutes in length. Time requirement is Less than two Less than a Correctly pauses as at just short of the 3 minutes in length minute of audio least three different minute requirement or incorporates recording and types of punctuation. by 0:30-1:00 or does only two different only one audible Reader’s voice not utilize at least punctuation types. punctuation type. establishes character, three different forms Voice does not Voice is a emotion and is of punctuation. demonstrate an monotone interesting to listen Student attempts to understanding of narration to. incorporate more than character and throughout. a monotone reading barely moves out but needs of a monotone improvement. narration. Visual: All poster space is All poster space is Student includes Has two or less utilized with images used and relates to three images, and photographs on relating to the narrative but fails to only one text box. their glog, and is 37 Themes of Confession

narrative of their meet the correct Fails to have a missing two of prose. Utilizes at quota of pictures or titles and/or audio the following: a least 5 pictures, a text boxes, but has clip. title, audio, two title, two text boxes, audio clip. Page text boxes. and at least one audio includes a title. clip. Creativity and All three aspects are Student attempts to Student has weak Student cannot Relatedness: related – audio, visual relate all three focus connection across defend reasons or and written. Student areas, but one area is all three focus creative choices has fully and weak. Student areas. Entire when challenged. successfully attempts to respond project is No connection is completed response to handout but some understood but evident between handout which defenses are weak or undeveloped. any of the focus challenge their final unexplained. Student has either areas and the choices and has handed in handout handout was not handed it in on time. incompletely or turned in. after due date. 38 Themes of Confession

Reflection Handout:

1. What corrections did you make to your first draft to improve your second draft? Why did you make these corrections?

2. How do these corrections improve your overall prose? 39 Themes of Confession

3. What do you want your reader to take away from your prose?

4. How do your images support this message?

5. In what ways have you improved your audio? Did you practice before you recorded it? 40 Themes of Confession

6. What can be learned from your story? What do you want your reader to understand about you?

STUDENT HANDOUT

Welcome to our new 10th Grade English Project, Digital Storybook! We will work together to develop our voices – not only our written voice, but our spoken voice as well. Our focus areas will include out-loud reading skills and a demonstration of understanding the differences in punctuation. We will be listening to audio books and listening to ourselves as we write, record, and examine the effectiveness of varying voice and character. After we create a Type-4 Writing, we will creatively expand our prose by visually expressing our narratives through the use of a Glogster. By the time we move on to our next writing project, you will be able to correctly use punctuation in your writing and read out loud to your classmates with an expressive voice.

Four class days will be devoted to this project. Any time spent outside of class is acceptable and always encouraged but if class time is utilized properly it should not be necessary. Here is a breakdown of our approaching schedule:

Day One: Lesson on Audio: Today we will listen to an audio reading from the book Stargirl while reading from the overhead projector. We will follow up with a partner and class discussion – What held your interest? How did the narrator adjust his voice to portray emotion and different characters? After this discussion we will complete a Type-4 writing in response to the prompt: Write about a memorable moment where you disagreed with a friend or family member. Focus on descriptive language, sensory detail, and the people around you. Must be 1.5 41 Themes of Confession to 2 pages in length. OR describe a memory that you have that you never want to forget in 1.5-2 pages. Focus on descriptive language, sensory detail, and the people around you.

Day Two: Peer Editing Process: This is the only day that we will spend revising our Type-4 Writing. The class will work within assigned groups of five for the first 45 minutes. During this time, I will meet with each student individually to answer any questions and to briefly revise their paper. In the last 15 minutes of class, we will return to our own documents to consider suggested revisions.

Day Three: Complete Edit, Begin Online Posters: For the first half of class we will finish self revisions and I will be available for monitoring and answering questions. After this first half hour, I will show you an example of a final Digital Storybook I created so that you can see an example of the final product. We will spend seven minutes examining the example before beginning work on our classroom set of laptops.

Day Four: Completion of Project: This is the last day devoted to the project. We will spend the entire class period working on finishing touches. Five minutes before the end of the class, I will pass out your Reflection Handout which is your required homework, due at the beginning of class tomorrow. Tomorrow everyone will present, so ask yourself, is there anything I need to do to prepare before I share my final project tomorrow?

Below is a provided checklist for your final project, and is followed by the grading rubric that I will be using:

 Two drafts of your prose that demonstrate revisions and improvement  Glogster requirements: o Title o 5+ images relating to narrative o Two text boxes o An audio clip of 3-5 minute recording of your narrative. . Audio must correctly acknowledge different forms of punctuation (at least 3 different forms) and correctly demonstrate breathing and pauses in their own audio recording . Read with expression

 Completion of the Reflection Handout 42 Themes of Confession

Category: 4 - Exemplary 3 - Satisfactory 2 - Needs 1 - Lacks Improvement Participation: Student utilizes class Student needs to be Attempts to use Student is work time. Provides reminded to stay on class time continually off meaningful feedback task a limited number productively but task and does not to partner and class of times. Provides needs to be provide any during discussions mostly correct input reminded of task constructive and provides correct and unique ideas multiple times. partner and revisions to partner’s during discussions Easily distracted classroom prose. and attempts to revise and provides little discussion points. partner’s prose with or incorrect Student fails to few errors. feedback during aid their partner discussions. during the editing Revisions to process. partner’s prose is nominal. Type-4 Has substantive Prose has few Student has many Does not Writing: content. Is read out grammatical errors grammatical errors complete prompt. loud and reviewed to but revision and and has made little Readability and meet following crafting process improvement flow are criteria: completes demonstrates a strong among drafts. interrupted by assignment, improvement Content of prose unacceptable flow/readability, between drafts. does not meet grammatical meets classroom Student demonstrates classroom errors and does standards for a desire to improve standards and does not consider grammatical prose. Readability not completely partner’s revision correctness. Revision needs little respond to prompt. suggestions. and editing are done improvement. by partner to meet Content is sufficient classroom standards. to complete prompt. Audio: 3-5 minutes in length. Time requirement is Less than two Less than a Correctly pauses as at just short of the 3 minutes in length minute of audio least three different minute requirement or incorporates recording and types of punctuation. by 0:30-1:00 or does only two different only one audible Reader’s voice not utilize at least punctuation types. punctuation type. establishes character, three different forms Voice does not Voice is a emotion and is of punctuation. demonstrate an monotone interesting to listen Student attempts to understanding of narration to. incorporate more than character and throughout. a monotone reading barely moves out but needs of a monotone improvement. narration. Visual: All poster space is All poster space is Student includes Has two or less utilized with images used and relates to three images, and photographs on 43 Themes of Confession

relating to the narrative but fails to only one text box. their glog, and is narrative of their meet the correct Fails to have a missing two of prose. Utilizes at quota of pictures or titles and/or audio the following: a least 5 pictures, a text boxes, but has clip. title, audio, two title, two text boxes, audio clip. Page text boxes. and at least one audio includes a title. clip. Creativity and All three aspects are Student attempts to Student has weak Student cannot Relatedness: related – audio, visual relate all three focus connection across defend reasons or and written. Student areas, but one area is all three focus creative choices has fully and weak. Student areas. Entire when challenged. successfully attempts to respond project is No connection is completed response to handout but some understood but evident between handout which defenses are weak or undeveloped. any of the focus challenge their final unexplained. Student has either areas and the choices and has handed in handout handout was not handed it in on time. incompletely or turned in. after due date.

___/20 Points

Expected Outcome: The final outcome of this project is a visual representation of prose. Each student will work alone, within small groups and participate in large classroom discussions. Together we will study the techniques other readers use to enhance our listening, and we will mimic these skills when we record ourselves reading our revised prose. These activities and the final completed Glog will demonstrate critical thinking (literary choices in prose), application (Glogster, images, and audio), and basic knowledge of class material (evident in ability to apply learned techniques). 44 Themes of Confession

Link to Exemplar: http://www.glogster.com/mebyoric/letting-the-air-in/g- 6lsqlvfmmn3ihhh6dp544a0 45 Themes of Confession

Lesson Plan Guide – Day One: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried, and Our Own Confessions

 Context for classroom (course, grade level, class description): 10th Grade English

 Context for lesson (brief description of Unit and background for today’s lesson): Students are reading three texts – Dr. Faustus, In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried by Amy Hempel (part of today’s lesson) and will be reading Heat by Joyce Carol Oates next week. They will be examining the different ways each of the main characters experience confession and its surrounding qualities: power struggle, guilt, acceptance, understanding and embracing change. This week, students will be focusing the on the literary techniques Hempel uses to capture her reader, and will be applying those same techniques in their own writing as they create a short prose and create a Digital Storybook to go along with it. Handouts and instruction to the Digital Storybook are included with the entire unit plan.

Unit Question(s) Lesson Question(s) for Students will be able to . . . . after today today’s lesson

What is confession? What is the main Compare different literary heroes’ How do power, guilt, character of our story experiences with guilt by understanding and confessing? Does she comparing their experiences. acceptance and follow the flow chart Students will identify the reasons learning function in that we have created at they felt close to one of the correlation to the beginning of this characters, and will apply those confession? unit? What are the writing techniques in their own Where have we driving forces of power coming writing assignment. seen/how have we and of her guilt? seen confession used historically? And later: How does What is the difference she experience guilt between confession differently than and understanding? Faustus? Which Can we understand, character did you relate learn from and grow to more, and how did from someone else’s the author make them confession? relatable? How can we adopt these techniques into our own writing? How do we engage reader emotions?

 Recognizing “understandings”: o What key aspects of the unit sequence are the focuses of today’s lesson? Can we understand, learn from and grow from someone else’s confession? Students will evaluate the narrator’s experience before beginning to evaluate their own.

o What assessment process or activities are most likely to reveal this understanding? 46 Themes of Confession

 Class discussion - Students will be comparing and evaluating the differences in the confessions and power struggles in both Dr. Faustus and In the Cemetery.  Class discussion – We will evaluate the author’s style and literary techniques that make the confessions believable or not believable, evaluation of intent  Type 1 Writing - We will follow up this comparison discussion by creating a list of our own experiences with confession  Elbow partner collaboration – students will share ideas with their partner and help each other decide which three events would create an interesting short narrative  Type 3 Writing – Students will begin a response to their writing prompt When have you ever lied to yourself to feel better? Been angry at a force out of your control? Felt guilty? Tell your memory in the form of a narrative. You may use fake names, embellish, and focus on sensory detail 47 Themes of Confession

 Teacher Activities and Student Enterprises (listed chronologically)

W: What and why: Students will engage in partner and group discussions to evaluate and explore the unit themes in the short story that was read for homework the night before. After evaluating the characters in the story, students will compare them to the previously read drama and will then list their own similarities on a paper in preparation for their prose assignment. 48 Themes of Confession

Teacher Activities Student Enterprises

H: Hook for Writing Prompt: From the Word Wall While journaling, students will be student created last week, pick one word and practicing their writing skills while interest or write about it. What does it mean to they apply a word to a different prior you? To others? How and why has its context than the one they originally knowledge meaning changed, if at all? How saw it in. does this word relate to confession, power or guilt? Keep this in journal, may count toward required two of the week. Evaluate the short story they read for E: Explore, Work with elbow partner to create a plot homework. Identify phrases in the text experience, outline in correlation to our class flow that portray the speaker’s journey with equip chart. Share ideas with class in class guilt, power, and confession. What is she discussion. Re-read plot analysis for confessing? Does she follow the course of Faustus and create class discussion, our flow chart? What are the driving Both main characters feel guilt, but forces of power and her guilt? how do they experience and deal with it differently? In what ways do the stories draw on the readers emotions? Why does one impact you more than the other? What does the author do differently in each story to draw on our emotions? Why is making a personal, emotional connection with a reader a positive thing? How can we adapt this into our own writing to engage our reader’s emotions? Create our own personal narrative dealing R: Rethink, revise, Type -1 response to: List ten situations with one of our discussed themes. Propose revisit, reflect where you felt similar to the speaker prompt. in this story. When have you ever lied to yourself to feel better? Been angry at a force out of your control? Felt guilty? Share ideas with elbow partner and begin Type-3 writing of favorite narrative idea. Tell of your memory in the form of a narrative. You may use fake names, embellish, and focus on sensory detail. Complete their Type-3 writing in E: Evaluate, Type-3 Writing in response to prompt. preparation for peer revision extend Tomorrow we will embark on tomorrow. crafting this Type-3 into a Type-4 49 Themes of Confession

Materials needed: Copy of short story In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried, class flow chart for confession, and flowchart-plot outline from class discussion on Faustus.

Follow-up enterprises: Tomorrow we will work within groups to help each other create Type-4 narratives for our Digital Storybook. 50 Themes of Confession

Lesson Plan Guide – Day Two: Our Own Confession: A Mini Digital Storybook Project (Differentiated Instruction included)

 Context for classroom (course, grade level, class description): 10th Grade English

 Context for lesson (brief description of Unit and background for today’s lesson): Students are reading three texts – Dr. Faustus, In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried by Amy Hempel (part of today’s lesson) and will be reading Heat by Joyce Carol Oates next week. They will be examining the different ways each of the main characters experience confession and its surrounding qualities: power struggle, guilt, acceptance, understanding and embracing change. This week, students will be focusing the on the literary techniques Hempel uses to capture her reader, and will be applying those same techniques in their own writing as they create a short prose and create a Digital Storybook to go along with it. Handouts and instruction to the Digital Storybook are included with the entire unit plan.

Unit Question(s) Lesson Question(s) for Students will be able to . . . . today after today’s lesson

What is confession? Can we understand, Identify the theme and supporting How do power, guilt, learn from and grow literary techniques in their own understanding and from someone else’s prose as well as their peers’. They acceptance and confession? Can will be equipped with responses learning function in others learn from from their peers to make necessary correlation to revisions to prepare for the ours? confession? completion of their glog project. Where have we seen/how have we How did I attempt to seen confession used engage my listener? historically? What theme – power What is the difference struggle, guilt or between confession confession – is and understanding? evident in my story? Can we understand, How do you know? learn from and grow What theme is from someone else’s evident in your story confession? Can and what should your others learn from ours? reader learn?

 Recognizing “understandings”: o What key aspects of the unit sequence are the focuses of today’s lesson? Students will be focusing on peer revision today – evaluating the effectiveness of their peers’ prose, crafting, techniques, and providing areas of suggested improvement. Students will also be asked to evaluate their own work, to recall what they learned from reading about power struggle, guilt and confession and to consider what they want their reader to learn from their prose. 51 Themes of Confession

o What assessment process or activities are most likely to reveal this understanding? Students will engage in a short classroom discussion at the beginning of class to focus their thoughts on the theme and effectiveness of my completed project. They will then participate in a differentiated instruction activity to evaluate, suggest and praise one another’s work. During this time, the instructor will go around the room and visit each group, participate in tasks, answer questions, address the class when necessary, monitor student growth. 52 Themes of Confession

 Teacher Activities and Student Enterprises (listed chronologically)

W: What and why: Students will become comfortable reading their own poetry with an expressive voice. They will correctly acknowledge punctuation and use tone and inflection to represent multiple characters. They will also demonstrate their ability to connect visuals to their narrative by creating a visual representation of their project. They will choose from images collected from the internet or from personal stock and create an online poster on edu.glogster.com which corresponds with their narrative. This reflective narrative will connect their lives to the themes of power, guilt and confession that we are studying, and will help them understand one of our EQ’s – can you learn from someone else’s confession, as they try to relate to the narrators they read about and create their own story. They will use literary techniques to enhance and support the theme they are writing about. Requirements are listed on the project handout and made clear in the project rubric. 53 Themes of Confession

54 Themes of Confession

Teacher Activities Student Enterprises

H: Hook for Listen to audio “book” of my own Engage in class discussion - How did I student recording of my personal prose attempt to engage my listener? (imagery, interest or narrative on my published final narrator’s thoughts) What theme – power prior glog. struggle, guilt or confession – is evident knowledge in my story? (power struggle, guilt?)How do you know? (voice of characters, action of characters, detail)

E: Explore, Break students into pre-arranged 1.) Group members will take turns experience, groups of six for differentiated reading out loud (6-inch voices). Each of equip instruction. Change stations every the participating members will record fifteen minutes. one question or suggestion for the reader’s speaking style, one question or suggestion remarking on the content of their story – does it relate to our themes? And one technique that was successful in hooking listeners/entertaining listeners. Do not read out loud after the reader finishes, but give comments to the reader so that he may explore them during his revision process. 2.) Group members will use laptops to read each other’s stories, typing their questions, comments, suggestions in red colored font. Spend four minutes at each computer, and begin reading/commenting where the final prior “red ink” was noted. 3.) Group members will trade copies of their story with one person in their group. After reading the story, students will do one of two things: create a list of details that stuck out to them. They will also include a description of pictures they would like to see paired with the story on the glog. OR, students may use provided colored pencils to draw a picture of a scene they pictured while reading the story. 55 Themes of Confession

R: Rethink, Instruct students to find a place in the Students will read their own story out loud revise, revisit, room where they feel comfortable in a whisper to themselves to feel the reflect (desk, floor, different side of the fluency and rhythm to their writing. room, etc. E: Evaluate, Remind students of project checklist Find five images that reinforce the theme extend to reference while working on and emotion of the prose. Record project at home. Assign audio of story. homework.

Materials needed: Laptops, printed copy of students’ stories, colored pencils, pre-arranged groups according to students’ level of proficiency.

Follow-up enterprises: Tomorrow we will spend our final day in class working on creating our glogster. 56 Themes of Confession

Lesson Plan Guide - Day 3: Completing Mini Project.

 Context for classroom (course, grade level, class description): 10th Grade English

 Context for lesson (brief description of Unit and background for today’s lesson): Students are reading three texts – Dr. Faustus, In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried by Amy Hempel (part of today’s lesson) and will be reading Heat by Joyce Carol Oates next week. They will be examining the different ways each of the main characters experience confession and its surrounding qualities: power struggle, guilt, acceptance, understanding and embracing change. This week, students will be focusing the on the literary techniques Hempel uses to capture her reader, and will be applying those same techniques in their own writing as they create a short prose and create a Digital Storybook to go along with it. Handouts and instruction to the Digital Storybook are included with the entire unit plan.

Unit Question(s) Lesson Question(s) Students will be able to . . . . after for today today’s lesson

What is confession? How have we Make connections and defend the How do power, guilt, developed as detectors photographs/images that they chose understanding and of confessions and its to visually represent their prose. acceptance and sister themes? How is Students will be able to explain in learning function in this evident in our paragraph form how their personal correlation to prose assignment? narrative relates to our class flow confession? What techniques have chart and our working theme of Where have we we used in our writing confession and its sister components. seen/how have we to enhance it, and how seen confession used does this relate to our historically? chosen images? What is the difference between confession and understanding? Can we understand, learn from and grow from someone else’s confession? Can others learn from ours?

 Recognizing “understandings”: o What key aspects of the unit sequence are the focuses of today’s lesson? Students will evaluate themselves as writers and participants in our study of confession. They will analyze their own prose to measure and plot their own experience in the same way we, as a class, plotted the characters in Faust and In the Cemetery on our flow chart.

o What assessment process or activities are most likely to reveal this understanding? 57 Themes of Confession

The images they selected to be part of their glog, their voice recording, their prose, instructor- student meetings, classroom observations, creating their own flow chart during class (instructor observation) proceeding a small class conversation, 1-3 paragraph reflection defending their reasons for choosing their visuals and connecting their flow chart to the ones we created in class prior 58 Themes of Confession

 Teacher Activities and Student Enterprises (listed chronologically) W: What and Why: Today students will finalize their Digital Storybook projects. This will include finalizing their glog with images and audio and beginning their Reflection Handout. Students will be challenged to evaluate their own connections between their prose, images, audio. Student-teacher meetings will also occur so that the instructor can address necessary questions. 59 Themes of Confession

Teacher Activities Student Enterprises

H: Hook for Collect all first copies from students asHand in their first drafts of their unit student they enter the classroom. Without story. Participate in mini discussion interest or reading the author’s name, read in response to, which ones they prior the opening sentence of each remember, which ones stood out? knowledge paper to the class before randomly Why? What sort of language was handing the draft to a student used in this opening statement that (who is not the author.) This grabbed your attention? student will be required to peer edit this paper as hw, due in two days.

E: Explore, Meet briefly with each student to Students will work on classroom set of experience, answer any questions relating directly laptops to compile their glog. They equip to their assignment, and to continue will refer to their given checklist of monitoring student progress requirements as they create it so that they are sure they meet all standards

R: Rethink, revise, With 20 mins remaining, have Write 1-3 paragraphs defending revisit, reflect students shut down laptops and pass narrative and its relation to class flow out a blank piece of paper to them. Onchart and audience. Include this with the overhead, have a copy of the class Project Reflection Handout that is to be flow chart and ask students to create a turned in when project is presented. flow chart for their story like we Complete for hw if not done in class created for Faustus and In the time. Cemetery using plot or imagery as evidence for each of the themes. E: Evaluate, Review all necessary components for For hw students must be sure their glog extend completed project and assign hw. is complete and ready to be shared with their peers. Students must complete their Reflection Handout as well as write a 1-3 paragraph explanation of their prose in defense of its relationship to our unit themes. Students are also to begin working on peer editing their assigned Draft One, focusing on: sensory detail, imagery, colorful language and relationship to theme. 60 Themes of Confession

Materials needed: Laptops, project check list, model flow chart, flow charts created for both Faust and In the Cemetery, students need to bring digital copy of images and audio recording.

Follow-up enterprises: Tomorrow will be devoted to sharing our completed Digital Storybooks! 61 Themes of Confession

In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried By Amy Hempel

"Tell me things I won't mind forgetting," she said. "Make it useless stuff or skip it."

I began. I told her insects fly through rain, missing every drop, never getting wet. I told her no one in America owned a tape recorder before Bing Crosby did. I told her the shape of the moon is like a banana—you see it looking full, you're seeing it end-on.

The camera made me self-conscious and I stopped. It was trained on us from a ceiling mount— the kind of camera banks use to photograph robbers. It played us to the nurses down the hall in Intensive Care.

"Go on, girl," she said. "You get used to it."

I had my audience. I went on. Did she know that Tammy Wynette had changed her tune? Really. That now she sings "Stand by Your Friends"? That Paul Anka did it too, I said. Does "You're Having Our Baby." That he got sick of all that feminist bitching.

"What else?" she said. "Have you got something else?"

Oh, yes.

For her I would always have something else.

"Did you know that when they taught the first chimp to talk, it lied? That when they asked her who did it on the desk, she signed back the name of the janitor. And that when they pressed her, she said she was sorry, that it was really the project director. But she was a mother, so I guess she had her reasons."

"Oh, that's good," she said. "A parable."

"There's more about the chimp," I said. "But it will break your heart."

"No, thanks," she says, and scratches at her mask.

We look like good-guy outlaws. Good or bad, I am not used to the mask yet. I keep touching the warm spot where my breath, thank God, comes out. She is used to hers. She only ties the strings on top. The other ones—a pro by now—she lets hang loose.

We call this place the Marcus Welby Hospital. It's the white one with the palm trees under the opening credits of all those shows. A Hollywood hospital, though in fact it is several miles west. Off camera, there is a beach across the street.

She introduces me to a nurse as the Best Friend. The impersonal article is more intimate. It tells me that they are intimate, the nurse and my friend.

"I was telling her we used to drink Canada Dry ginger ale and pretend we were in Canada." 62 Themes of Confession

"That's how dumb we were," I say.

"You could be sisters," the nurse says.

So how come, I'll bet they are wondering, it took me so long to get to such a glamorous place? But do they ask?

They do not ask.

Two months, and how long is the drive?

The best I can explain it is this—I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not the grisliest, but it's the one that did. A man wrecked his car on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the wet bone—and when he looked at it—it scared him to death.

I mean, he died.

So I hadn't dared to look any closer. But now I'm doing it—and hoping that I will live through it.

She shakes out a summer-weight blanket, showing a leg you did not want to see. Except for that, you look at her and understand the law that requires two people to be with the body at all times.

"I thought of something," she says. "I thought of it last night. I think there is a real and present need here. You know," she says, "like for someone to do it for you when you can't do it yourself. You call them up whenever you want—like when push comes to shove."

She grabs the bedside phone and loops the cord around her neck.

"Hey," she says, "the end o' the line."

She keeps on, giddy with something. But I don't know with what.

"I can't remember," she says. "What does Kübler-Ross say comes after Denial?"

It seems to me Anger must be next. Then Bargaining, Depression, and so on and so forth. But I keep my guesses to myself.

"The only thing is," she says, "is where's Resurrection? God knows, I want to do it by the book. But she left out Resurrection."

She laughs, and I cling to the sound the way someone dangling above a ravine holds fast to the thrown rope.

"Tell me," she says, "about that chimp with the talking hands. What do they do when the thing ends and the chimp says, ‘I don't want to go back to the zoo'?"

When I don't say anything, she says, "Okay—then tell me another animal story. I like animal stories. But not a sick one—I don't want to know about all the seeing- eye dogs going blind." 63 Themes of Confession

No, I would not tell her a sick one.

"How about the hearing-ear dogs?" I say. "They're not going deaf, but they are getting very judgmental. For instance, there's this golden retriever in New Jersey, he wakes up the deaf mother and drags her into the daughter's room because the kid has got a flashlight and is reading under the covers."

"Oh, you're killing me," she says. "Yes, you're definitely killing me."

"They say the smart dog obeys, but the smarter dog knows when to disobey."

"Yes," she says, "the smarter anything knows when to disobey. Now, for example."

She is flirting with the Good Doctor, who has just appeared. Unlike the Bad Doctor, who checks the IV drip before saying good morning, the Good Doctor says things like "God didn't give epileptics a fair shake." The Good Doctor awards himself points for the cripples he could have hit in the parking lot. Because the Good Doctor is a little in love with her, he says maybe a year. He pulls a chair up to her bed and suggests I might like to spend an hour on the beach.

"Bring me something back," she says. "Anything from the beach. Or the gift shop. Taste is no object."

He draws the curtain around her bed.

"Wait!" she cries.

I look in at her.

"Anything," she says, "except a magazine subscription."

The doctor turns away.

I watch her mouth laugh.

What seems dangerous often is not—black snakes, for example, or clear-air turbulence. While things that just lie there, like this beach, are loaded with jeopardy. A yellow dust rising from the ground, the heat that ripens melons overnight—this is earthquake weather. You can sit here braiding the fringe on your towel and the sand will all of a sudden suck down like an hourglass. The air roars. In the cheap apartments on-shore, bathtubs fill themselves and gardens roll up and over like green waves. If nothing happens, the dust will drift and the heat deepen till fear turns to desire. Nerves like that are only bought off by catastrophe.

"It never happens when you're thinking about it," she once observed. "Earthquake, earthquake, earthquake," she said.

"Earthquake, earthquake, earthquake," I said. 64 Themes of Confession

Like the aviaphobe who keeps the plane aloft with prayer, we kept it up until an aftershock cracked the ceiling.

That was after the big one in seventy-two. We were in college; our dormitory was five miles from the epicenter. When the ride was over and my jabbering pulse began to slow, she served five parts champagne to one part orange juice, and joked about living in Ocean View, Kansas. I offered to drive her to Hawaii on the new world psychics predicted would surface the next time, or the next.

I could not say that now—next.

Who’s next? she could ask.

Was I the only one who noticed that the experts had stopped saying if and now spoke of when? Of course not; the fearful ran to thousands. We watched the traffic of Japanese beetles for deviation. Deviation might mean more natural violence.

I wanted her to be afraid with me. But she said, "I don't know. I'm just not."

She was afraid of nothing, not even of flying.

I have this dream before a flight where we buckle in and the plane moves down the runway. It takes off at thirty-five miles an hour, and then we're airborne, skimming the tree tops. Still, we arrive in New York on time.

It is so pleasant.

One night I flew to Moscow this way.

She flew with me once. That time she flew with me she ate macadamia nuts while the wings bounced. She knows the wing tips can bend thirty feet up and thirty feet down without coming off. She believes it. She trusts the laws of aerodynamics. My mind stampedes. I can almost accept that a battleship floats when everybody knows steel sinks.

I see fear in her now, and am not going to try to talk her out of it. She is right to be afraid.

After a quake, the six o'clock news airs a film clip of first-graders yelling at the broken playground per their teacher's instructions.

"Bad earth!" they shout, because anger is stronger than fear.

But the beach is standing still today. Everyone on it is tranquilized, numb, or asleep. Teenaged girls rub coconut oil on each other's hard-to-reach places. They smell like macaroons. They pry open compacts like clam-shells; mirrors catch the sun and throw a spray of white rays across glazed shoulders. The girls arrange their wet hair with silk flowers the way they learned in Seventeen. They pose. 65 Themes of Confession

A formation of low-riders pulls over to watch with a six-pack. They get vocal when the girls check their tan lines. When the beer is gone, so are they—flexing their cars on up the boulevard.

Above this aggressive health are the twin wrought-iron terraces, painted flamingo pink, of the Palm Royale. Someone dies there every time the sheets are changed. There's an ambulance in the driveway, so the remaining residents line the balconies, rocking and not talking, one-upped.

The ocean they stare at is dangerous, and not just the undertow. You can almost see the slapping tails of sand sharks keeping cruising bodies alive.

If she looked, she could see this, some of it, from her window. She would be the first to say how little it takes to make a thing all wrong.

There was a second bed in the room when I got back to it!

For two beats I didn't get it. Then it hit me like an open coffin.

She wants every minute, I thought. She wants my life.

"You missed Gussie," she said.

Gussie is her parents' three-hundred-pound narcoleptic maid. Her attacks often come at the ironing board. The pillowcases in that family are all bordered with scorch.

"It's a hard trip for her," I said. "How is she?"

"Well, she didn't fall asleep, if that's what you mean. Gussie's great—you know what she said? She said, ‘Darlin', stop this worriation. Just keep prayin', down on your knees'—me, who can't even get out of bed."

She shrugged. "What am I missing?"

"It's earthquake weather," I told her.

"The best thing to do about earthquakes," she said, "is not to live in California."

"That's useful," I said. "You sound like Reverend Ike—‘The best thing to do for the poor is not to be one of them.' "

We're crazy about Reverend Ike.

I noticed her face was bloated.

"You know," she said, "I feel like hell. I'm about to stop having fun."

"The ancients have a saying," I said. "'There are times when the wolves are silent; there are times when the moon howls.'"

"What's that, Navaho?" 66 Themes of Confession

"Palm Royale lobby graffiti," I said. "I bought a paper there. I'll read you something."

"Even though I care about nothing?"

I turned to the page with the trivia column. I said, "Did you know the more shrimp flamingos birds eat, the pinker their feathers get?" I said, "did you know that Eskimos need refrigerators? Do you know why Eskimos need refrigerators? Did yo now that Eskimos need refrigerators because how else would they keep their food from freezing?"

I turned to page three, to a UPI filler datelined Mexico City. I read her MAN ROBS BANK WITH CHICKEN, about a man who bought a barbecued chicken at a stand down the block from a bank. Passing the bank, he got the idea. He walked in and approached a teller. He pointed the brown paper bag at her and she handed over the day's receipts. It was the smell of barbecue sauce that eventually led to his capture.

The story had made her hungry, she said—so I took the elevator down six floors to the cafeteria, and brought back all the ice cream she wanted. We lay side by side, adjustable beds cranked up for optimal TV-viewing, littering the sheets with Good Humor wrappers, picking toasted almonds out of the gauze. We were Lucy and Ethel, Mary and Rhoda in extremis. The blinds were closed to keep light off the screen.

We watched a movie starring men we used to think we wanted to sleep with. Hers was a tough cop out to stop mine, a vicious rapist who went after cocktail waitresses.

"This is a good movie," she said when snipers felled them both.

I missed her already.

A Filipino nurse tiptoed in and gave her an injection. The nurse removed the pile of popsicle sticks from the nightstand—enough to splint a small animal.

The injection made us both sleepy. We slept.

I dreamed she was a decorator, come to furnish my house. She worked in secret, singing to herself. When she finished, she guided me proudly to the door. "How do you like it?" she asked, easing me inside.

Every beam and sill and shelf and knob was draped in gay bunting, with streamers of pastel crepe looped around bright mirrors.

"I have to go home," I said when she woke up. 67 Themes of Confession

She thought I meant home to her house in the Canyon, and I had to say No, home home. I twisted my hands in the time-honored fashion of people in pain. I was supposed to offer something. The Best Friend. I could not even offer to come back.

I felt weak and small and failed.

Also exhilarated.

I had a convertible in the parking lot. Once out of that room, I would drive it too fast down the Coast highway through the crab-smelling air. A stop in Malibu for sangria. The music in the place would be sexy and loud. They'd serve papaya and shrimp and watermelon ice. After dinner I would shimmer with lust, buzz with heat, life, and stay up all night.

Without a word, she yanked off her mask and threw it on the floor. She kicked at the blankets and moved to the door. She must have hated having to pause for breath and balance before slamming out of Isolation, and out of the second room, the one where you scrub and tie on the white masks.

A voice shouted her name in alarm, and people ran down the corridor. The Good Doctor was paged over the intercom. I opened the door and the nurses at the station stared hard, as if this flight had been my idea.

"Where is she?" I asked, and they nodded to the supply closet.

I looked in. Two nurses were kneeling beside her on the floor, talking to her in low voices. One held a mask over her nose and mouth, the other rubbed her back in slow circles. The nurses glanced up to see if I was the doctor—and when I wasn't, they went back to what they were doing.

"There, there, honey," they cooed.

On the the morning she was moved to the cemetery, the one where Al Jolson is buried, I enrolled in a "Fear of Flying" class. "What is your worst fear?" the instructor asked, and I answered, "That I will finish this course and still be afraid."

I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.

What do I remember?

I remember only the useless things I hear—that Bob Dylan's mother invented Wite-Out, that twenty-three people must be in a room before there is a fifty-fifty chance two will have the same birthday. Who cares whether or not it's true? In my head there are bath towels swaddling this stuff. Nothing else seeps through.

I review those things that will figure in the retelling: a kiss through surgical gauze, the pale hand correcting the position of the wig. I noted these gestures as they happened, not in any retrospect —though I don't know why looking back should show us more than looking at. 68 Themes of Confession

It is just possible I will say I stayed the night.

And who is there that can say that I did not?

I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.

In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign to her newborn.

Baby, drink milk.

Baby, play ball.

And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby, come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.

for Jessica Wolfson 69 Themes of Confession

Heat By Joyce Carol Oates

It was midsummer, the heat rippling above the macadam roads, cicadas screaming out of the trees, and the sky like pewter, glaring.

The days were the same day, like the shallow mud-brown river moving always in the same direction but so low you couldn't see it. Except for Sunday: church in the morning, then the fate Sunday newspaper, the color comics, and newsprint on your fingers.

Rhea and Rhoda Kunkel went flying on their rusted old bicycles, down the long hill toward the railroad yard, Whipple's Ice, the scrubby pastureland where dairy cows grazed. They'd stolen six dollars from their own grandmother who loved them. They were eleven years old; they were identical twins; they basked in their power.

Rhea and Rhoda Kunkel: it was always Rhea-and-Rhoda, never Rhoda- and-Rhea, I couldn't say why. You just wouldn't say the names that way. Not even the teachers at school would say them that way.

We went to see them in the funeral parlor where they were waked; we were made to. The twins in twin caskets, white, smooth, gleaming, perfect as plastic, with white satin lining puckered like the inside of a fancy candy box. And the waxy white lilies, and the smell of talcum powder and perfume. The room was crowded; there was only one way in and out.

Rhea and Rhoda were the same girl; they'd wanted it that way. Only looking from one to the other could you see they were two.

The heat was gauzy; you had to push your way through like swimming. On their bicycles Rhea and Rhoda flew through it hardly noticing, from their grandmother's place on Main Street to the end of South Main where the paved road turned to gravel leaving town. That was the summer before seventh grade, when they died. Death was coming for them, but they didn't know.

They thought the same thoughts sometimes at the same moment, had the same dream and went all day trying to remember it, bringing it back like something you'd be hauling out of the water on a tangled line. We watched them; we were jealous. None of us had a twin. Sometimes they were serious and sometimes, remembering, they shrieked and laughed like they were being killed. They stole things out of desks and lockers but if you caught them they'd hand them right back; it was like a game.

There were three floor fans in the funeral parlor that I could see, tall whirring fans with propeller 70 Themes of Confession blades turning fast to keep the warm air moving. Strange little gusts came from all directions, making your eyes water. By this time Roger Whipple was arrested, taken into police custody. No one had hurt him. He would never stand trial; he was ruled mentally unfit and would never be released from confinement.

He died there, in the state psychiatric hospital, years later, and was brought back home to be buried--the body of him, I mean. His earthly remains.

Rhea and Rhoda Kunkel were buried in the same cemetery, the First Methodist. The cemetery is just a field behind the church.

In the caskets the dead girls did not look like anyone we knew, really. They were placed on their backs with their eyes closed, and their mouths, the way you don't always look in life when you're sleeping. Their faces were too small. Every eyelash showed, too perfect. Like angels, everyone was saying, and it was strange it was _so_. I stared and stared.

What had been done to them, the lower parts of them, didn't show in the caskets.

Roger Whipple worked for his father at Whipple's Ice. In the newspaper it stated he was nineteen. He'd gone to DeWitt Clinton until he was sixteen; my mother's friend Sadie taught there and remembered him from the special education class. A big slow sweet-faced boy with these big hands and feet, thighs like hams. A shy gentle boy with good manners and a hushed voice.

He wasn't simpleminded exactly, like the others in that class. He was watchful, he held back.

Roger Whipple in overalls squatting in the rear of his father's truck, one of his older brother driving. There would come the sound of the truck in the driveway, the heavy block of ice smelling of cold, ice tongs over his shoulder. He was strong, round-shouldered like an older man. Never staggered or grunted. Never dropped anything. Pale washed-looking eyes lifting out of a big face, a soft mouth wanting to smile. We giggled and looked away. They said he'd never been the kind to hurt even an animal; all the Whipples swore.

Sucking ice, the cold goes straight into your jaws and deep into the bone.

People spoke of them as the Kunkel twins. Mostly nobody tried to tell them apart: homely corkscrew-twisty girls you wouldn't know would turn up so quiet and solemn and almost beautiful, perfect little dolls' faces with the freckles powdered over, touches of rouge on the cheeks and mouths. I was tempted to whisper to them, kneeling by the coffins, “Hey, Rhea! Hey, Rhoda! Wake up!” 71 Themes of Confession

They had loud slip-sliding voices that were the same voice. They weren't shy. They were always first in line. One behind you and one in front of you and you'd better be wary of some trick. Flamey-orange hair and the bleached-out skin that goes with it, freckles like dirty raindrops splashed on their faces. Sharp green eyes they'd bug out until you begged them to stop.

Places meant to be serious, Rhea and Rhoda had a hard time sitting still. In church, in school, a sideways glance between them could do it. Jamming their knuckles into their mouths, choking back giggles. Sometimes laughter escaped through their fingers like steam hissing. Sometimes it came out like snorting and then none of us could hold back. The worst time was in assembly, the principal up there telling us that Miss Flagler had died, we would all miss her. Tears shining in the woman's eyes behind her goggle glasses and one of the twins gave a breathless little snort; you could feel it like flames running down the whole row of girls, none of us could hold back.

Sometimes the word "tickle" was enough to get us going, just that word.

I never dreamt about Rhea and Rhoda so strange in their caskets sleeping out in the middle of a room where people could stare at them, shed tears and pray over them. I never dream about actual things, only things I don't know. Places I've never been, people I've never seen. Sometimes the person I am in the dream isn't me. Who it is, I don't know.

Rhea and Rhoda bounced up the drive on their bicycles behind Whipple's Ice. They were laughing like crazy and didn't mind the potholes jarring their teeth or the clouds of dust. If they'd had the same dream the night before, the hot sunlight erased it entirely.

When death comes for you, you sometimes know and sometimes don't.

Roger Whipple was by himself in the barn, working. Kids went down there to beg him for ice to suck or throw around or they'd tease him, not out of meanness but for something to do. It was slow, the days not changing in the summer, heat sometimes all night long. He was happy with children that age, he was that age himself in his head--sixth-grade learning abilities, as the newspaper stated, though he could add and subtract quickly. Other kinds of arithmetic gave him trouble.

People were saying afterward he'd always been strange. Watchful like he was, those thick soft lips. The Whipples did wrong to let him run loose.

_They_ said he'd always been a good gentle boy, went to Sunday school and sat still there and never gave anybody any trouble. He collected Bible cards; he hid them away under his mattress for safe-keeping. Mr. Whipple started in early disciplining him the way you might discipline a 72 Themes of Confession big dog or a horse. Not letting the creature know he has any power to be himself exactly. Not giving him the opportunity to test his will.

Neighbors said the Whipples worked him like a horse, in fact. The older brothers were the most merciless. And why they all wore coveralls, heavy denim and long legs on days so hot, nobody knew. The thermometer above the First Midland Bank read 98 degrees F. On noon of that day, my mother said.

Nights afterward my mother would hug me before I went to bed. Pressing my face hard against her breasts and whispering things I didn't hear, like praying to Jesus to love and protect her little girl and keep her from harm, but I didn't hear; I shut my eyes tight and endured it. Sometimes we prayed together, all of us or just my mother and me kneeling by my bed. Even then I knew she was a good mother, there was this girl she loved as her daughter that was me and loved more than that girl deserved. There was nothing I could do about it.

Mrs. Kunkel would laugh and roll her eyes over the twins. In that house they were "double trouble"--you'd hear it all the time like a joke on the radio that keeps coming back. I wonder did she pray with them too. I wonder would they let her.

In the long night you forget about the day; it's like the other side of the world. Then the sun is there, and the heat. You forget.

We were running through the field behind school, a place where people dumped things sometimes, and there was a dead dog there, a collie with beautiful fur, but his eyes were gone from the sockets and the maggots had got him where somebody tried to lift him with her foot, and when Rhea and Rhoda saw they screamed a single scream and hid their eyes.

They did nice things--gave their friends candy bars, nail polish, some novelty key chains they'd taken from somewhere, movie stars' pictures framed in plastic. In the movies they'd share a box of popcorn, not noticing where one or the other of them left off and a girl who wasn't any sister of their sat.

Once they made me strip off my clothes where we'd crawled under the Kunkels' veranda. This was a large hollowed-out space where the earthy dropped away at one end and you could sit without bumping your head; it was cool and smelled of dirt and stone. Rhea said all of a sudden, “Strip!” and Rhoda said at one, “Strip! Come on!” So it happened. They wouldn't let me out unless I took off my clothes, my shirt and shorts, yes, and my panties too. “Come on,” they said, whispering and giggling; they were blocking the way out so I had no choice. I was scared but I was laughing too. This is to show our power over you, they said. But they stripped too just like me. 73 Themes of Confession

You have power over others you don't realize until you test it.

Under the Kunkels' veranda we stared at each other but we didn't touch each other. My teeth chattered, because what if somebody saw us, some boy, or Mrs. Kunkel herself? I was scared but I was happy too. Except for our faces, their face and mine, we could all be the same girl.

The Kunkel family lived in one side of a big old clapboard house by the river, you could hear the trucks rattling on the bridge, shifting their noisy gears on the hill. Mrs. Kunkel had eight children. Rhea and Rhoda were the youngest. Our mothers wondered why Mrs. Kunkel had let herself go: she had a moon-shaped pretty face but her hair was frizzed ratty; she must have weighed two hundred pounds, sweated and breathed so hard in the warm weather. They'd known her in school. Mr. Kunkel worked construction for the county. Summer evenings after work he'd be sitting on the veranda drinking beer, flicking cigarette butts out into the yard; you'd be fooled, almost thinking they were fireflies. He went bare-chested in the heat, his upper body dark like stained wood. Flat little purplish nipples inside his chest hair the girls giggled to see. Mr. Kunkel teased us all; he'd mix Rhea and Rhoda up the way he'd mix the rest of us up, like it was too much trouble to keep names straight.

Mr. Kunkel was in police custody; he didn't even come to the wake. Mrs. Kunkel was there in rolls of chin fat that glistened with sweat and tears, the makeup on her face so caked and discolored you were embarrassed to look. It scared me, the way she grabbed me as soon as my parents and I came in, hugging me against her big balloon breasts, sobbing. All the strength went out of me; I couldn't push away.

The police had Mr. Kunkel for his own good, they said. He'd gone to the Whipples, though the murdered had been taken away, saying he would kill anybody he could get his hands on: the old man, the brothers. They were all responsible, he said; his little girls were dead. Tear them apart with his bare hands, he said, but he had a tire iron.

Did it mean anything special, or was it just an accident Rhea and Rhoda had taken six dollars from their grandmother an hour before? Because death was coming for them; it had to happen one way or another.

If you believe in God you believe that. And if you don't believe in God it's obvious.

Their grandmother lived upstairs over a shoe store downtown, an apartment looking out on Main Street. They'd bicycle down there for something to do and she'd give them grape juice or lemonade and try to keep them awhile, a lonely old lady but she was nice, she was always nice to me; it was kind of nasty of Rhea and Rhoda to steal from her but they were like that. One was in 74 Themes of Confession the kitchen talking with her and without any plan or anything the other went to use the bathroom, then slipped into her bedroom, got the money out of her purse like it was something she did every day of the week, that easy. “What did you do?” knowing Rhea had done something she hadn't ought to have done but not knowing what it was or anyway how much money it was. They started in poking each other, trying to hold the giggles until they were safe away.

On their bicycles they stood high on the pedals, coasting, going down the hill but not using their brakes. “What did you do! Oh, what did you do!”

Rhea and Rhoda always said they could never be apart. If one didn't know exactly where the other was that one could die. Or the other would die. Or both.

Once they'd gotten some money from somewhere, they wouldn't say where, and paid for us all to go to the movies. And ice cream afterward too.

You could read the newspaper articles twice through and still not know what he did. Adults talked about it for a long time but not so we could hear. I thought probably he'd used an ice pick. Or maybe I heard somebody guess who didn't know any more than me.

We liked it that Rhea and Rhoda had been killed, and all the stuff in the paper, and everybody talking about it, but we didn't like it that they were dead; we missed them.

Later, in tenth grade, the Kaufmann twins moved into our school district: Doris and Diane. But it wasn't the same thing.

Roger Whipple said he didn't remember any of it. Whatever he did, he didn't remember. A first everybody thought he was lying; then they had to accept it as true, or true in some way: doctors from the state hospital examined him. He said over and over he hadn't done anything and he didn't remember the twins there that afternoon, but he couldn't explain why their bicycles were at the foot of his stairway and he couldn't explain why he'd taken a bath in the middle of the day. The Whipples admitted that wasn't a practice of Roger's or of any of them, a bath in the middle of the day.

Roger Whipple was a clean boy, though. His hands always scrubbed so you actually noticed, swinging the block of ice off the truck and, inside the kitchen, helping to set it in the icebox. They said he'd got crazy if he got bits of straw under his nails from the icehouse or inside his clothes. He'd been taught to shave and he shaved every morning without fail; they said the sight of the beard growing in, the scratchy feel of it, seemed to scare him.

A few years later his sister Linda told us how Roger was built like a horse. She was out age, a 75 Themes of Confession log younger than him; she made a gesture toward her crotch so we'd know what she meant. She'd happened to see him a few times, she said, by accident.

There he was squatting in the dust laughing, his head lowered, watching Rhea and Rhoda circle him on their bicycles. It was a rough game where the twins saw how close they could come to hitting him, brushing him with their bike fenders, and he'd lunge out, not seeming to notice if his fingers hit the spokes; it was all happening to fast you maybe wouldn't feel pain. Out back of the icehouse, the yard blended in with the yard of the old railroad depot next door that wasn't used any more. It was burning hot in the sun; dust rose in clouds behind the girls. Pretty soon they got bored with the game, though Roger Whipple even in his heavy overalls wanted to keep going. He was red-faced with all the excitement; he was a boy who loved to laugh and didn't have much chance. Rhea said she was thirsty, she wanted some ice, so Roger Whipple scrambled right up and went to get a big bag of ice cubes! He hadn't any more sense than that.

They sucked on the ice cubes and fooled around with them. He was panting and lolling his tongue pretending to be a dog, and Rhea and Rhoda cried, “Here, doggie! Here, doggie-doggie!” Tossing the ice cubes at Roger Whipple he tried to catch in his mouth. That went on for a while. In the end the twins just dumped the rest of the ice onto the dirt, then Roger Whipple was saying he had some secret things that belonged to his brother Eamon he could show them, hidden under his bed mattress; would they like to see what the things were?

He wasn't one who could tell Rhea from Rhoda or Rhoda from Rhea. There was a way some of us knew: the freckles on Rhea's face were a little darker than Rhoda's, and Rhea's eyes were just a little darker than Rhoda's. But you'd have to see the two side by side with no clowning around to know.

Rhea said OK, she'd like to see the secret things. She let her bike fall where she was straddling it.

Roger Whipple said he could only take one of them upstairs to his room at a time, he didn't say why.

“OK,” said Rhea. Of the Kunkel twins, Rhea always had to be first.

She'd been born first, she said. Weighed a pound or two more.

Roger Whipple's room was in a strange place: on the second floor of the Whipple house above an unheated storage space that had been added after the main part of the house was built. There was a way of getting to the room from the outside, up a flight of rickety wooden stairs. That way Roger could get in and out of his room without going through the rest of the house. People said the Whipples had him live there like some animal, they didn't want him tramping through the 76 Themes of Confession house, but they denied it. The room had an inside door too.

Roger Whipple weighed about one hundred ninety pounds that day. In the hospital he swelled up like a balloon, people said, bloated from the drugs; his skin was soft and white as bread dough and his hair fell out. He was an old man when he died aged thirty-one.

Exactly why he died, the Whipples never knew. The hospital just told them his heart had stopped in his sleep.

Rhoda shaded her eyes, watching her sister running up the stair with Roger Whipple behind her, and felt the first pinch of fear, that something was wrong or was going to be wrong. She called after them in a whining voice that she wanted to come along too, she didn't want to wait down there all alone, but Rhea just called back to her to be quiet and wait her turn, so Rhoda waited, kicking at the ice cubes melting in the dirt, and after a while she got restless and shouted up to them--the door was shut, the shade on the window was drawn--saying she was going home, damn them, she was sick of waiting, she said, and she was going home. But nobody came to the door or looked out of the window; it was like the place was empty. Wasps had built one of those nests that look like mud in layers under the eaves, and the only sound was wasps.

Rhoda bicycled toward the road so anybody who was watching would think she was going home; she was thinking she hated Rhea! Hated her damn twin sister! Wished she was dead and gone, God damn her! She was going home, and the first thing she'd tell their mother was that Rhea had stolen six dollars from Grandma: she had it in her pocket right that moment.

The Whipple house was an old farmhouse they'd tried to modernize by putting on red asphalt siding meant to look like brick. Downstairs the rooms were big and drafty; upstairs they were small, some of them unfinished and with bare floorboards, like Roger Whipple's room, which people would afterward say based on what the police said was like an animal's pen, nothing in it but a bed shoved into a corner and some furniture and boxes and things Mrs. Whipple stored there.

Of the Whipples--there were seven in the family still living at home--only Mrs. Whipple and her daughter Iris were home that afternoon. They said they hadn't heard a sound except for kids playing in the back; they swore it.

Rhoda was bent on going home and leaving Rhea behind, but at the end of the driveway something made her turn her bicycle wheel back . . . so if you were watching you'd think she was just cruising around for something to do, a red-haired girl with whitish skin and freckles, skinny little body, pedaling fast, then slow, then coasting, then fast again, turning and dipping and crisscrossing her path, talking to herself as if she was angry. She hated Rhea! She was furious at 77 Themes of Confession

Rhea! But feeling sort of scared too and sickish in the pit of her belly, knowing that she and Rhea shouldn't be in two places; something might happen to one of them or to both. Some things you know.

So she pedaled back to the house. Laid her bike down in the dirt next to Rhea's. The bikes were old hand-me-downs, the kickstands were broken. But their daddy had put on new Goodyear tires for them at the start of the summer, and he'd oiled them too.

You never would see just one of the twins' bicycles anywhere, you always saw both of them laid down on the ground and facing in the same direction with the pedals in about the same position.

Rhoda peered up at the second floor of the house, the shade drawn over the window, the door still closed. She called out, “Rhea? Hey, Rhea?” starting up the stairs, making a lot of noise so they'd hear her, pulling on the railing as if to break it the way a boy would. Still she was scared. But making noise like that and feeling so disgusted and mad helped her get stronger, and there was Roger Whipple with the door open staring down at her flush- faced and sweaty as if he was scared too. He seemed to have forgotten her. He was wiping his hands on his overalls. He just stared, a lemony light coming up in his eyes.

Afterward he would say he didn't remember anything. Just didn't remember anything. The side of a grown man but round-shouldered so it was hard to judge how tall he was, or how old. His straw- colored hair falling in his eyes and his fingers twined together as if he was praying or trying with all the strength in him to keep his hands still. He didn't remember the twins in his room and couldn't explain the blood but he cried a lot, acted scared and guilty and sorry like a dog that's done bad, so they decided he shouldn't be made to stand trial; there was no point to it.

Afterward Mrs. Whipple kept to the house, never went out, not even to church or grocery shopping. She died of cancer just a few months before Roger died; she'd loved her boy, she always said; she said none of it was his fault in his heart, he wasn't the kind of boy to injure an animal; he loved kittens especially and was a good sweet obedient boy and religious too and Jesus was looking after him and whatever happened it must have been those girls teasing him; everybody knew what the Kunkel twins were like. Roger had had a lifetime of being teased and taunted by children, his heart broken by all the abuse, and something must have snapped that day, that was all.

The Whipples were the ones, though, who called the police. Mr. Whipple found the girls' bodies back in the icehouse hidden under some straw and canvas. Those two look-alike girls, side by side.

He found them around 9 P.M. that night. He knew, he said. Oh, he knew. 78 Themes of Confession

The way Roger was acting, and the fact that the Kunkel girls were missing: word had gotten around town. Roger taking a bath like that in the middle of the day and washing his hair too and not answering when anyone said his name, just sitting there staring at the floor. So they went up to his room and saw the blood. So they knew.

The hardest minute of his life, Mr. Whipple said, was in the icehouse lifting that canvas to see what was under it.

He took it hard too; he never recovered. He hadn't any choice but to think what a lot of people thought--it had been his fault. He was an old-time Methodist, he took all that seriously, but none of it helped him. Believed Jesus Christ was his personal savior and He never stopped loving Roger or turned His face from him, and if Roger did truly repent in his heart he would be saved and they would be reunited in Heaven, all the Whipples reunited. He believed, but none of it helped in his life.

The icehouse is still there but boarded up and derelict, the Whipples' ice business ended long ago. Strangers live in the house, and the yard is littered with rusting hulks of cars and pickup trucks. Some Whipples live scattered around the county but none in town. The old train depot is still there too.

After I'd been married some years I got involved with this man, I won't say his name, his name is not a name I say, but we would meet back there sometimes, back in that old lot that's all weeds and scrub trees. Wild as kids and on the edge of being drunk. I was crazy for this guy, I mean crazy like I could hardly think of anybody but him or anything but the two of us making love the way we did; with him deep inside me I wanted it to never stop. Just fuck and fuck and fuck, I'd whisper to him, and this went on for a long time, two or three years, then ended the way these things do and looking back on it I'm not able to recognize that woman, as if she was someone not even not-me but a crazy woman I would despise, making so much of such a thing, risking her marriage and her kids finding out and her life being ruined for such a thing, my God. The things people do.

It's like living out a story that has to go its own way.

Behind the icehouse in his car I'd think of Rhea and Rhoda and what happened that day upstairs in Roger Whipple's room. And the funeral parlor with the twins like dolls laid out and their eyes like dolls' eyes too that shut when you tilt them back. One night when I wasn't asleep but wasn't awake either I saw my parents standing in the doorway of my bedroom watching me and I knew their thoughts, how they were thinking of Rhea and Rhoda and of me their daughter wondering how they could keep me from harm, and there was no clear answer. 79 Themes of Confession

In his car in his arms I'd feel my mind drift, after we'd made love or at least after the first time. And I saw Rhoda Kunkel hesitating on the stairs a few steps down from Roger Whipple. I saw her white-faced and scared but deciding to keep going anyway, pushing by Roger Whipple to get inside the room, to find Rhea; she had to brush against him where he was standing as if he meant to block her but not having the nerve exactly to block her and he was smelling of his body and breathing hard but not in imitation of any dog now, not with his tongue flopping and lolling to make them laugh. Rhoda was asking where was Rhea? She couldn't see well at first in the dark little cubbyhole of a room because the sunshine had been so bright outside.

Roger Whipple said Rhea had gone home. His voice sounded scratchy as if it hadn't been used in some time. She'd gone home, he said, and Rhoda said right away that Rhea wouldn't go home without her and Roger Whipple came toward her saying, Yes she did, yes she did, as if he was getting angry she couldn't believe him. Rhoda was calling, “Rhea, where are you?” Stumbling against something on the floor tangled with the bedclothes.

Behind her was this big boy saying again and again, “yes she did, yes she did,” his voice rising, but it would never get loud enough so that anyone would hear and come save her.

I wasn't there, but some things you know. 80 Themes of Confession

Reference Page:

Barrett, Standley, Sean Stokholm and Jeanette Burke. “The Idea of Power and the Power of Ideas: A Review Essay.” American Anthropologist 103.2 (2001): 468-480.

Contu, Alessia and Hugh Willmott. “Re-Embedding Situatedness: The Importance of Power Relations in Learning Theory.” Organization Science 14.3 (2003): 283-296.

Dobozy, Tamas. “The Encirclement.” The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Ed. Dave Eggers. Boston. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. 165-179. Print.

Godsey, Mark. “Rethinking the Involuntary Confession Rule: Toward a Workable Test for Identifying Compelled Self-Incrimination.” California Law Review 93.2 (2005):465-540.

Kelly, Rita Mae and Bernard Ronan. “Subjective Culture and Patriotism: Gender, Ethnic, and Class Differences Among High School Students.” Political Psychology 8.4 (1987): 525- 546.

Klenck, Margaret. “The Psychological and Spiritual Efficacy of Confession.” Journal of Religion and Health 43.2 (2004): 139-150.

Kogan, Maurice. “Modes of Knowledge and Patters of Power.” Higher Education 49.1-2 (2005): 9-30.

Romano, Tom. Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers. New Hampshire: Boynton, 2000. Print.

Scherff, Lisa and Carolyn Piazza. “The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: A Survey of High School Students’ Writing Experiences.” Research in the Teaching of English 39.3 (2005): 271-304.

Load more

  80

Copy Link