Conflicts in Literature [8th grade]

In this unit, students will gain a greater understanding of conflict and its implications on life. The reading of short stories, biographies, and newspaper articles will guide the students in exploring the understandings that conflict brings about change, conflict is a catalyst of fiction, and that conflicts in literature can be applicable to our own lives. Performance task #1 invites students to delve into a newspaper article identifying the essential component of every story, (Does every story have a conflict?) conflict. The purpose is to locate the conflict and arrive at the conclusion that conflict is the determining factor of the opinions cast on its effect. Students will then learn that conflict does not always have to be bad and that it can be a venue in which we can learn. This will specifically be highlighted in the performance task #2, where students create a peer mediation role play. The purpose of this assessment is to think of a real world conflict, one that is personal to their lives, and to develop a plan of action that solves the conflict in a beneficial way. Thus, allowing them to see that conflicts, which at first appear to be negative, can be turned around for the betterment of those involved

Goal Setting- Obtaining Your Best [7th-8th grades]

In this unit, students will work to construct their own definition of a goal and from that spring into action in setting real, measurable, and motivating goals for their life. This unit is designed to not only teach students what a goal is, but to also explain why they are necessary. To emphasize to students that without them we have little to no direction and as a result we will not be led to success, but wander aimlessly. The unit is also structured to go beyond the preliminary stages of goal setting, but to actually see the students through to the accomplishment of these goals, and celebrating in their successes. Students will do this by establishing an accountability partner and write reflective journals as a means to monitor their progress. Meanwhile, students will participate in simulations to make the abstract concrete in understanding the importance of goals and explore second hand experiences of goal setting in literature

The Silent Problem: The Implicit Personhood Determination in State V. Montoya

Can a dead person still be considered a person under a criminal statute? This unspoken question is at the center of State v. Montoya, illustrating how a facially simple and uncontroversial case can actually be very misleading. On appeal in Montoya, the defendant argued that the conviction of robbery was unfounded, since the victim was already deceased at the time of theft. The Court of Appeals gave little attention to the argument about the victim’s personhood, instead analyzing the case through the lens of a rational link standard, essentially measuring the connection between a homicide and a subsequent robbery in determining whether those acts were sufficiently entwined and causally-related. This standard allowed the Court to circumvent a literal application of the State’s robbery statute, which requires the use of force sufficient to remove property from the immediate control of another person

The Dilemma of Dezra: An Adolescent Manifesto in Five Parts

The adolescent body and the space of performance both employ a dynamic of liminality - constantly changing and shifting, never complete, never able to be fully defined, understood, or categorized. There is a compulsion we have in naming, categorizing and defining the bodies and emotional life of young people. Where the liminality of performance may be welcomed and viewed as a necessary and desired component of the experience, the liminality of adolescence is deeply troubling. The issue of erotic agency further complicates our relationship to the adolescent body - a concept of body that seems almost born out of erotic tension. The adolescent body is not yet seen as a sexual being, but is also not devoid of sexuality and erotic potential. We try so desperately to define and manage how an adolescent body might traverse its maturation and find its own erotic agency, and we strip them of that chance by managing it with such conviction. Through the course of developing my play, That One Forbidden Thing, which centers on a young girl who is experiencing her own, deeply complicated, sexual awakening, I encountered these dynamics in action - fixing themselves on my own work. I began to wonder if the tensions that were playing out on my play could shed light on how we might more productively engage adolescence - in performance, certainly, but also in life. This manifesto is a step towards finding a way to fully engage bodies that are limited in their access to agency and voice, a call-to-arms, of sorts, to push towards an existence wherein we might live fully and allow the experience of that living to be felt by any body that might want it