The+Rough+Face+Girl

Choosing Texts for Teaching: Part B   Kristin Schaefer ED/EN3051B Alyson van Beinum March 18, 2011 Chosen Text: //The Rough-Face Girl// by Rafe Martin, illustrated by David Shannon

For this assignment, I chose to focus on an illustrated children’s book from Algonquin Indian folk lore. This story is a powerful version of the traditional Cinderella tale. I can imagine using this story, or other children’s books like it, in numerous ways in the classroom. I thought this type of text would be particularly effective with grade 9 or 10 applied level English as a diagnostic tool at the beginning of a short story unit. The instructor would read the text aloud to the class and provide the students with guiding questions or a graphic organizer where students could organize their thoughts in regards to plot, setting and character. Following the reading of the story and the students working in small groups to complete their graphic organizers, the instructor would pose questions to the students in order for them to identify the stereotypes and biases in this rendition of a classic fairy tale. They would also be asked to discuss, in small groups, how the story is different through its use of minority characters and focus on Native spirituality (ex: there is no Prince, but rather a spiritual being called “The Invisible Being” who can only be seen by his true love, the rough faced girl) rather than the traditional fairy tale format. Another way this text could be used in a grade 9 or 10 applied level course is as the framework for an entire short story unit. Students could be introduced to this children’s book, again as a diagnostic tool, and then introduced to others over the course of the unit. Students would be taught the elements of short story writing and look at children’s books as short stories worthy of study. Special attention would be paid to stories like this, either a retelling of a classic fairy tale or a story with a minority main character. As a class, we would want to focus on identifying the stereotypes and biases within these types of texts and working as a class to undermine them. After the students have developed skills in short story writing, using both children’s books and traditionally used short stories, students could, as a culminating task, work to create their own children’s stories based on classic fairy tales. Students would be given class time to peer edit one another’s work and would have time in the computer lab to learn how to use programs necessary for production of the stories (microsoft publisher). Students would be given the choice to create their own hand drawn images for their stories, or use photographs or graphic images. These stories could then be compiled into a class anthology of “new” fairy tales and donated to a local library, elementary school, women’s shelter or foster care facility. This allows the students to see a purpose behind their work and would encourage them to create dynamic, educational or entertaining stories for an actual audience as well as building community within the classroom by working toward a goal as a collective group. This assignment would allow students to form and show their opinions on many social issues, such as feminism, for example. In doing a culminating task of this kind, curriculum expectations would be hit in the media component, as well as writing and oral communication if you chose to have the students present their individual stories. Although I have described these tasks as appropriate for intermediate level english courses, these ideas could easily be applied to other grade levels in the english department, even just as a diagnostic tool at the beginning of a short story unit. I also thought that in a grade 12 University bound course this text could be used during the Literary Criticism unit. Students could use children’s stories including “The Rough-Face Girl” and look at these stories through a variety of critical lenses, Another area which I thought this assignment would be appropriate would be in HPC3O (gr. 11 parenting). This course deals with notions of family, children, child-rearing and family types, so this would be a great culminating task for this course as well. Students could work individually or in small groups to create children’s stories or a class anthology of stories for children on a wide variety of topics, including the “new” fairy tale idea if the students focussed on different family types as seen in fairy tales. For example, Cinderella comes from a step parented household with a deceased father, as does Snow White. There is no mother present in either Beauty and the Beast nor Little Red Riding Hood, and stories such as Jack and the Beanstalk feature a widowed mother with a single son. This allows students to comment on a variety of family types as well as create a social commentary on widely popular fairy tales. Some issues I could see arising when teaching this text is that native studies is not often taught in the average English classroom. I find that there is a stronger focus placed on minority groups outside of the First Nations community in this country and students may be apprehensive to learning about a community that they are unfamiliar with. Other issues arise in regards to the anthology of children’s stories. There could be issues when dealing with cost of producing the final project and students may feel concerned that their skills are not ‘worthy’ of being put into print and shared with others. Students should be given the option to be omitted from the anthology if uncomfortable with publicly producing their work. 