January
12
ELA 20: Jan 12 Roles and Responsibilities sub-unit…
- This Monday morning, the class did great by working through questions to help them analyze two poems that began a new sub-unit for us regarding the Roles and Responsibilities of young adults at their stage of life.
- The first poem, called “Paper Matches“, is narrated by a young woman who questions the stereotypical gender roles performed around her. She compares herself and the women to paper matches that are valuable only when needed and then are useless afterwards. It criticizes the old-fashioned gender roles.
- To contrast that they also read a poem titled “St. George” about a young girl with a wonderfully trained pet dragon. She describes in the poem how careful her dragon is and how safe she feels with him in her company, until she encounters a knight on a white horse who, before she can stop him, cuts off her dragon’s head to “save her” from the danger she must have been in. Traditionally speaking, the knight in the poem did as he was expected to do. It was the young girl who was acting outside the gender role, the damsel in distress who needed the young man’s help, who actually caused the conflict in the story.
- Students individually responded to poetry questions for each. We’ll discuss them tomorrow.