Have you watched The Diary of a Song Series by The New York Times? It’s one of the many things the NYT does to break down and demystify behind-the-scenes in art. I love all things process and enjoy every one of these videos and writings by NYT.
Last weekend, I discovered a YouTube channel called Suvaissance by Su Krish. Su Krish attempts to analyze Indian film music exactly as we analyze mentor texts (without access to the author/music director/lyricist). This channel is way behind the NYT in terms of editing and production value, but it intellectually stimulated me and moved me in ways any NYT video hasn’t been able to. I was hooked and binge-watched all the videos in a go. I have since been asking myself what this channel has that better produced, more professionally made videos don’t. I have my answer: my art.
I don’t mean art I have created, but art that is viscerally mine and has been forever because it is art produced in my language, my place, my context, consumed by people around me, many of whom I love dearly. The art had already done its work on me, sometimes for years before I watched Su Krish break it down. She didn’t have to convince me about a song being good; I already knew that. When she showed what musical and technical decisions might have led to what I felt when I couldn’t stop my tears or when I wanted to break a leg, the intellectual pleasure was unparalleled. Su Krish’s visible enjoyment of the music made it even better. It wasn’t just analysis anymore; it was done by someone whose heart flutters just like mine in the presence of the same music. My heart and head met in a way they rarely do.
I was four years old when my mother and grandmother bundled me up into a bus to travel to a theatre quite a distance from home to watch Roja. I understood nothing in the movie and was too sleepy to keep my eyes open. But A R Rehman’s genius impacted me so deeply that I still remember images from the theatre to this day. That’s when his music touched me for the first time. Like most others my age in South India, all of my major life events are associated with an Ilayaraja or A R Rehman soundtrack in my head. Su Krish gives vocabulary to the thousands of us who couldn’t explain why thallipogathey is magical or how we can recognize Ilayaraja’s music from miles away.
This is exactly what I don’t get with the NYT videos and what my English Language Learners (ELLs) don’t get with the English mentor texts I bring to class.
- I heard Dance Monkey for the first time after watching the NYT analysis. My response was limited to “catchy and cool”. All my mentor texts are new to my ELLs and they read them for the first time when I bring them to class. Their response is similarly limited to “nice and good”.
- I had heard Shape of You before watching the NYT analysis and knew it was a massive hit. It had not made me cry or made my migraine go away. It was just a great song. If I were a musician and my teacher asked me what I noticed about Shape of You that I wanted to emulate, I wouldn’t know what else to say except that it’s great. Exactly like my ELLs who are asked to emulate English texts that don’t necessarily move them in the first place.
But, with my art, what I’d need from my music teacher would be technical knowledge, observations and vocabulary to help me analyze the creative decisions that led to what I’m already feeling. With mentor texts in their home language, my students have a similar experience. After having laughed, cried and liked what the text did to them, they look to me for analysis skills, what I call writer’s hat thinking, to explain what they think the author did to make them feel the way they did. They already want to emulate the author before I even suggest they must.
This isn’t the first time I identified this problem. I have wrestled with this as long as I’ve been teaching using the workshop method and have found a couple of small solutions too. I have written about them here, here and here. While I have brought in known mentor texts in the students’ home language, they have always been expected to write in English. It seems like common sense that students might be able to write better in their home language, but the requirements and rigidity of school systems don’t share the same opinion.
This time, however, I’m more certain than ever that creative writing, i.e., all writing that I teach in my workshop classroom should occur in the student’s home language, at least in the beginning, at least for a while, before they do it with unknown texts and/or in English. I don’t have an opportunity to teach writing workshop in the other language I teach (Kannada) yet, but I’m so excited by the possibility that I’m already collecting mentor texts.
What role do you think the student’s home language and the affective domain play in working with mentor texts? Comment below or get in touch with me on Twitter @teachingtenets.
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