English teachers at Danville High School are encouraging their students to collaborate, think critically and apply learning to their own lives through various lessons that delve into competencies of the Portrait of a Danville Learner. 

Four teachers shared what is going on in their classrooms. 

 

 

Megan Berketis

Megan Berketis’ sophomores were presented with the essential question, “How do my experiences and struggles shape who I am or who I will become?” They examined readings and songs related to learning and growing. 

They explored essays by Sherman Alexie, Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X, all of whom taught themselves to read while experiencing struggles and using limited resources. Berketis said the students looked at how these people were Empowered Learners. The students also had the option to write about a choice they made and what they learned from it, hard work they did, or something they taught themselves. 

Most of them completed an essay about what they taught themselves. Some topics included hair braiding, basketball moves, video games, origami and more. The students explored how they applied feedback from others to what they were learning, too. For example, one student who was learning origami took his father’s suggestion to add “eyes” to his creations. 

“They enjoyed telling their peers struggles that they had and got through learning a new skill, maybe even taught their peers something,” Berketis said. 

The unit also touched on the Creative Problem Solver competency, Berketis said, because the individuals the students focused on had to get creative with the resources they had available.

The students’ next unit is called “Anatomy of an Overdose,” something they are currently working on. 

In groups and as a class, they’re writing a play that’s a series of vignettes about stages of an overdose. Members of the community are visiting the class for interviews on the topic, such as crisis response team members, a nurse, police and more. 

The unit focuses on many of the Portrait competencies, but perhaps especially on being a Productive Collaborator and Culturally Competent Citizen. 

“I told them one of the goals that I have for them is that they realize that adults value them as being members of the community,” Berketis said. 

The students are empowered to take ownership of the project.

“The students are totally in control of this,” Berketis said. “I don’t have a list of readings for them. They have to find their own readings, they have to write their own play, they record it, they insert sound effects into it, and they perform it.”

Laurie Pierce

Laurie Pierce’s English IV classes that she co-teaches with Mary Arnold are doing a College and Career Preparation unit. Pierce said they’re using the Empowered Learner, Productive Collaborator, and Effective Communicator pieces of the Portrait “as the foundation for practical assignments designed to improve students' college and career readiness.”

“The first major assignment students are working on is their senior capstone presentation, which requires them to effectively communicate their learning experiences, strengths, and future plans to a panel audience in a formal setting,” Pierce said. “The capstone assignment also involves productive collaboration, because students get peer feedback on their slideshows/visual aids, and after fall break they will practice presenting their capstone to a group of peers.”

They’re also working on their interview skills.

“They have a series of assignments where they collaborate with each other to practice answering interview questions, and the culminating assessment takes the form of a mock job interview with either me or Ms. Arnold,” Pierce said. 

The last major assignment will be career research or college application work.

“This is where the Empowered Learner piece comes in — they have to either make concrete progress on their college applications or, if they don't plan to attend college, make a step-by-step plan to achieve their goals,” Pierce said.

 

Mary Arnold

Arnold led another class through a lesson where they focused on the Productive Collaborator competency and created posters of the “ironic ministries” in the novel “1984.” 

“Students were given full credit for the posters as long as each participant either helped illustrate, write or present their poster to me — allowing each person to use a strength of theirs in the group work,” Arnold said. 

Since the lessons focused on the literary element of irony, students made the connection that the names of the novel’s ministries contradicted what they actually did. 

Something she hopes that her students gain from the lesson is the willingness “to try new things and work with others they may not know very well,” as well as taking accountability to contribute to a project. 

Blossom Brosi

Blossom Brosi’s English III class is doing a unit on the American Dream. In their previous unit, they read F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby,” exploring Gatsby as a symbol of the American Dream. In their current unit, they are “building off of that by reading informational text about different perspectives on the American Dream,” Brosi said. The Portrait connection is to the Culturally Competent Citizen competency.  

They started by reading economist Alan Kruger's President's Economic Report to Congress, which he titled the "Great Gatsby Curve." During the unit, students will write an argumentative essay about the American Dream.

“We are examining artwork, photo essays, graphs, and informational text,” she said. “Each offers different perspectives on the American Dream … In some of the texts, a lot of data and information is given on topics such as income inequality, college attendance by race, home ownership. By looking at different perspectives, both similar and different to their own perspectives, students developed self-awareness of their own cultural perspective. They also acquired knowledge about various cultures, and better understood speakers from diverse cultural backgrounds.”

She said many of her students expressed surprise about some of the things they learned. 

“When writing argumentative essays, my students need to use sources that represent different points of view,” she said. “I want my students to use these points of view to support and to refute their own arguments. Reading about the American Dream helped them to see different perspectives, and it also helped them develop as writers because they were able to use diverse sources in their arguments.”