Over the past two weeks our instructional assistant Miss Melanie and I have been working with the kids to launch an inquiry into perspective. As our Common Core Standards state, kids need to learn to "acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters." We've been running with this idea and have even worked to expand it beyond the points of view of fictional characters to the points of view of real people within our classroom and beyond.
Of course, we used picture books help us begin this work. Last week Miss Melanie and I took turns reading books and letting the kids build discussions around what various characters might have been thinking or feeling at different points in the story. We began simply with a comparison of the Three Little Pigs and the True Story of the Three Little Pigs. These two texts addressed the same story but the first was from the perspective of the pigs and the second was from the perspective of the wolf. Much like when I negotiate a dispute on the playground, the two accounts of what happened were very, very different. Miss Melanie helped the kids complete a Venn Diagram displaying the differences between the two stories.
The pigs portray the wolf as evil. The wolf says it's all a misunderstanding.
The wolf likens his eating of the pigs to someone eating a hamburger.
Next, we read Jacqueline Woodson's book The Other Side. This text tells the fictional story of two girls, one Black and one White, living on opposite sides of a long wooden fence in the segregated South. Each of their mothers warn them not to go on the other side of that fence. However, their curiosity about one another and their longing for a playmate eventually bring them together. At first they sit on the top of the fence, "My mother didn't say anything about not sitting ON the fence!", and then they wind up skipping rope and wondering when that old fence might finally be knocked down.
As we read the story we asked the kids to stop at various points in the story to think about what one of the characters might have been thinking or feeling about what was going on. Half the class thought as Clover and the other half thought as Annie. In this case, we found that both girls may have been thinking largely the same sorts of thoughts - at least in terms of being able to cross the fence to play with one another. The following day we read another title from Jacqueline Woodson titled Each Kindness. In this story a new girl joins a classroom and is largely ignored and teased by her new classmates - including the main character, Maya. Miss Melanie and I split the group up into two, each of us working with ten kids, and read the book while asking the kids to stop and think about what each of the two primary characters may have been thinking and feeling along the way. This sort of work helps us grow our social imaginations - imagining what others might be feeling, thinking, or wanting. Social imagination offers us the ability to think outside ourselves and care for (or at the very least, acknowledge) the people who surround us.
This week we continued our work around multiple perspectives but transitioned from picture books to news
articles. We began with a couple of articles written about zoos. The first article focused on what the author felt was unethical treatment of animals. We read through this article and used our highlighters to identify what we felt were the most important points in the article. We then discussed these a bit before considering what other people might say or feel about zoos. I asked the kids who else might be interested in this topic and they responded: kids, parents, zoologists, veterinarians, and "tree huggers." Each of the kids was assigned one of these perspectives and worked with partners to think about what their group of people might have to say about zoos and their treatment of animals.Miss Melanie and I walked around and engaged the kids in conversation about their thoughts. We found that many of the kids were beginning to realize this doesn't have to be an either/or choice. Many of the groups they identified would probably agree with arguments from both sides of this issue. For instance, one of the kids responded "Well, I think a parent would not like that the animals are locked up all the time and can't run around or get enough exercise but they would also like for their kids to see the animals because their kids probably like going to the zoo."
We looked at a different article the following day that tackled many of the arguments for and against zoos in a back-and-forth pattern in which it looked at a positive of zoos and then demonstrated how that could also be seen as a negative. Again, Miss Melanie and I split the kids into two smaller groups and had them work with partners to highlight the positive arguments in yellow and the negative ones in orange. We then came back together to offer our own thoughts around zoos - based on all we had been reading. The kids used rulers to measure out and create a large t-chart where they listed all the arguments they agreed with, both positive and negative. We quickly realized a few people in class were clearly identifying with just one of these two sets of arguments but the majority of us tended to be closer to the middle. I put a line up on the board with GOOD written at one end and BAD written at the other and asked the kids to make a dot where they felt they belonged on this spectrum.
Miss Melanie then used this idea of how people's perspectives often lie somewhere on a spectrum to challenge the kids with the question "What happens when someone's perspective is hurtful to others?" For this, she showed the Cheerio commercial that sparked great controversy because it featured an interracial married couple and a mixed-race child. The kids watched the commercial with no knowledge of the controversy and struggled to figure out why people would be upset by this. She then told them people were outraged Cheerios would put a couple where the mom is White and the dad is Black in their commercial. She then told the kids that the comment section of the You Tube video of this commercial had to be shut down because of all the hateful comments. She asked "Do you think people have a right to share their perspective when what they have to say is hurtful or even hateful to others?" A handful of kids said "yes." They felt people should believe what they want but maybe they shouldn't share this out to everyone if it hurts someone. Another student spoke up to disagree. She argued these sorts of thoughts and words are mean and can hurt people in bad ways. It was such a great discussion. Our own perspectives were all over the map but great conversation was taking place to make sense of it all. Miss Melanie finished by showing the kids a video of other kids watching and talking about the commercial. It helped fuel even more great discussion around this topic. Here's that video...
We've both enjoyed this study so much. I love that the kids are so thoughtful and articulate and comfortable. We are learning the world is full of many perspectives and there is great value in discussion and careful listening. And we're also uncovering all those Common Core Standards along the way.
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