{"id":368,"date":"2021-01-20T13:46:52","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T20:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/?p=368"},"modified":"2021-07-09T18:06:09","modified_gmt":"2021-07-10T00:06:09","slug":"teach-political-texts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/teach-political-texts\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Tips on How to Teach Political Texts that May Be Controversial"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAs English teachers, we teach historical speeches.\u00a0 But how do we teach political texts that are modern and are often controversial and politically-charged?\u00a0 We can\u2019t ignore what is happening in our world, but there is a strategy to teaching political speeches.<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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My Own Experience<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Four years ago during the 2016 Election, I was teaching AP Lang.\u00a0 We were right in the middle of the Rhetorical Analysis Essay\/Unit.\u00a0 I watched live President Trump\u2019s apology for the leaked video where he said that you should \u2018grab women by the \u2026\u201d (<\/span>video<\/span><\/a> | <\/span>text<\/span><\/a>).\u00a0 Immediately I thought about President Clinton\u2019s apology for the Monica Lewinsky scandal (<\/span>video<\/span><\/a> | <\/span>text<\/span><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>

I decided that we needed to do a rhetorical analysis of these two apologies.\u00a0 The Clinton apology is often studied in the AP Lang curriculum, but the election gave me the perfect chance to teach political texts in real-time.<\/span><\/p>

To say I was worried would be minimizing the anxiety I felt.\u00a0 You see, I teach in a conservative, mostly white, mostly Republican, upper-middle-class school.<\/span><\/p>

And guess what \u2026 the lesson went amazing!\u00a0 No parent complaints.\u00a0 No phone calls or emails from the superintendent (she lived in the neighborhood and would contact teachers directly with complaints from her neighbors).<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet my Political Cartoon Analysis Graphic Organizer - FREE!<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Here are my top 5 Tips for How to Teach Political Texts in English Class<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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1. What\u2019s Your Rationale?<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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You need to have a strong objective and reason why.\u00a0 The lesson needs to be rooted in your standards and goals for the class.\u00a0 You can defend that to admin, students, parents, or maybe even the public.<\/span><\/p>

The amazing thing about being English teachers is that we do not have to teach specific \u201ccontent\u201d or texts; we teach skills!\u00a0 Like analyzing.\u00a0 Like evaluating.\u00a0 Like rhetoric.\u00a0 Like argument.\u00a0 Like main ideas and details.\u00a0 Like citing the text in your analysis.\u00a0 There are so many standards we can use as our rationale.<\/span><\/p>

You may not be asked the WHY the first time you teach something controversial.\u00a0 But I promise you will eventually.<\/span><\/p>

And the next thing you need to do is communicate the why to your students.\u00a0 Be sure they know why you chose the political texts you chose.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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2. Stay Objective<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In a world and content area where we are judging, evaluating, and analyzing all day long, it is hard to stay objective about the content of political speeches.<\/span><\/p>

One way you can do this is to not state opinions \u2013 only facts.\u00a0 In this instance you become a formalist in your analysis \u2013 you only look at what it in the text itself.<\/span><\/p>

I linked the videos above as well as the texts of what I call the \u201cPresidential Apology Speeches\u201d; however, I didn\u2019t show the videos until after we were done with the text analysis.\u00a0 We talked about how video changed our opinions of the sincerity of the two speeches.<\/span><\/p>

By sticking to what is in the text, not what new commentators say (or any other opinions), you can focus class discussion on being objective as well.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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3. Politically \u2013 You are Switzerland<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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This may be the most important tip I have.\u00a0 You can\u2019t let your students know what political party you affiliate with.\u00a0 Students can and will catch any hint of bias you have.\u00a0 And if they know or even suspect this, they will not hear the lesson you are actually trying to teach.<\/span><\/p>

Throughout that whole election cycle, my students wanted to know who I was going to vote for.\u00a0 They would guess and tease and try to trick me up. They were completely wrong \u2013 by the way.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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4. Pair Texts Together<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The more politically charged the text, the more important it is that you find an example from the opposing political party.\u00a0 This practice helps you stay objective and not let students know your personal beliefs.\u00a0 Critiquing only one side will backfire.<\/span><\/p>

After years of being a debate coach, I default to examining and presenting two sides of an argument.\u00a0 Even middle school debate topics are very controversial.\u00a0 In elections, almost every debate connects to the election \u2013 even the extemporaneous speeches.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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5. Set up Classroom Norms for Discussion<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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This last tip isn\u2019t something that you can really set up in the moment.\u00a0 It is the class culture you develop over many months and building positive relationships with your students.\u00a0 It also means that you have to follow those same rules of respect.<\/span><\/p>

I had a saying in my class, \u201cWe don\u2019t attack people, we attack ideas.\u201d\u00a0 As a debate coach, we would frequently hold impromptu debates every time I saw that students were highly engaged, opinionated, and divided on a topic in class.\u00a0 Every-single-time I would review our debate rules and make every student in my class repeat this golden rule.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Trust Your Students<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In the end, believe that your students will be thoughtful in their analysis of the texts you choose because you have set them up to be successful by teaching them critical analysis skills and communication.<\/span><\/p>

In my own experience with the Trump and Clinton speeches, my class ended up coming to the same conclusion in their rhetorical analysis of each text.\u00a0 Personal opinion didn\u2019t factor into it.<\/span><\/p>

Ultimately I want my students to be able to leave my class, hear things on the news or read them, and be thoughtful and critical so that they can make up their own minds rather than being told what to think.<\/span><\/p>

You can teach political texts in class \u2013 even if they are controversial.\u00a0 Be brave and try it out.<\/span><\/p>

Check out <\/span>my blog post full of resources for teaching Amanda Gorman\u2019s poem<\/span><\/a> \u201cThe Hill We Climb\u201d that was read at the inauguration of President Biden.\u00a0 Amanda\u2019s poem is one way to teach political texts in your own classroom.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Teaching\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As English teachers, we teach historical speeches.\u00a0 But how do we teach political texts that are modern and are often controversial and politically-charged?\u00a0 We can\u2019t ignore what is happening in our world, but there is a strategy to teaching political speeches. My Own Experience Four years ago during the 2016 Election, I was teaching AP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":375,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,30],"tags":[29,27],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-secondary-language-arts","category-informational-text","tag-informational-text","tag-secondary-language-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1468,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions\/1468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}