Class taught by Kristin Papania

The theme of language and power was used as an impetus for students to think critically about how language is used and the power that is has in our lives. Students read, discussed and wrote on a number of ideas within the main theme of language and power. Some ideas included in the class were:

• When, where and why do we change the way we speak or the language we use?
• What are the pros and cons of Prop #227 — the California English Only initiative?
• What are the positives and negatives of speaking different languages or dialects?
• What is the power of the words used in media advertising?
• How do words change what we think about history?

The latter, how words can change the way we think about history was part of a three week process during the twelve week class. This part of the class seemed to impact students significantly given their feedback at the end of the twelve weeks. During our study, we compared two historical perspectives about the impact of Christopher Columbus on the Americas. To begin with, we brainstormed what everyone in the group knew about Columbus. This process was very interesting in and of itself. Although students represented six countries and languages, everyone knew about or had been directly taught the Columbus story.

The students read The Untold Story by Tina Thomas from the journal Rethinking Columbus and I, Christopher Columbus, by Lisl Weil to investigate how the same story can be told very differently, and how language is used to those ends.

Students broke into two groups where they collectively read, discussed and filled in charts of main events and results of those events for each story. After this activity we discussed how language was used in each story to present specific historical perspectives. The group also brainstormed and discussed the question, who decides what stories get told? During the following class, students compared the two event results chart that had written up together for each story. They discussed how perspective, point of view and words were used and could change a reader’s understanding of important historical events.

Our final project in the class was to create a dialogue poem of the Christopher Columbus story. Given this end, the following session we practiced a dialogue poem about immigrant experience. This poem modeled how a dialogue poem has two different and often conflicting points of view on the same subject.

The two groups worked separately while writing their lines and came to find that many of the lines seemed to answer the other side’s responses. The poem was entitled by the students, and as a group they brainstormed the “truth” that both sides might have in common: these are the centered lines.

We See Each Other Differently My people and I landed, greeted by the native people Strangers came to our island I named the island Hispaniola and the people — Indians They put their flag and cross down I could not stay and had to go back to Spain for food and medicine They act as if they own the land. Changes The gold made my men steal, fight and kill We are forced to find gold for them We went to look for treasures, and found nothing There isn't any gold on the island We went to the nearest shore and the ships were getting ruined We are cruelly punished. Everyone is Thinking About Gold The men had been too greedy and killed the people We have to fight back We settled in a new place and the illnesses brought death Over half our people are dead I got malaria and died in May of 1506 Our peaceful homeland is destroyed Death

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