Is it really empty

							Romantic Framework                                 Topic:

Finding a Narrative
          Heroic Qualities                          Heroic Image                   Organizing Content into Story Form
What “heroic” qualities or values are        What image captures the           What “heroic narrative” will allow us to integrate the
central to the topic? What makes the         heroic qualities of the topic?    content we wish to cover?
characters in this story full of wonder?
                                             Images can be visual,             This is the trickiest part, and the part requiring the
In order to help students connect            auditory, tactile, gustatory or   most imagination.
emotionally to the material, teachers        olfactory. The central image
need to first identify their own emotional   for the unit should represent        “Think of the content of the curriculum more as
attachment to it. What heroic human          the transcendent quality that        great stories to tell than as objectives to attain. We
quality or emotion –– courage,               guides the unit by moving the        might, then, think of "story" much in the sense a
compassion, tenacity, fear, hope,            story forward.                       newspaper editor asks a reporter "What's the
loathing, delight, or whatever –– can we                                          story on this?"” (Egan, Arts as Basics)
identify in the topic?
                                                                               Reflect on the whole unit or lesson and think of it in
These “romantic” qualities help us ––                                          terms of some overall narrative structure. You want to
and our students –– see the world in                                           select and highlight content that will make clear to
human terms and give human meaning                                             students that one is not simply relating a sequence of
to events, facts, and ideas in all                                             facts or events but that one has a story to tell them
disciplines. “Romance” invites us to                                           and that the set of facts and events have a unity of
view the world in human terms: not to                                          some kind.
confuse but to infuse the world with
human meaning. Again, this first task is                                       If you have listed a dozen possible heroic qualities,
the most difficult part of planning the                                        chose one that is central. Decide which elements in
lesson or unit. We are asked to feel                                           the content fit best into the narrative and fit with the
about the topic as well as to think about                                      central heroic quality or value and disregard the rest.
it; indeed, we are asked to “perfink”                                          It is often hard to let go, but it is crucial to remove
about it.                                                                      unnecessary items that are not within the context of
                                                                               the story.
Developing Cognitive Tools




                                                                                                                            St



                                                                                                                                      Teacher-led/strructured
Exploring Human Strengths & Emotions                    Extremes of Reality                   Collecting & Organizing

How can students understand the human hopes,         What extremes of reality are         What parts of the topic can students
fears, passions or struggles that have shaped our    related to the topic – biggest,      best explore in exhaustive detail?
knowledge of this topic?                             hottest, oldest, richest?            How can students present their
                                                                                          knowledge in some systematic form?
Think of how a good movie or novel makes             Children of this age are very
aspects of the world engaging. Obstacles to the      engaged by the types of              While it is easy to give students a
hero are humanized in one form or another,           information that can be found        project to do that is part of a topic, it
almost given motives; they are seen in human         in the Guinness Book of World        is a little harder to think about what
terms. To do this, we don’t need to falsify          Records. By finding the              aspect of the topic they might be able
anything, but rather we highlight a particular way   greatest and the least of            to exhaust, i.e. be able to find out
of seeing it –– because this is precisely the way    something they are                   nearly everything that is known about
students’ imaginations are engaged by                establishing the limits of reality   it.
knowledge.                                           and thus establishing a scale
                                                     to measure with.                     But there are such parts in every
                                                                                          topic, and the security and sense of
                                                     There are extreme examples           mastery that comes from knowing
                                                     within any topic. Perhaps            nearly as much as anyone about
                                                     when studying spiders it is          something is a great stimulus to
                                                     best to first establish the          inquiry. Think of something that is




                                                                                                                                      Student-led/open-ended
                                                     largest spider, the most             intriguing, that can be seen from a
                                                     minute, the most poisonous           variety of different perspectives, or
                                                     and so on before examining           that is alluded to but not examined in
                                                     those that are less impressive.      detail in the content or in your
                                                                                          teaching of it.

                                                                                          Ensure that the topics which students
                                                                                          explore in exhaustive detail relate
                                                                                          back to the heroic quality. Otherwise,
                                                                                          the humanized meaning will
                                                                                          potentially be lost.
Looking Forward and Concluding
Towards Further Understanding                         A Celebratory Ending                              Assessment

How can the unit develop embryonic             What is the best way of resolving the       How can one know whether the topic has
forms of Philosophic and Ironic                dramatic tension inherent in the unit?      been understood, its importance grasped
understanding? What cognitive tools            What communal project or activity will      and the content learned?
characteristic of the disciplines or           enable the students to experience and
embodied self-awareness can be                 share this resolution?                      Any of the traditional forms of evaluation
introduced here?                                                                           can be used, but in addition, teachers
                                               We will want to make sure that the unit     might want to get some measure of how
Consider questions one might ask about         ends on a positive note. One way to do      far students’ imaginations have been
the topic from a Philosophic or Ironic         this is to have students work communally    engaged by the topic -- how far they
point of view. These might be presented        on a project which resolves the dramatic    have successfully made a romantic
to students as “brain candy” throughout        tension of the unit. If we want the         engagement with the material.
the unit or towards its end, or they might     conclusion to lead towards Philosophic
become more substantial areas of inquiry.      understanding, we might consider re-        Concluding activities can also be
Remember that students do not                  examining images we started with and        evaluative in nature. Remember, when
“graduate” from one layer of                   reviewing the content through the lenses    evaluating, that the heroic qualities are
understanding and move suddenly into           of other heroic qualities, which can give   what give us access to the content.
the next. Rather, they are probably more       an opposite or conflicting image of the     These transcendent qualities are tools,
likely to experience a gradual shifting of a   content.                                    and do not themselves have to be
tendency towards or a proficiency in                                                       evaluated.
using particular cultural tools.

(A unit at the Romantic level, however,
will consistently emphasize and develop
the cognitive tools of literacy even when
some later tools are being introduced.)