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THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN + WITH SUPPORT FROM THE W. K. KELLOGG.FOUNDATION AND, THE SID W. RICHARDSON FOUNDATION

INNOVATION ABSTRACTS

 

 

Congratulations! You're Leroy Moffitt!:
Role-Playing to Bring Out Course Concepts and

Encourage Critical Thinking

In even the best of my Composition II classes,
students often cannot identify with protagonists and
(more often) with antagonists in short fiction. In
addition, some of these students are intimidated by
more serious fiction.

I found a partial solution to this problem while
helping my wife, a local actress, learn a script. She
explained to me that an actress must learn everything
she can about her character—What does she fear? What
are her most prevalent thoughts?—and be able to
ground those ideas in the text. Similarly, my professor
of fiction writing in college asked each of us students to
know everything there was to know about our charac-
ters. We were expected to know what they carried in
their pockets, where they bought their clothes, what
sort of socks they wore, where they ate out, where they
shopped, and so on.

e

Three semesters ago, my students were reading
Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh” in Composition II. The
first day we discussed this story, the students, though
willing to explore, were confused. “Who is the protago-
nist?” they asked. “What's the central conflict?” They
were having a difficult time determining classical ideas
of conflict and character in a story slightly more sophis-
ticated than any they had read before.

During the next class I placed them in triad writing
groups and handed one of two handouts to each group.
One-half of the class was assigned to find out about
Leroy Moffitt, and the other half was assigned to find
out about Norma Jean Moffitt. Actually, the sheets
announced that the students had become these charac-
ters: “Congratulations! You have now become Norma
Jean. In a few minutes you will have a confrontation
with Leroy. You’d better find out all you can about
yourself. Luckily, you have the story Bobbie Ann
Mason wrote about you.” The students were then
directed to answer the 10-15 questions as a group, first

identifying one student to serve as secretary. After each
group had answered all the questions (through the
text), they found the other groups assigned the same
character and compared notes. By this time, the class
had become polarized, each half thinking only the way
their character thought. I asked each group to choose a
representative for their character.

After the groups had chosen their representatives,
each was to ask one of the five questions that their
character wanted to ask the other. These questions
often centered around the main conflict, and the an-
swers revealed a lot about each character. (If you have
thin-walled classrooms, it may be wise to move the
class to a more soundproof location for this exercise, as
students can become quite vocal when they “become” a
character in a story. Ten- to fifteen-minute confronta-
tions seem to work best; they leave the students hungry
for more.)

e

Some students unaccustomed to enjoying literature
may respond that it was fun but that they “didn't learn
a thing.” For this reason and to clarify goals, five or ten
minutes after the confrontation we answer the question,
“What did we learn?” (This session can teach tolerance
and understanding, as it did when we read and role-
played Mary Wilkins Freeman’s, “A Mistaken Charity,”
and the students decided that both sides were right.)

I often schedule this exercise for Fridays. Students
often ask when we are going to role-play again, enjoy
coming to class on Fridays, and search for anything
they might use in arguments while reading the assigned
stories.

Gregory Byrd, Instructor, Communications
For further information, contact the author at St.

Petersburg Junior College, Clearwater Campus, P.O.
Box 13489, St. Petersburg, FL 33733.

 

 

College

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD)
ple College Leadership Program, Department of Educational Administration
of Education, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712