Back to Blog
Storywriting the mentor6/2/2023 Why Does the Mentor Need to Be One Person? In the end, the protagonist without a mentor is like a 16 year old getting into a stick shift for the first time- no one’s going to wait around on the road while the poor thing learns how to get into first and move. The mentor helps the protagonist with almost anything anyone could ever need help with: dealing with emotions, understanding the past, foreseeing the future, avoiding conflicts and mistakes, learning new arts or sciences, discovering one’s self and/or destiny, understanding the workings of the world, life, and other people. This itself is a great source of conflict- doubt is one of the most powerful "non-human" antagonists that you can ever find.Īs we know, conflict is what drives the story forward. Whether it's challenging the protagonist's motives or intentions to exposing a different worldview, the mentor rattles the foundations of what is already known and forces everyone to doubt themselves and others around them. The mentor can only then sigh and wait for their "I told you so" moment to arrive.īut even if the protagonist is being a prick about the advice they're getting served on a silver platter, the mentor can also force other characters and the reader to have a think about something. In fact, it's often times that no one listens at all since they’re too busy screaming “la la la la” and jamming their fingers in their ears. The funny thing is just because someone is wiser doesn't mean anyone listens. Mentoring is a great way not only for the protagonist to learn and grow in order to naturally move along on their journey, but it also saves us from having to watch the protagonist make a royal moron of themselves by making mistake after mistake and learning the painfully hard way. Everyone in the world needs mentoring time and again (some of us all the time). I don't negate the importance of a mentor. Show of hands, who in their life had a mentor who was the only person they ever learned anything valuable from? Well maybe "hate" is a strong word, but it really drives me crazy.īecause it's unrealistic. You know, that one character, usually much older, wiser, and destined to die at the least convenient moment, who guides the protagonist along on their journey. What are the critical features of a quality mentor text? Do they support Common Core State Standards? How do the criteria of mentor texts differ among lessons, or among teachers? How do students respond to mentor texts as a model of writing? This study examines how teachers are implementing mentor texts into a permanent part of their writing curriculum, how they discern which mentor texts to include, and how they facilitate the instruction with their students.I stumbled across a comment recently that every protagonist must have a mentor. Although the concept of mentor texts is growing in the field of English Education, little has been said about the implementation of the practice into mainstream writing instruction. This study also seeks to break down the implementation process so that it is accessible to all teachers. Instead, they read as disjointed singular lesson ideas. The same teaching guides are filled with detailed lesson plans and annotated bibliographies, but they do not examine how to make this practice a permanent part of writing instruction. The second goal is to provide insight as to how teachers put this theory into practice. This study seeks to create this missing foundation to ensure that this practice becomes a permanent part of writing instruction, rather than a passing trend. Many teaching guides exist that explain the concept of mentor texts, but they do not explore the foundations behind the teaching practice. One goal of this study is to provide the educational theory that supports mentor text instruction that is missing from the movement. This project focuses on each participant as they share a common goal in writing instruction while maintaining their teaching identity and curricular freedom. In this dissertation, I investigate the way in which mentor texts are defined and implemented by four elementary classroom teachers within one school district, and how this mode of instruction allows for an increase in teacher autonomy while still addressing Common Core State Standards.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |