Contributed by: Bethany Buchholz

A Cinderella Story

This is one of mine, and it works well for helping students see the nuances of a text and seeing that they don't have to "agree" or "disagree" (or "like" or "hate") the entire text. Breaking down a familiar story seems to help them see that within the same text, you can often find some ideas that you agree with/understand/support and others that you disagree with/don't understand/don't support. Using the Cinderella story gives students a "low stakes" place to try this out—they already know and understand the story, so they don't have to worry that they'll misread it and sound "dumb." This can be particularly helpful moving into the Interacting with Texts essay.

I break this exercise into two parts, and don't tell the students about part two until they complete part one.

  1. For homework, I ask the students to examine the story of Cinderella (most use the Disney version, but it doesn't really matter) and to attack the story in the following ways: attack the author/teller in some way, attack the story as not being clear or specific, as not having credibility, as being impossible and illogical, and as being unfitting or unprofitable (remembering that this doesn't have to mean financially unprofitable - the text could be morally or socially unprofitable). Students are asked to be as specific as possible, pointing to exact instances of each of these things in the Cinderella story.
  2. The next night, I ask students to look again at the same version of the story that they used for part one. This time, I ask them to confirm the value of the text by reversing the steps: praise the author/teller in some way, confirm the story as being clear and specific, as being credible or logical, as being probable and possible, and as being fitting or profitable (again, considering profits other than monetary ones). Again, students are asked to point to specific examples from the Cinderella story that support their claims.

Once students have completed both assignments, we talk in class about what they found. We'll then work, in class, to find specific parts of the essay(s) from the Text Wrestling Book that they want to either attack or defend, and to talk about on what specific grounds they wish to do so. This can help move away from emotional gut reactions, and can separate feelings about the author from feelings about the actual text itself.

Later, in peer review, I challenge students to use these same techniques in examining their peers' work, as a way of thinking about how arguments are being created.