Becoming Ruth and James....

After spending some days reading a few chapters from the memoir,"The Color of Water", it was time for the students to demonstrate their connection so far to the main characters in the book. Having read about a major conflict had between the characters Ruth and Tateh, I decided to let my students take on the role of each character by creating a dialogue between the 2 characters. Since time will not allow for us to read the enitre book, the dialogue allowed for the students to make their own predications as to what might come later in the book. Working in pairs, one student was to become Ruth, and the other Tateh (Ruth's father). They had to imagine that Ruth was now 35 years old (in the chapter, she is only 10) and has decided to confront her father about all the bad things he did to her as a child. They had to come up with a dialogue where Ruth confronts her father about all the things he did to her in the past, and how it has affected her as an adult. After discussing with the class that in real life, not every problem has a solution, it was up to the students to decide if Ruth was to make peace with her father or not.

After giving out the instructions, the students were now ready to work. As usual, whether in NY or in Ghana, some students got to the task immediately, while others lingered along. Some of my students are still not 100% comfortable at working in pairs, so there were even some who made it clear that they wanted to work alone. But with any dialogue, there needs to be a minimum of 2 people, which I tried explaining to them. Since they were only to use one piece of paper, where both students were switching writing their character's dialogue, they had to work with their partner! Still, some wanted to write their own dialogue and then fuse it in with the other student's dialogue. It's amazing how difficult it becomes to break one's habits...in this case going from working individually to working as a pair. Some are still not comfortable working together....though after doing this dialogues they proved to themselves that it could be done...and have fun as they are doing it!

In short...my students did an amazing job with their dialogues.....each pair of students came to the front of the class to present their dialogue. They really allowed themselves to take on the role of their character....reminding them for the past 2 days that they "were no longer themselves...but Ruth or James". Accepting this, Ruth's anger and frustration was presented loud and clear, while Tateh's stubborness and abbrasiveness read in the book was carried out similarly in their dialogues.

Below is a sample of one of the dialogues presented in class!


Ruth: How are you today, Dad?
Tateh: I'm not intereted in your food!
Ruth: Tateh, can I talk to you?
Tateh: About what?
Ruth: Did you ever love us?
Tateh: I never loved anybody or anything except money!!
Ruth: Do you know you preach in a synagogue?
Tateh: And what's wrong with that? Does it bother you anyway?
Ruth: Yes, is does bother me a lot!!
Tateh: In what way? I'm tired of all these questions..don't you have any better things to do instead of these unnecessary questions?
Ruth: Do you know you have created low-self esteem for me because of what you did to me?
Tateh: Are you mad! Who gave you such an impression? Who said I did? Is it your useless mother?
Ruth: Can you cast your mind on when we went swimming? ?What you did to me? Please leave my mother from this!
Tateh: Nothing happened when we went swimming. Have you forgotten who I am? I can still give you eight sounding kicks in your head!
Ruth: Go ahead Tateh!