Metaphors are Tools: A Lesson for Teachers

So, I have a class I’m required to take as a first year teacher. Like many of the classes I take (or am involved with) (and, hell, probably like the classes I teach), there are days when our discussions are interesting, days when the work makes no sense or is completely out of whack with the track of the school year, and days when I’m outright bored. Of course, there are also days when the work is fun and helps me be a better teacher.

Tomorrow, I am supposed to present to my fellow classmates (other teachers) a short lesson on analogies and/or metaphors. i chose metaphors because I have an easier time with them. Figuring out analogies is pretty simple, for the most part, but creating them takes time. Creating metaphors also takes time, but comes easier.

Therefore, tomorow I’ll present the following metaphor.

A SENTENCE IS A MOVIE

A sentence is a movie, because in every movie there’s a movie star.
A sentence has a movie star. In fact, a sentence must have a movie star, or else it isn’t a sentence.

Take a look at this example: Luke ate 50 eggs.

Let’s treat this as a movie (my kids would be lost on this example, so I wouldn’t explain it to them–I’d just let the sentence stand on its own weird, ridiculous premise), shall we? Every movie has a movie star, and in this movie, some guy named Luke eats 50 eggs, right? So tell me, who’s the movie star of this sentence?

Answer: Luke.

In this movie we call the star “Luke.”
In a sentence, though, we call the star “the subject.”

Like every movie has a star, every sentence has a subject.
Take the “movie star” out of the movie or take “the subject” out of the sentence, and what do you have?

Answer: “eats 50 eggs.”

Eats 50 eggs? That’s not a sentence. That not a movie, either, because no one’s eating the 50 eggs. It doesn’t make any sense. How can you have a movie where 50 eggs are eaten by….nothing?

Therefore, I’ll argue if a movie has a star, a sentence must have a star, too.

Try it with another sentence: Napoleon dances in order to get his friend elected class president.

Who’s the star?

What would happen if we took the star out of the movie? We’d end up with something completely incomprehensible: Dances in order to get his friend elected class president.

No star, no movie. No star, no sentence.

Here’s another way to look at it: EVERY MOVIE HAS ACTION

This doesn’t mean that every movie is an action movie, but that in every movie something happens. What if we took out the action in the movie about luke?

We’d have: Luke.
Same thing with the movie about Napoleon. We’d have just: Napoleon.

In both of those movies, there’s nothing happening. So why would we waste our time watching them?

In a movie we call the action “action,” in a sentence, we call the action “the predicate.”
Sentences work in the same ways as movies. No star, no sentence. No action, no sentence. Take out the star or the action, and it’s not worth reading.

But this is more a lesson on writing sentences, isn’t it? On with the metaphors!

Now, what I’ve actually just taught you was a lesson on writing sentences. Every sentence must have a subject. Every sentence must have a predicate.

Now let’s talk about metaphors. A metaphor is a comparison between two totally different things. Can you tell me the two things I compared in the short little explanation above?

Answer: Sentences and movies.

A metaphor helps us understand how one thing works by comparing it to another. Everyone says “Sentence schmentence,” or “Movie schmovie,” but when have you thought about they ways those two different things are alike?

I want you to try writing a sentence, and it better contain a movie star and some action, using metaphors. I’ll give you a few topics, but I’ll let you run with them on your own.

I want you to compare school to something completely different, but I want you to make it make sense to me. Therefore, you’ll have to do some explaining to me.

So, Luke ate 50 eggs. So what? It would be better explained if I said something like: Luke ate 50 eggs because he bet he could.

Same way I said why Napoleon was dancing. He was trying to help his friend win the class president election.

You have to compare school to something completely different, but you have to make it make sense to me.

Here’s are some examples: School is a prison, we’re locked up all day long.
That’s a metaphor because I’m comparing school to prison. You’re not actually locked up all day long, but it sure feels like it.

School is a garden, you water the students and they’ll grow.
The metaphor here is comparing school to a place where I spend my free time–the garden. In a garden you make things grow.

Hey wait a minute! There’s another metaphor hiding in that last sentence. Do you see it? No?

If school is a garden, and if you water the students and they’ll grow, what does that mean I’m comparing students to? PLANTS!

What happens to plants if you water and feed them? They grow.
What happens to plants if you forget to water and feed them? They die.

So, the metaphor says: Students need something ot make them grow. Take that something away, and they’ll not do so well.

There are a few topics.
My examples: School is a prison.
Students are plants.

Your job is to compare school to something completely different, but you have to use the words “are” or “is.

You may use prison or garden, but don’t copy my sentences.
Other ways we can talk about school using metaphors:

• Highways

• Factories
• Recipes
• or your own comparison.

This is something I’ve done with my students, and it’s really helped improve their writing. I see fewer and fewer papers with incomplete sentences these days. At the beginning of the semester, I asked the students to write papers, and they’d treat ancillary thoughs as sentences instead of tying the thought to the previous statement. Now, instead of seeing them write: “Snowboarding is cool because you can do all sorts of tricks. Like a 360 tailwhip.” I see: “Snowboarding is cool because you can do all sorts of tricks, such as a 360 tailwhip.” (A minor change, and while it might be acceptable in everyday speaking, it’s unacceptable in writing.)

Similarly, they’ve grown in their use of metaphors, and this short lesson proves so: the metaphors show up in their short stories, their papers, their conversation, and when I use a metaphor in general classroom discussion the kids point it out.

Another little trick to make students see incomplete sentences is to have them read their wrtiting aloud. Make them pause for two seconds after each period. They’ll see the mistakes in their writing.

While I planned out this lesson for tomorrow, I realized that I could have taken this metaphor lesson on sentences a little further. If I were teaching the construction of sentences, I would use this metaphor but I would include the fact that there are several types of movies. Then I would have groups of students writing sentences about drama, comedy, action, horror, murder-mysteries, etc.

And if I was really feeling energetic, I’d get the students to write complex sentences with mutiple subjects doing mutiple things.