Chapter 8 Reflection, Transformation Formations: How We, and the Characters in Our Stories, Change

In chapter 8, Ohler does a good job explaining how the transformation process can affect characters in the storytelling process. While he gives many different examples of ways of understanding the concept of transformation, the simple definition that stuck out to me was that transformation was, “slaying internal dragons through attitude adjustment based on learning and realization,” (Ohler, 2008, p.107). We can try to explain the process of transforming to our students, but I found this simple definition to be very succinct and to-the-point, something that is necessary when working with younger kids in today’s world.

Since a lot of people have already talked about Ohler’s description of how Bloom’s taxonomy can correlate to different levels of transformation, I thought I would focus on the beginning of the chapter and Ohler’s identification of his eight levels of transformation. While I do have a lot of experience as a teacher using Bloom’s taxonomy levels, I found Ohler’s eight levels of transformation and his explanations for them to be make a lot of sense. Actually, I think I connected more with his levels than I did with Bloom’s hierarchy provided. I appreciated the specific explanations, and the categories seemed to be more appropriate for making sense to younger children. I feel that I would have an easier time explaining how characters transform through ways of inner strength or moral issues, rather than trying to explain about Bloom’s analysis or synthesis examples. Yes, it could be done, but simply for ease of use with the younger children I work with, Ohler’s levels just appeal more to me at this time.

I can see how using Ohler’s levels of transformation, kids could really gain a better understanding of how characters actually transform throughout a story. It really helps me to see specific examples of stories or movies that depict the exact levels, and I would absolutely need to do that with kids in my class. To best make it work for younger kids, I would probably look for popular kid movies that my students are interested in, and then apply each of the levels to some kind of transformation a character made in that story. The ones Ohler used were helpful when I knew of the movie, such as the example from the movie Dirty Dancing, but when I hadn’t see the movie, I was left just trying to make that connection on my own, (Ohler, 2008, p.109). Actually, for my students, I think I would almost have to have a variety of examples ready so that I would hopefully be able to reach as many kids as possible. Since this is how I learn, using examples to make everything make sense, I would probably start with that in my own classroom as well.