Overview
- "Medicine for the soul." ~Inscription over the door of the Library at Thebes
- "A book is like a garden carried in the pocket." ~Chinese Proverb
- "Mrs. Varner taught me that reading books would open the world to me..." — Rep. Leonard L. Boswell (D-IA)
- "In the old days, in my mother's time, I heard colored people …had to learn to read in secret…A book was a precious thing…" -Rose Smith
How many students fervently believe in the force of the above sentiments? Reading increases vocabulary, increases knowledge of the known and unknown world, advances writing, and improves grades and test scores. "Reading strengthens the self," writes Harold Bloom. He quotes Waldo Thoreau Emerson as saying, "Reading falls apart and much of the self scatters with it." The author Norman Mailer wrote in a newspaper essay that Johnny can't read because the visuals he encounters move at such a fast pace that it feels like there is no time to sit and just read a book. Whatever the cause, it is difficult to inspire some high school students to read in their leisure time. It is difficult to compel the students to reach the twenty-five books requirement that is part of the literacy portfolio. Many just copy the backs of books or plagiarize from the Internet instead of reading the books. With the females, the competition is the so-called "urban books," which are unacceptable to include in the twenty-five books requirement. Many males don't complete books or read enough articles to make reading an essential routine.
The goal of this curriculum unit is to stimulate students to become enthusiastic about reading and to value books and reading as the authors of the above quotes value them. In preparation for an unknown future, the goal is for students to become lifelong readers and to become responsible learners. The purpose of this curriculum unit is to motivate students to become critical thinkers, discriminatory readers and world players in the scheme of life. As Bloom quotes one of Emerson's principles of reading, "You must be an inventor to read well."
What is relevant to African American adolescents that draws them and excites them to read? Where is the African American student's place in the world of reading? How can he enter the text so that he can transfer the ideas and themes to fit his world, and how can the reading transform and broaden his ideas of the world? Those are the questions this curriculum unit will answer.
African American teenagers face racism, police brutality, violence, self-hatred, crime, drugs, community decay and many other ills of society. Who cares about books and reading? What does reading have to do with any of these debilitating conditions that are consistently affecting teens? To help engage students to connect with universal themes, fairy tales can be compared to the current literature. What was the theme of Hansel and Grethel? From a class perspective didn't those children face poverty? Poverty was the reason they were thrust out of the house. The conflict was between the haves (the witch) and the have-nots. Historically when there is poverty, child abuse sometimes occurs. Looking at the story through the lens of gender, why are the ones who are evil, greedy and violent - the mother, who has the idea of losing the children in the woods, and the witch - both female? At some point in history an unwed woman was considered a witch. Some of the issues brought out in Hansel and Grethel could be faced racially, as with The Learning Tree, which exposes poverty, racism, violence, crime, drugs and self-hatred. There is an ideology that links both texts. The reader could use her life experiences to interpret text, but by using multiple meanings, context, theoretical approaches and various lenses to make sense of the text, the reader can bridge the gap from the known to the unknown.
Males in high school and beyond seem to think that reading is too passive. It's for females. Identity is an issue for both males and females. Who is in and who is out? The Ugly Duckling certainly did not fit in and was made to feel alienated and not acceptable. Kaffir Boy was alienated, abused, tortured and terrorized in his own native country. In Metamorphosis Gregor felt such an outcast in his own home that he turned into a bug to be stomped on and killed. Sometimes students, especially males, will read nonfiction to learn something new or legitimize and support their experiences and view of themselves. The Pact: Three Young Black Men Make a Promise to Fulfill a Dream or Think Big by Ben Carson tell stories of triumph, encouraging African American males to read and interact imaginatively with the authors. Starting small with familiar themes and issues from children's literature and building reading strategies that give students authority hopefully will lead students to eventually read rich text such as: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Go Tell It On The Mountain, If Beale Street Could Talk, Invisible Man, Song Of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, The Unknown World, and so on.
This unit will guide students to interpret, analyze and evaluate their reading as they cross the bridge from assigned text to independent reading and from so called urban books to recommended books. Students will look as texts through various lenses based on gender, class, race, history, and ideology. Students will evaluate the literary quality of the text by asking and answering questions concerning the author, the background, theme, setting, characters, plot, style, point of view, balance, universality and the text's relationship to society. Students will critically analyze texts by first defining the key terms needed to be a literary critic or evaluator. Following a Web Quest, students will chart the literary definitions by giving the characteristics, examples, purpose and opposites of the terms.
To "see" the texts through various lenses, students will first analyze children's literature (Cinderella, Hansel and Grethel, The Three Little Pigs, Tony the Tow Truck, The Ugly Duckling, and Charlotte's Web), using a reader's response formula, which includes the characteristics the reader brings to the text, the meaning of the text, and the features of the text that support the meaning. Students will explore the historical and biographical backgrounds of the text and/or the author, the role of the female and the role of the male, and issues of power, culture, class and race. As critics, students will look beyond the surface of the text for connections to society and other texts. They will ask questions that systematically examine the underlying political, social and/or economical motivation of the authors and the texts.
Students will practice the theoretical approaches inspired by identity politics on children's literature. They should be able to easily read and identify the elements and qualities that have sustained the young children's classics. As critics, students will feel comfortable reading fairy tales, fables, folktales, myths and stories for young children. They will be empowered to critique the stories and study the authors, the history and the background of the writing. After they gain confidence, students will read and use aspects of literary theory (the multiple perspectives of history, gender, class, ideology, and race) to critique Macbeth alongside the "urban" book, The Coldest Winter Ever, by Sister Souljah and a recommended book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neal Hurston. They will develop criteria for evaluating modern literature for older adolescents. Students should ask the questions: Why does a text continue to be read over time? What is the author trying to say? What is the author's purpose? How does the author support the purpose and the meaning? What is the universal theme that transcends time, place, class, race, politics, gender and even space?
As students develop skills for analyzing and evaluating literature, they will gradually assume the responsibility of deciding the criteria for selecting books. "Children learn when they take an active role in their own work." (Graves. 14) Using book reviews from magazines and established booklists as models, students will finally become editors and reviewers. Conclusions drawn from the focused approaches mentioned above should enable students to describe the qualities of their ten favorite books. The objective is for students to select and read challenging but interesting texts independently in order to fulfill the twenty-five books requirement. Students will compare and contrast traditional literature with recent books. Students will be permitted to include a so-called urban book to weigh against the evaluative criteria they have developed. They will set standards to develop a rubric to analyze and evaluate books. Based on the rubric, each group will generate a top ten booklist, write a comprehensive book assessment and publish a literary newsletter that will encourage the whole school to select texts from the list and the book reviews to fulfill their twenty-five-book requirement.
This curriculum unit will explore ways to engage African American high school students from grades nine to twelve to connect to the text and become confident, competent, committed, contributing critical and independent readers. The unit should be taught at the beginning of the school year for four weeks, but the focused approaches can be practiced throughout the year with many texts used in the English curriculum. The culminating assessment will be the book reviews in the newsletter created by the students.
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