Text Selection, Unit Objectives and Anticipated Outcomes
This unit focuses, thematically, on the ways in which we interpret the urban experience— eventually zeroing in on students' own experiences as urban citizens. It starts simple: with children's books such Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House— texts that are small, yet lend themselves to different methods of interpretation. It then moves into contemporary poetry and song lyrics— including spoken word poetry by Chicago poet Ayesha Jaco (sister of famed hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco). Similarly, my students are more comfortable looking at smaller chunks of text—even if they are, like Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro," deceptively complex. It's the same reason that struggling readers gravitate toward books in the popular Bluford series of young adult literature before they dive into Harry Potter or The Hunger Games: Smaller texts feel more approachable. Thus, I will begin to teach my students how to interpret texts by starting small. We will work our way up to larger texts, and— eventually— students will create and analyze their own texts.
I want to keep texts accessible in the beginning and keep to a minimum the necessary background knowledge students will need in order to interpret texts historically or biographically. We will then delve into less accessible texts (in terms of knowledge students come to the table with) such as the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks and Richard Wright's urban haiku. As we navigate these texts together, we will touch on the structure of each text as well as necessary outside information (biographical, historical, cultural, or otherwise) that can enhance interpretation. Finally, we will explore Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems— especially the poem simply entitled "Chicago".
Throughout the exploration of these texts— primarily poetic commentaries on the urban experience— students should engage with the unit's two distinct essential questions: What is interpretation? and What is Chicago, to you? Students will have gained an understanding not just of their own positions within an urban landscape (as depicted in their own original poetry); they will have learned how to read closely and interpret texts beyond what they will likely have been previously comfortable with. As they read the texts covered in this unit, students will respond in reading log format. Students will also produce original poems— their own "Chicago" poems— which will be published in a poetry chapbook and which they will analyze in log format. Those reading log responses will eventually transform into a literary analysis essay. By the end of the unit, students will understand how to grapple with literature like a literary critic and think beyond the level of basic comprehension.
Illuminating An Urban Experience
When I have previously used the word "urban" with my students, I have found that very few—unless they have taken a sociology elective—know how to accurately define the term. Once, when discussing a series of "urban fairytales" (Francesca Lia Block's Dangerous Angels), a student defined the word urban as "ghetto." I will revisit the word "ghetto" momentarily—but this word knowledge deficit is both intriguing and disturbing. So often my students are referred to as "urban public school students," "urban students of color," and "urban students of poverty," and yet—many do not know how to accurately define one of the adjectives used to describe them. So, the first hurdle is in getting students to define what urban is.
What Urban Is Not
I find the word "ghetto" problematic, though my students use it regularly. And, it ends up being the first in a series of words my students will throw out when I ask them to define "city." Though many of my students are, in fact, ghettoed by institutionalized racism and poverty, it is rare (except in referring to historic Jewish ghettos, such as the Warsaw Ghetto) that my students ever mean that. The adjective is frequently used to refer to elements of urban life, especially things that are less savory or are, in some way, sub-standard. Students might describe another's clothing as "ghetto" if he or she is wearing second-hand or out-of-style fashions; or, a student's hair might be seen as "ghetto" if it does not bear markers of an attempt at racial or ethnic assimilation. Because I see the word as a continuation of the oppression that my students inadvertently perpetuate, I know I have to turn any utterance of that word into a teachable moment for my students.
I do think it is helpful, though, to call to mind students' associations of words with places—urban, suburban, and rural. I think it is best to guide my students to a definition of the word "urban" by showing them images of what an urban area is not. This, for me, is relatively easy: I grew up in the Appalachian region and simply—as a way of defining not urban— share with my students pictures from my childhood— of my small, remote elementary school or of my friend's goat tied to a post outside of her front door. This was a part of my reality. I ask my students: What do you see? What do you not see?
After students get over the fact that—yes, my childhood friends lived among barnyard animals—they will likely get at a couple of things we can accept as fundamental truths about the differences between urban and rural life: urban areas have more people, rural areas tend to contain more agriculture, and so on. There are, of course, exceptions to all of these things that my students will, perhaps, tease out over time—such as urban farming movements like the Milwaukee-based Growing Power; but making informed generalizations as a first step can help guide students to interpretations of texts later in this unit.
What Makes a City?
Then, we will start talking about what things make the city a city. In Chicago, aside from the densely populated neighborhoods in which my students live, they might refer to The El (the city's elevated railways). Or, they may call to mind parks like Millennium Park or—in my school's neighborhood—Riis Park. Perhaps acknowledgement of the monoculture I came from in Southwestern Pennsylvania will help my students to recognize the diversity of food or cultures that surrounds them. There are, of course, elements of city life that my students will inevitably bring up because of the frequency with which they are confronted by them: gangs and drugs, primarily.
I think that the spoken word track "Ayesha Says"(15) accurately captures the ethnoscape(16) that my students encounter on a daily basis. She begins with single images from what very well may be Chicago (or a universal city): "Hijabs, hoodies, afros, locks / teddy bear, liquor bottle shrines, rocks / Tanks, prayer rugs, church pews, Mexican corn stands / Blood, sweat, and tears, police batons / Gas masks and bullets create graffiti on corners." I can imagine that my students will be able to make sense of some of the images in this performance. I will appeal to their senses, asking: What do you see?, What do you smell?, and What do you hear? The first few lines of this poem will form a jumping-off point for students to then add their own markers of urban life—such things as mentioned previously: riding the El, walking along Humboldt Park's Paseo Boricua, or experiencing a class trip to Millennium Park, for example.
Once students have collaborated on class and individual definitions of "urban" life, they can begin to move into coding poems as sociologists might code interviews: looking for single words or images that call to mind urban ideas or experiences. Take, for example, the memorable first stanza of Carl Sandburg's "Chicago:"(17)
HOG Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders
This poem will present a certain challenge to any student—from Chicago or not. I imagine students will be able to discern the last line of the stanza as explicitly urban (as it uses the word "city"), but what about the rest? To understand the status of the city as the "Hog Butcher for the World" or the "Player with Railroads," students might benefit from having a bit of historical context about the stockyards and railroads that were the focus of life for Chicagoans in the early 1900s. Or—they may simply latch onto the "City of the Big Shoulders" and see it as a celebration of the city's strength. No matter what sort of meaning they make, after completing the activities in this unit, students will have an idea of what Carl Sandburg has to say about cities; whether or not they agree with his depiction of the city as a universal entity (and—for my students specifically—his depiction of Chicago); and how his Chicago meshes with their own notions of space, place, and identity.
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