Introduction
It is so, so, so easy not to read. I’m not reading right now, for example. I also didn’t read this morning. And I love to read, I’m an English teacher. So I try to put myself in the shoes of my students (who happen to be studying at an inner-city school, but I’m sure the same could be said for the suburbs), many of whom attest to their detestation of reading.
Regularly.
It is an American epidemic. It does not improve year to year. In fact, it is worsening the easier it gets to not read – i.e., the easier it becomes for young people to indulge their passive sides with apps and screens and viral videos and text messages.
This is where our jobs can be most frustrating. Being a teacher of English in essence is being a teacher of life. This can be said for any subject, of course, but in an English classroom philosophy and meaning are simply part of our everyday course of instruction, so one of the ultimate struggles as an English teacher is to figure out how reading – the proven optimal medium through which to discover, grow and learn – can be related to young people. How do we convince students, many of whom can’t be bothered with reading text on paper, that these poems, these essays, these literary works are worth reading, when they are mired in the fickle and challenging world of the modern?
Focusing on the journey of identity can be a way to navigate this problem. The concept of identity can be confusing to many inner-city students and, indeed, students of all walks of life. What is it, really? Is it knowing oneself? Is it connecting with friends and family? Is it necessary to figure out exactly who we are by the time we are supposedly “adults”? These are questions that are addressed in many books, and students can learn a lot about themselves through perusing the experiences of others. Yet many students will still struggle without reaching for the lifeline of literature – with confidence, self-doubt, depression, confusion about identity and their place in the world – because it is so and increasingly so easy to not read.
Discovering ourselves through literature is nothing new – in fact it is one of the greatest things about the art form. However, when battling with videogames that have become as easy to access as opening a phone app, digital communication and social media, good old television, and countless other modern distractions, it will take extra effort for an educator to ensure literature “competes” in a student’s world; that the page does not falter when the screen is so prominent. To do this, we must focus on what I call a “stir” – that feeling inside of us that only literature can inspire – that emotion, gut feeling of a connection to the world that can only come when we immerse ourselves in the worlds created or illuminated for us in written prose. For thousands of years, from Gilgamesh to the Bible to Shakespeare to Harry Potter, literature has helped stir our emotion, imagination, and feeling of place in an unsure world. To encourage and inspire our students to foster or open that connection – to experience that “stir” – amidst all those distractions, we must use engaging, accessible, relevant and entertaining text.
The challenge then, for this curricular unit, is to choose engaging literature, short literature, literature that can be paired with mixed media (art, video, even social media), and literature that is accessible and entertaining and relevant. We will focus on literature, and even some art and visual representations, involving journeys and discoveries that can help teenagers do some discovering of their own – that we are all part of a large world with a lot of people and problems and wonders, and that we have a place in that world. This unit focuses on African-American literature as I teach at a school where the student body is comprised of 78% minority (50% African-American).1 However, the literature featured in this curricular unit could be engaging and accessible to most students. Meant for students in the latter half of their high school careers, this unit caters to that transitional period when students have begun to discover their identities, and now need to decide exactly what to do – the beginning of finding where in the world they belong.
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