Rationale and Content Objectives
There’s something important about the bird that was in the old woman’s hand in Toni Morrison’s famed Nobel Prize lecture. The bird (read as language) has never died, it never needed to be reincarnated, however, it has become transmogrified as digitality has progressed. In the parable of Morrison, we may try as children to broach the hands of the old woman, to find the wings of a flip phone, completely lost at the disconnection of what we expected and how we interact with literacy today. We may assume that, like flip phones, that literacy and language has become outdated and we may find ourselves completely trying to compete with the rotating lines of new technology that has arrived.
Like itinerant birds arriving upon their destined season, language can embody different moods upon the emotional constitution of the reader and upon the context of the work. This can almost be considered a truism, however, having our students engage with literature in a meaningful way when our students have a host of personal issues and may be limited by the “hard skills of literacy” is something that teachers take for granted. For many Black educators, there is a political reason why many of us became teachers, whether we want to admit it or not. Although the narrative that teaching is a “calling” oftentimes leave us susceptible to mistreatment, whenever Black teachers talk among ourselves, there are a lot of common stories that we tell. In our case, we may have had a Black educator who saw our and nurtured our genius despite our personal tragedy. We might have been wronged by a Black educator who modeled what “not” to be instead of being a lodestar for good behavior and standards. Or, in our undergrad, we had a “lightning in a bottle” moment when we understood that anti-blackness is global and that colonialism has caused a variety of Black social problems. Learning the lessons of our past, we voluntarily join a teaching program, study hard, and then inherit a class of our own in an underserved, Black school. Excited to pass on the lessons we have held for years, our students stare back with empty eyes and then those empty eyes stare down at their phones. Somehow, we find our way back to adults, thankful of teachers that had helped them to connect to their Blackness, to Africa, and our shared political destiny that we have as descendants of Africa. From the full hearts of thankful adults to the empty eyes of young children and adults, we start to become curious, if not incensed, at the disconnect.
Unresolved racist histories have helped create narratives that add to the sense of disconnection and alienation that we must always be on guard not to internalize. When examining the narratives that are impinged on Black students as being “unteachable” and “defective”, it is important to remember our ancestors and their role in liberating each other through the power of literacy. Cornelius reminds us that “literacy was a skill and a power which was shared with the slave community by those who learned. Enslaved African Americans often used the knowledge they had gained to teach fellow slaves”10. During the Antebellum Era, Black children attending schools increased in Northern states and decreased in southern States from 1850-1860, and Philadelphia was one of the leading cities in Black education during the time period.11 Philadelphia had 56 private black schools in 1860 with only 12 of them conducted by white people and there were also opportunities for public education during the time period12. It is important that we understand our history in order to have hope in each other to move forward.
In the interaction between the aspirations and the realities of teaching in media res can be sobering and frustrating. An apt device to help mediate the disconnection that happens between teacher’s intentions and student learning is how author Andre Aciman employs the grammatical structure of the irrealis mood. Aciman explains:
Most of our time is spent not in the present tense, as we so often claim, but in the irrealis mood—the mood of our fantasy life, the mood where we can shamelessly envision what might be, should be, could have been who we ourselves really were if we knew the open sesame to what might otherwise have been our true lives…We flit through wisps of tenses and moods because in these drifts that seem to take us away from what is around us, we glimpse life, not as its being lived or was lived but as it was meant to be and should be lived.
This may sound entirely too theoretical for an educator to find useful, especially when new educational initiatives are pushed upon us at any waking hour with little regard to the immediate needs of our students. However, it is critical for educators to examine how to close the gap about the lives that our students should live and our role for how we get them there. It seems unfair to theorize and suggest yet another gap for teachers and students to jump over with little direction. However, the gap can be closed with the simple question: If the subject of the dream is the dreamer, how can our Black students write themselves into the framework of their lives? Morrison acknowledges that “writers are among the most sensitive, the most intellectually anarchic, most representative, most probing of artists. The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar is the test of their power”13 . Reading society from the position of an active reader to the power of an active writer is one of the main goals of this unit.
I’d argue that it is important in our self-reflective practice to examine the imagination(s) between what is a worthwhile education for both the student and the teacher. I contend in this unit that there is a direct relationship between literacy and history, and that if history is not made aware to our students, moments of racialized violence can easily be (mis)read to be moments of situational instances, therefore upholding white supremacy and removing personal agency. Written plainly, one goal of this unit is a direct confrontation of our student’s learning attitudes of past historical events through journaling and surveying in service for educators to learn how to make our history of reading more relevant.
In service of meeting the goals of students taking charge of their personal lives and students taking ownership of history, students will engage with the essential questions of the unit, which are: how do you define intelligence? What role does learning have with regards to one’s intelligence? Who in your life taught you how to teach others? These questions will be explored with “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” by Carol Dweck, “Sparrow” by Paul Laurence Dunbar as a supplementary text to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (Chapter 15, excerpted, and “The Lost Love Letters of Frederick Douglass (from June 5th, 1892)” by Evie Shockley as a supplementary text to The Life and Narrative of Frederick Douglass (Chapter 10, excerpted). Most of these texts were chosen by the provided curriculum of the School District of Philadelphia by means of StudySync, but some of these texts were chosen by personal directive and through support of my seminar leader. It is worth noting that StudySync readings are online.
It is important that to note that this unit will employ Penn’s Literacy Network’s “Four Lenses of Literacy” in order to supplement and dynamize a digital curriculum. The four lenses of literacy include the meaning-center lens, the social lens, the language lens and the human lens. The meaning-centered lens takes the perspective that learning takes place when the reader takes ownership of learning through transacting with the text by means of their thought processes and their method of knowledge organization14. The social lens takes the perspective that curating a supportive community of learning that enables students’ use of prior experiences is the best way to actualize students’ literacy and language goals15. The language lens takes the perspective that language is best learned in application to skill-specific contexts16. The human lens takes the perspective of capturing the unique character of our students and respects the truth that students make meaning in personal ways17. The four senses of literacy are interdependent and integrated, however, in this unit, there may be more intentional focus on a particular lens than others in order to support the anticipated needs of students navigating a digital curriculum.
Texts
“The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” by Carol Dweck
Essential Question (s): How do you define intelligence? What role does intelligence have in your learning?
Carol Dweck has been on the personal docket of teachers due to her famed “Growth Mindset” dictum that had been pushed in our professional development, and it was only a matter of time that she reached students’ desks too. Before students read this text, they will be assigned to answer a BLAST question provided by StudySync that asks: “What special skills or talents do you have? Describe what you like to do and why you like doing it.”. Afterwards, they will be expected to engage with a short text by Howard Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences in order to prepare them for the article. Given the digital and occasionally alienating nature of digital “canned” curriculum, it is critical to have students to interact socially with each other.
Students will explore the difference between fixed mindset (innate intelligence) and mastery-oriented mindset (malleable intelligence). Students who inhabit a fixed mindset are more apt to give up on educational challenges quicker while mastery-oriented students are more open to approach problems as a welcome challenge. Dweck props the mastery-oriented student as ideal when she writes, “The mastery-oriented children on the other hand think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through hard work. They want to learn above all else. After all, if you believe that you can expand your intellectual skills, you want to do just that”18 Students will also confront how these mindsets contrast with how one’s self-perceptions can affect their personal and educational outcomes. I would want my students to reflect and track on their personal genealogies of learning, collaboratively, through conversation with their peers. I would want them to record when their fixed mindset got in the way of their learning or when mastery-oriented mindset supported their learning experience. I also want to invite criticism about thinking about learning in a binary and recognize that there are periods in which we can inhabit a fixed mindset at a particular moment in our learning; however, it does not always have a general character. In the spirit of the social lens, it would be necessary to facilitate a space where students can teach each other how they redirect their mental energies back to a mastery-oriented mindset when facing academic challenges. An instructor may provide a challenging math problem or a dense poem that needs to be translated and have students work in pairs to record mental strategies that they encounter while “solving” the problem presented. Students should share their strategies to the class, and then reflect on their initial opinions on the role that intelligence has on their personal learning after the group activity.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (supplemented by “Sparrow” by Paul L. Dunbar) (250)
Essential Question (s): Who in your life taught you how to teach others?
In order to preface the reading, students will be engaging with the poem “Sparrow” by Paul L. Dunbar in order to analyze the metaphor of the bird in the poem in the context of the poem as well as its context in the Bible (vis a vis Matthew 10:29-31). The metaphor is the perfect device to bridge the themes present in both the Lawrence and Angelou reading and is in line with the meaning-making literacy lens. Zora Neal Hurston highlights the role that metaphor has in African American literature. In her essay, “The Characteristics of Negro Expression”, Hurston says about metaphor:
The metaphor is of course very primitive. It is easier to illustrate than it is to explain because action came before speech. Let us make a parallel. Language is like money. In primitive communities actual goods, however bulky, are bartered for what one wants. This finally evolves into coin, the coin being not real wealth but a symbol of wealth. Still later even coin is abandoned for legal tender, and still later for cheques in certain usages. Every phase of Negro life is highly dramatised. No matter how joyful or how sad the case there is sufficient poise for drama. Everything is acted out. Unconsciously for the most part of course. There is an impromptu ceremony always ready for every hour of life. No little moment passes unadorned19.
The goal of this engagement with the poem is two-fold. First, through analyzing the metaphor of the bird in the poem, students can reflect on the many “birds” that they neglect in their lives, improving their sense of existential literacy. I believe if my students are aware of the importance of love, peace, and hope and how they are often undervalued due to our preoccupations on materialistic living or other unworthy distractions, students can also leverage that personal, existential insight to the plight of Marguerite in I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings. This will help students to examine what potential “birds” the narrator could have missed if there wasn’t an intervention by the gentlewoman in the text. Second, the introduction of Matthew 10:29-31, will provide the opportunity to introduce the role of the Bible within the Black American Literary Tradition and create the groundwork necessary to complicate the role of the sparrow in the poem. In Matthew 10:29-31, it reads: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”20 In the poem, it is well established that the birds represent the important things in life that are neglected by the toils and distractions of living. In the context of the Bible verse, the sparrow (or specifically, two) are also neglected and devalued by Man, however, they are still protected and deeply valued by God. It is through the confirmation of God’s attention of two “insignificant” sparrows that God’s love for humanity and His right for divine rulership, is deeply affirmed. Talking about God’s loving-kindness may seem more appropriate in a church than in a school, but if asked tactfully, the philosophical angle of how we approach our values as “things-in-itself” or “things-for-itself” may further enrich students’ existential literacy. With the parable of the sparrow, the value of God’s love is sublime, and by acknowledging it as such, can lead students to investigate if there are values that they hold sublimely (or if there is any possibility for humans to have sublime values). At the very least, students can understand that despite the terrible drama that ensues in the text, the presence of a loving God is at the foreground of I Know How the Caged Bird Sings and other Christian-inspired Black literature that provides a hopeful milieu in many of their works.
In Chapter 15 of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the reader is placed in an arc of healing after Marguerite’s sexual assault. In this chapter, Marguerite has met Mrs. Flowers, a socialite in the Black part of her hometown, who takes on the part of a role model for the narrator. As said by the narrator, “She was one of the few gentlewomen I have ever known and has remained throughout my life the measure of what a human being can be”21. Despite her shy and reserved nature, Mrs. Flowers chose to build a relationship with Marguerite and taught her how to read and taught her what it meant to be a person with dignity. The essential question for this reading is layered as it is deep. Mrs. Flowers taught Marguerite how to teach others, and Marguerite is teaching us (as readers) through her narrative. Understanding the themes of abuse, trauma, and shame is integral to the novel, and students through personal narrative will reflect on the role models that they had in their life and how they reflect their best qualities through their own actions. This is in line with the human lens, and the instructor should take leadership for modeling self-reflection by writing a sample assignment. This writing assignment encourages self-reflexivity and metacognition so that students are able to come to terms with who they are so that they can take full appreciation of the loved ones in their life.
The Life and Narrative of Frederick Douglass (supplemented by “The Lost Love Letters of Frederick Douglass” by Evie Shockley)
Essential Question (s): Who in your life taught you how to teach others?
In this particular instance, students reading Chapter 10 of The Life and Narrative of Frederick Douglass will supplement the reading. This decision is based off the meaning-making literacy lens, as the poem by Evie Shockley is high context and students engaging with Douglass’ narrative before engaging with the poem may prove to have more beneficial returns than expected. In Chapter 10 (titled “Learning to Read”) of the Narrative, Douglass details his relationship with Mrs. Auld (introduced as Mrs. Sophia), the wife of a slaveowner, and how the institution of slavery had changed her relationship with him over time. Initially, Mrs. Auld took favor with Frederick and taught him how to read. Douglass details that he was not exposed to the worst of slave labor and that he was treated as a child first, slave second. In fact, Mrs. Auld treated him as one of her children (as much as a slaveowner could) and held Frederick accountable for Mrs. Auld’s son. The relationship between Frederick and Mrs. Auld changed once her husband challenged her for teaching Frederick how to read, and that is when Frederick became aware of the dynamic between master and slave. For this particular reading, I would want students to track the dynamic between Frederick and Mrs. Auld by using adjectives to describe their characters. Characterization will be important for understanding how the institution of slavery changes people, especially the enslaved relationship with the world that they inhabit. After reading the chapter, students will reflect on the question: What was the biggest lesson you learned from someone who hurt you? This can be accomplished as a writing assignment or as a pair and share, but what is important is that students maintain a firm command of narrative when explaining their answer.
In order for students to engage with the poem, The Lost Love Letters of Frederick Douglass, the language lens and meaning-making lens will have to be applied. The instructor can make the choice to build background knowledge by providing the important names provided in the poem or have students take initiative to research the names in the poem. Students will study structure and form in order to unpack the theme in the poem. In the spirit of mutual understanding, the instructor should at least identify the speaker and the audience for the class. Students should break into pairs and identify how the themes of sacrifice and loss contributed to his identity as a formerly enslaved person. Due to its’ clear prose, it is easy for readers to take the order of events in the Narrative for granted. Poetry complicates our engagement with the events, and forces the reader to slow down and evaluate the circumstances and consequences of the political violence that Frederick had to endure. Students will be tasked to analyze and direct other readers about how Douglass’ role as an educator changed in relationship to the medium in which is voice was presented. Students will be tasked to compare and contrast the lessons learned from each medium, and create a small primer for free and enslaved Africans during that time period.
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