CATE Conference 2018

A few weeks ago, Liz and I flew down to San Diego for our second CATE (California Association of Teachers of English) Conference.

 

Last year, the conference was in Santa Clara (a not-too-long drive for us), and we gave a presentation based on a chapter of our book, Method to the Madness. The presentation was titled, Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of Literature (which is also our book’s subtitle).

 

This year, our presentation was based on another chapter of the book and was titled, Contemporary Short Fiction: the Key to Unlocking Potential and Leveling the Playing Field for Students of All Ability Levels (long title). We had given a longer version of the presentation to Tracy Unified School District in January.

 

The presentation began with the rationale for building curriculum centered on quality literature (fiction, poetry, drama, creative nonfiction). There was (still is?) a misperception that Common Core equals less literature in the English classroom and more “informational” reading. This, of course, is a misunderstanding that the framers of the standards have addressed: “Said plainly, stories, drama, poetry, and other literature account for the majority of reading that students will do in the high school ELA classroom. […]The Standards could not be clearer: ELA classrooms must focus on literature — that is not negotiable, but a requirement of high school ELA.” (David Coleman & Susan Pimental)

 

Next, Liz gave her pitch for using contemporary short stories in the English classroom, particularly as an opening unit, such stories being accessible to a variety of students (including those with attendance issues). These high-quality stories can be taught in a single class period (or two), and they offer students the opportunity to engage with a wide variety of voices while allowing the teacher the opportunity to establish (or remediate) essential skills.

 

We had prepared to use three short stories—Sticks by George Saunders, The Flowers by Amy Walker, and How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes) by Lorrie Moore—but we only got through the first two.

 

Each of those stories (Sticks and The Flowers) fits onto a single page, but each story is very meaty. We asked our participants to read and annotate each story, and, despite (as mentioned) each story being only one page, they each led to a wide-ranging academic discussion of the significant choices being made by the author.

 

(Note: all of the above was great, great, great, and a lot of fun, because our participants were so great, and also because Liz is so great at this.)

 

We ended with a discussion of narrative structure (the traditional plot curve, which is sometimes incorrectly perceived as a restraint to creativity and voice [a view I once embarrassingly held] but that instead allows for infinite variation).

 

We were getting short of our time, there were several slides to go, and I was sort of floundering, describing the plots of Pixar movies. Liz would later say that when I gave a third such example, she knew I was in trouble.

 

But a participant saved me by asking if, when learning about this narrative structure, which is so obvious in Pixar movies, students can apply the elements (ground situation, inciting incident, conflict, complications, climax, resolution) to something like The Flowers, which is so short and describes a single event.

 

This was exactly where, despite all floundering, we were supposed to be headed, and, as a group, we tried it. It turns out, despite being only one page and describing only one incident, The Flowers “fits” the narrative structure perfectly (infinite variation).

 

So, we modeled lessons on two one-page short stories (Sticks, by the way, Liz describes as the only “magic bullet” for English teachers: a two-paragraph story that students always like and always have so much to say about). Each story is accessible to a variety of students, and each story provides the opportunity for critical reading, critical thinking, analytical writing, and academic discussion.

 

Several people came up at the end to buy books (which was very nice), and a few told us that it was the best presentation they had been to all weekend (but maybe they say that to all the presenters).

Testimonials from August 2nd and 3rd Professional Development Workshop at Tracy Unified School District

Earlier this month, we facilitated a professional development workshop for English Language Arts teachers at Tracy Unified School District in Tracy, CA.

The workshop was titled Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of Literature and its focus was building literature-based units of study that meet the demands of Common Core.

The following are some testimonials from that workshop:

“Finally! A workshop that was teacher-driven by competent educators. The presenters were knowledgeable and accessible. The book is teacher-friendly and very helpful. Thank you!”

“I rarely write ‘strongly agree’! Thanks for the coaching and patience! Excellent time flow management! Great scaffolding for middle school! Wonderful content and help!”

“Very organized and practical. Everything I learned I can apply to my own classroom. Thought the ‘So what?’ phrase is great; can’t wait to see their reaction after saying it for the 1,000th time.”

“Please have the James’s come back. I was very impressed and really enjoyed having our speakers. Great job.”

“Great, useful activities and focus on rigor.”

“Time was well-spent and informative. Liked the ‘So what?’ approach.”

“Great, dynamic duo!”

“The presenters were knowledgeable and kept things interesting.”

“I learned some new ideas that I can implement this year.”

“This was quite helpful. Having actual teachers who work with students and have used these techniques was a smart choice. I look forward to using this this year.”

“Thank you for helping us enrich our curriculum w/rigor. I am looking forward to reading your book.”

“Two days in a row with lessons I can use immediately!”

“The instructors were very organized and had us active the entire time.”

“Really developed ways to promote understanding and creating connections with literature.”

“This has been the most relevant workshop in years. Thoroughly satisfied.”

“Bring Liz and Bill back!!!”

 

Teaching Native Son by Richard Wright, Part Three (Themes AND Motifs)

This is part three of a series of posts about teaching Richard Wright’s 1940 novel, Native Son (for part one, click here, and for part two, click here). This post will share a series of lessons that help students recognize (and analyze the effects of) key themes and motifs within the novel, the final product of those lessons being a full-length essay that, in part, was composed collaboratively.

Materials for all of these lessons are available in our Teachers Pay Teachers Store.

Lesson #1: Color-Coding a Scene (1-2 Days)

In this first lesson, students will re-read and color-code a particular scene from early in the novel. The scene is significant because it serves as a microcosm of the novel’s central conflict.

This lesson works best when students have already read at least Book One of the novel, in which this scene appears.

Here is the scene (students will need their own copy, as either a physical or a digital handout):

He walked toward the poolroom. When he got to the door he saw Gus half a block away, coming toward him. He stopped and waited. It was Gus who had first thought of robbing Blum’s.

“Hi, Bigger!”

“What you saying, Gus?”

“Nothing. Seen G.H or Jack yet?”

“Naw. You?”

“Naw. Say, got a cigarette?”

“Yeah.”

Bigger took out his pack and gave Gus a cigarette; he lit his and held the match for Gus. They leaned their backs against the red-brick wall of a building, smoking, their cigarettes slanting white across their black chins. To the east Bigger saw the sun burning a dazzling yellow. In the sky above him a few big white clouds drifted. He puffed silently, relaxed, his mind pleasantly vacant of purpose. Every slight movement in the street evoked a casual curiosity in him. Automatically, his eyes followed each car as it whirred over the smooth black asphalt. A woman came by and he watched the gentle sway of her body until she disappeared into a doorway. He sighed, scratched his chin and mumbled,

“Kinda warm today.”

“Yeah,” Gus said.

“You get more heat from this sun than from them old radiators at home.”

“Yeah; them old white landlords sure don’t give much heat.”

“And they always knocking at your door for money.”

“I’ll be glad when summer comes.”

“Me too,” Bigger said.

He stretches his arms above his head and yawned; his eyes moistened. The sharp precision of the world of steel and stone dissolved into blurred waves. He blinked and the world grew hard again, mechanical, distinct. A weaving motion in the sky made him turn his eyes upward; he saw a slender streak of billowing white blooming anst the deep blue. A plane was writing high up in the air.

“Look! Bigger said.

“What?”

“That plane writing up there,” Bigger said, pointing.

“Oh!”

They squinted at a tiny ribbon of unfolding vapor that spelled out the word: USE …The plane was so far away that at times the strong glare of the sun blanked it from sight.

“You can hardly see it.” Gus said.

“Looks like a little bird,” Bigger breathed with childlike wonder.

“Them white boys sure can fly,” Gus said.

“Yeah,” Bigger said, wistfully. “They get a chance to do everything.”

Noiselessly, the tiny plane looped and veered, vanishing and appearing, leaving behind it a long trail of white plumage, like coils of fluffy paste being squeezed from a tube; a plume-coil that grew and swelled and slowly began to fade into the air at the edges. The plane wrote another word: SPEED . . .

“How high you reckon he is? Bigger asked

“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred miles; maybe a thousand.”

“I could fly one of them things if I had a chance,” Bigger mumbled reflectively, as though talking to himself.

Gus pulled down the corners of his lips, stepped out from the wall, squared his shoulders, doffed his cap, bowed low and spoke with mock deference:

“Yessuh.”

“You go to hell,” Bigger said, smiling.

“Yessuh,” Gus said again.

“I could fly a plane if I had a chance,” Bigger said.

“If you wasn’t black and if you had some money and if they’d let you go to that aviation school, you could fly a plane,” Gus said.

For a moment Bigger contemplated all the “ifs” that Gus had mentioned. Then both boys broke into hard laughter, looking at each other through squinted eyes. When their laughter subsided, Bigger said in a voice that was half-question and half-statement:

“It’s funny how the white folks treat us, ain’t it?”

“It better be funny,” Gus said.

“Maybe they are right in not wanting us to fly,” Bigger said. ” ‘Cause if I took a plane up I’d take a couple of bombs along and drop ’em as sure as hell ….”

They laughed again, still looking upward. The plane sailed and dipped and spread another word against the sky: GASOLINE….

“Use Speed Gasoline,” Bigger mused, rolling the words slowly from his lips. “God, I’d like to fly up there in that sky.”

“God’ll let you fly when He gives you your wings up in heaven,” Gus said.

They laughed again, reclining against the wall, smoking, the lids of their eyes drooped softly against the sun. Cars whizzed past on rubber tires. Bigger’s face was metallically black in the strong sunlight. There was in his eyes a pensive, brooding amusement, as of a man who had been long confronted and tantalized by a riddle whose answer seemed always just on the verge of escaping him, but prodding him irresistibly on to seek its solution. The silence irked Bigger; he was anxious to do something to evade looking so squarely at this problem.

“Let’s play ‘white,’ ” Bigger said, referring to a game of play-acting in which he and his friends imitated the ways and manners of the white folks.

“I don’t feel like it,” Gus said.

“General!” Bigger pronounced in a sonorous tone, looking at Gus expectantly.

“Aw, hell! I don’t want to play,” Gus whined.

“You’ll be court-martialed,” Bigger said, snapping out his words with military precision.

“Nigger, you nuts!” Gus laughed.

“General! Bigger tried again, determinedly.

Gus looked wearily at Bigger, then straightened, saluted and answered:

“Yessuh.”

“Send your men over the river at dawn and attack the enemy’s left flank,” Bigger ordered.

“Yessuh.”

“Send the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Regiments,” Bigger said, frowning. “And attack with tanks, gas, planes, and infantry.”

“Yessuh!” Gus said again, saluting and clicking his heels.

For a moment they were silent, facing each other, their shoulders thrown back, their lips compressed to hold down the mounting impulse to laugh. Then they guffawed, partly at themselves and partly at the vast white world that sprawled and towered in the sun before them.

“Say, what’s a ‘left flank’?” Gus asked.

“I don’t know,” Bigger said. “I heard it in the movies.”

They laughed again. After a bit they relaxed and leaned against the wall, smoking. Bigger saw Gus cup his left hand to his ear, as though holding a telephone receiver; and cup his right hand to his mouth, as though talking into a transmitter.

“Hello,” Gus said.

“Hello,” Bigger said. “Who’s this?”

“This is Mr. J. P. Morgan speaking,” Gus said.

“Yessuh, Mr. Morgan, Bigger said; his eyes filled with mock adulation and respect.

“I want you to sell twenty thousand shares of U. S. Steel in the market this morning, Gus said.

“At what price, suh?” Bigger asked.

“Aw, just dump ’em at any price,” Gus said with casual irritation. “We’re holding too much.”

“Yessuh,” Bigger said.

“And call me at my club at two this afternoon and tell me if the President telephoned,” Gus said.

“Yessuh, Mr. Morgan” Bigger said

Both of them made gestures signifying that they were hanging up telephone receivers; then they bent double, laughing.

“I bet that’s just the way they talk,” Gus said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Bigger said.

They were silent again. Presently, Bigger cupped his hand to his mouth and spoke through an imaginary telephone transmitter.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” Gus answered. “Who’s this?”

“This is the President of the United States speaking,” Bigger said.

“Oh, yessuh, Mr. President,” Gus said.

“I’m calling a cabinet meeting this afternoon at four o’clock and you, as Secretary of State, must be there.”

“Well, now, Mr. President,” Gus said, “I’m pretty busy. They raising sand over there in Germany and I got to send ’em a note….”

“But this is important,” Bigger said.

“What you going to take up at this cabinet meeting?” Gus asked.

“Well, you see, the niggers is raising sand all over the country,” Bigger said, struggling to keep back his laughter. “We’ve got to do something with these black folks….”

“Oh, if it’s about the niggers, I’ll be right there, Mr. President,” Gus said.

They hung up imaginary receivers and leaned against the wall and laughed. A street car rattled by. Bigger sighed and swore.

“Goddammit!”

“What’s the matter?”

“They don’t let us do nothing.”

“Who?”

“The white folks.”

“You talk like you just now finding that out,” Gus said.

“Naw. But I just can’t get used to it,” Bigger said. “I swear to God I can’t. I know I oughtn’t think about it, but I can’t help it. Every time I think about it I feel like somebody’s poking a red-hot iron down my throat. Goddammit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like living in jail. Half the time I feel like I’m on the outside of the world peeping in through a knot-hole in the fence….”

“Aw, ain’t no use feeling that way about it. It don’t help none,” Gus said.

“You know one thing?” Bigger said.

“What?”

“Sometimes I feel like something awful’s going to happen to me,” Bigger spoke with a tinge of bitter pride in his voice.

“What you mean?” Gus asked, looking at him quickly. There was fear in Gus’s eyes.

“I don’t know. I just feel that way. Every time I get thinking about me being black and they being white, me being here and they being there, I feel like something awful’s going to happen to me….”

“Aw, for chrissakes! There ain’t nothing you can do about it. How come you want to worry yourself? You black and they make the laws…. “

“Why they make us live in one corner of the city? Why don’t they let us fly planes and run ships….”

Gus hunched Bigger with his elbow and mumbled good-naturedly, “Aw, nigger, quit thinking about it. You’ll go nuts.”

The plane was gone from the sky and the white plumes of floating smoke were thinly spread, vanishing. Because he was restless and had time on his hands, Bigger yawned again and hoisted his arms high above his head.

“Nothing ever happens,” he complained.

“What you want to happen?”

“Anything,” Bigger said with a wide sweep of his dingy palm, a sweep that included all the possible activities of the world.

Their eyes were riveted; a slate-colored pigeon swooped down to the middle of the steel car tracks and began strutting to and fro with ruffled feathers, its fat neck bobbing with regal pride. A street car rumbled forward and the pigeon rose swiftly through the air on wings stretched so taut and sheer that Bigger could see the gold of the sun through their translucent tips. He tilted his head and watched the slate-colored bird flap and wheel out of sight over the edge of a high roof.

“Now, if I could only do that,” Bigger said.

Gus laughed.

“Nigger, you nuts.”

“I reckon we the only things in this city that can’t go where we want to go and do what we want to do.”

“Don’t think about it,” Gus said.

“I can’t help it.”

“That’s why you feeling like something awful’s going to happen to you,” Gus said “You think too much.”

“What in hell can a man do?” Bigger asked, turning to Gus.

“Get drunk and sleep it off.”

“I can’t. I’m broke.”

Bigger crushed his cigarette and took out another and offered the package to Gus. They continued smoking. A huge truck swept past, lifting scraps of white paper into the sunshine; the bits settled down slowly.

“Gus?”

“Hunh?”

“You know where the white folks live?”

“Yeah,” Gus said, pointing eastward. “Over across the ‘line’; over there on Cottage Grove Avenue.”

“Naw; they don’t,” Bigger said.

“What you mean?” Gus asked, puzzled. “Then, where do they live?”

Bigger doubled his fist and struck his solar plexus.

“Right down here in my stomach,” he said.

Gus looked at Bigger searchingly, then away, as though ashamed.

“Yeah; I know what you mean,” he whispered.

“Every time I think of ’em, I feel ’em,” Bigger said.

“Yeah; and in your chest and throat, too,” Gus said.

“It’s like fire.”

“And sometimes you can’t hardly breathe….”

Bigger’s eyes were wide and placid, gazing into space.

“That’s when I feel like something awful’s going to happen to me….” Bigger paused, narrowed his eyes. “Naw; it ain’t like something going to happen to me. It’s …It’s like I was going to do something I can’t help….”

“Yeah!” Gus said with uneasy eagerness. His eyes were full of a look compounded of fear and admiration for Bigger. “Yeah; I know what you mean. It’s like you going to fall and don’t know where you going to land….”

Gus’s voice trailed off. The sun slid behind a big white cloud and the street was plunged in cool shadow; quickly the sun edged forth again and it was bright and warm once more. A long sleek black car, its fenders glinting like glass in the sun, shot past them at high speed and turned a corner a few blocks away. Bigger pursed his lips and sang:

“Zoooooooooom!”

“They got everything,” Gus said.

“They own the world,” Bigger said.

“Aw, what the hell,” Gus said. “Let’s go in the poolroom.”

 

Instruct students, in small groups, to re-read the scene and color code it. They can create their own key, but they must include a different color for each of the following elements:

MOTIFS

WHITENESS (white people but also white things)

SIGHT (or blindness, which is its opposite)

FLIGHT

SUNLIGHT/HEAT/FIRE

THEMES

ALIENATION

DETERMINISM (which is the opposite of free will)

FEAR and HATE/ANGER (which in this book seem to go together [like Yoda said])

 

If students are accessing a physical copy of the scene, they of course can color code using colored pencils, highlighters, crayons, etc. If they are accessing the scene digitally, they can color code using font color or highlighting features.

 

After the groups have completed their color-coding, instruct them to do the following:

Instructions: As a group, but in each person’s notebook:

  1. Write a statement (one sentence; any pattern) about the scene that combines at least one motif and at least one theme.
  2. Write a statement (one sentence; any pattern) that answers this question: How does this scene reveal the central conflict of the entire novel?

Once groups have drafted their two statements, they will send a representative to write their statements on the board. The board should already have an area designated for “statement #1” and another area designated for “statement #2”.

 

Then, instruct students—individually—to do the following:

Instructions: Take a sheet of binder. On the top of one side, write one group’s “statement 1” (it does not have to be the statement from your group).

Flip to the other side. Write one group’s “statement 2” at the top and do the same thing.

The statements are your topic sentences. On each side of the paper, use your color-coded scene to write a detailed paragraph supporting that topic sentence. The paragraph should include specific details from the text that support the topic sentence.

 

On the following day, students can peer review one another’s paragraphs, and/or the teacher can model feedback on a few examples using the document camera (if one is available). Students can then choose one of the two paragraphs to revise and write a second draft of.

 

Lesson #2: The Motif of Whiteness

This follow-up lesson will focus on one of the motifs that students color-coded for in the previous lesson

The essential question of this lesson is: What is the effect of the motif of whiteness in the novel?

It may be interesting to note to students that the word white appears 498 times in the novel, Native Son, which works out to about 1.3 times per page and which leads to a discussion that is at the center of this lesson: Why does the word white appear so often in the novel? What is the effect of the word white appearing so often in the novel?

After students have shared their initial thoughts (with peers and with the whole class), instruct students—in their groups—to get out their novels and scour the text in search of the most significant passage for each of the following symbols:

MAJOR SYMBOLS OF WHITENESS

  1. Mrs. Dalton
  2. Snow/the blizzard
  3. The map in the newspaper
  4. The water tank

Once groups have found their passages (which may take some time), instruct groups to do the following:

For each of the four passages, write a statement (one sentence) about the effect of the symbol in the passage (what it represents; why that matters).

 

Representatives from each group will then write their passage (pg. #, “first two words…last two words”) and their statement on the board, in areas designated for each symbol. Individual students will record the passages and statements in their notebook for later use in their essay.

Lesson #3: The Motif of Blindness

This lesson will shift to a second key motif in the novel: blindness. Provide students with the four passages below (in each, occurrences of the word

The essential question for this lesson is: What is the effect of the motif of blindness in the novel?Provide students with the four passages below (in each, occurrences of the word

Provide students with the four passages below (in each, occurrences of the word blind are in bold), and give the following instructions:

Instructions: Do the following for each passage (1 through 4):

  1. Read it.
  2. In the space at the bottom, summarize (briefly; one or two sentences) what is happening in the novel at that moment.
  3. Below that, write a statement about blindness in the passage.

When finished, write a topic sentence about the motif of blindness in the novel. HINT: Does the motif reveal/reflect any important themes?

 

Passage #1:

Now that the ice was broken, could he not do other things? What was there to stop him? While sitting there at the table waiting for his breakfast, he felt that he was arriving at something which had long eluded him. Things were becoming clear; he would know how to act from now on. The thing to do was to act just like others acted, lived like they lived, and while they were not looking, do what you wanted. They would never know. He felt in the quiet presence of his mother, brother, and sister a force, inarticulate and unconscious, making for living without thinking, making for peace and habit, making for a hope that blinded. He felt that they wanted and yearned to see life in a certain way; they needed a certain picture of the world; there was one way of living they preferred above all others; and they were blind to what did not fit. They did not want to see what others were doing if that doing did not feed their own desires. All one had to do was to be bold, do something nobody thought of. The whole thing came to him in the form of a powerful and simple feeling; there was in everyone a great hunger to believe that made him blind, and if he could see while others were blind, then he could get what he wanted and never be caught at it. Now, who on earth would think that he, a black timid Negro boy, would murder and burn a rich white girl and would sit and wait for his breakfast like this? Elation filled him.

He sat at the table watching the snow fall past the window and many things became plain. No, he did not have to hide behind a wall or a curtain now; he had a safer way of being safe, an easier way. What he had done last night had proved that. Jan was blind. Mary had been blind. Mr. Dalton was blind. And Mrs. Dalton was blind; yes, blind in more ways than one. Bigger smiled slightly. Mrs. Dalton had not known that Mary was dead while she had stood over the bed in that room last night. She had thought that Mary was drunk, because she was used to Mary’s coming home drunk. And Mrs. Dalton had not known that he was in the room with her; it would have been the last thing she would have thought of. He was black and would not have figured in her thoughts on such an occasion. Bigger felt that a lot of people were like Mrs. Dalton, blind….

 

Passage #2:

He paid the money, put the package into his pocket and went out to the corner to wait for a car. One came; he got on and rode eastward, wondering what kind of note he would write. He rang the bell for the car to stop, got off and walked through the quiet Negro streets. Now and then he passed an empty building, white and silent in the night. He would make Bessie hide in one of these buildings and watch for Mr. Dalton’s car. But the ones he passed were too old; if one went into them they might collapse. He walked on. He had to find a building where Bessie could stand in a window and see the package of money when it was thrown from the car. He reached Langley Avenue and walked westward to Wabash Avenue. There were many empty buildings with black windows, like blind eyes, buildings like skeletons standing with snow on their bones in the winter winds. But none of them were on corners. Finally, at Michigan Avenue and East Thirty-sixth Place, he saw the one he wanted. It was tall, white, silent, standing on a well-lighted corner. By looking from any of the front windows Bessie would be able to see in all four directions. Oh! He had to have a flashlight! He went to a drug store and bought one for a dollar. He felt in the inner pocket of his coat for his gloves. Now, he was ready. He crossed the street and stood waiting for a car. His feet were cold and he stamped them in the snow, surrounded by people waiting, too, for a car. He did not look at them; they were simply blind people, blind like his mother, his brother, his sister, Peggy, Britten, Jan, Mr. Dalton, and the sightless Mrs. Dalton and the quiet empty houses with their black gaping windows.

 

Passage #3:

He closed his eyes, longing for a sleep that would not come. During the last two days and nights he had lived so fast and hard that it was an effort to keep it all real in his mind. So close had the danger and death come that he could not feel that it was he who had undergone it all. And, yet, out of it all, over and above all that had happened, impalpable but real, there remained to him a queer sense of power. He had done this. He has brought all this about. In all of his life these two murders were the most meaningful things that had ever happened to him. He was living, truly and deeply, no matter what others might think, looking at him with their blind eyes. Never had he had the chance to live out the consequences of his actions; never had his will been so free as in this night and day of fear and murder and flight.

He had killed twice, but in a true sense it was not the first time he had ever killed. He had killed many times before, but only during the last two days had this impulse assumed the form of actual killing. Blind anger had come often and he had either gone behind his curtain or wall, or had quarreled and fought. And yet, whether in running away or in fighting, he had felt the need of the clean satisfaction of facing this thing in all its fullness, of fighting it out in the wind and sunlight, in front of those whose hate for him was so unfathomably deep that, after they had shunted him off into a corner of the city to rot and die; they could turn to him, as Mary had that night in the car, and say: “I’d like to know how your people live.”

But what was he after? What did he want? What did he love and what did he hate? He did not know. There was something he knew and something he felt; something the world gave him and something he himself had; something spread out in front of him and something spread out in back; and never in all his life, with this black skin of his, had the two worlds, thought and feeling, will and mind, aspiration and satisfaction, been together; never had he felt a sense of wholeness. Sometimes, in his room or in the sidewalk, the world seemed to him a strange labyrinth even when the streets were straight and the walls were square; a chaos which made him feel that something in him should be able to understand it, divide it, focus it. But only under the stress of hate was the conflict resolved. He had been so conditioned in a cramped environment that hard words or kicks alone knocked him upright and made him capable of action—action that was futile because the world was too much for him. It was then that he closed his eyes and struck out blindly, hitting what or whom he could, not looking or caring what or who hit back.

 

Passage #4:

“Allow me, Your Honor, before I proceed to cast blame and ask for mercy, to state emphatically that I do not claim that this boy is a victim of injustice, nor do I ask that this Court be sympathetic with him. That is not my object in embracing his character and his cause. It is not to tell you only of suffering that I stand here today, even though there are frequent lynchings and floggings of Negroes throughout the country. If you react only to that part of what I say, then you, too, are caught as much as he in the mire of blind emotions, and this vicious game will roll on, like a bloody river to a bloodier sea. Let us banish from our minds the thought that this is an unfortunate victim of injustice. The very concept of injustice rests upon a premise of equal claims, and this boy here today makes no claim upon you. If you think or feel that he does, then you, are blinded by a feeling as terrible as that which you condemn in him, and without as much justification. The feeling of guilt which has caused all of the mob-fear and mob-hysteria is the counterpart of his own hate.

“Rather, I plead with you to see a mode of life in our midst, a mode of life stunted and distorted, but possessing its own laws and claims, an existence of men growing out of the soil prepared by the collective but blind will of a hundred million people. I beg you to recognize human life draped in a form and guise alien to ours, but springing from a soil plowed and sown by all our hands. I ask you to recognize the laws and processes flowing from such a condition, understand them, seek to change them. If we do none of these, then we should not pretend horror or surprise when thwarted life expressed itself in fear and hate and crime.

 

Once students have completed the steps above and have composed a topic sentence (which they can do individually, in pairs, or in groups), instruct them to compose a paragraph in support of the topic sentence, using specific details from the four passages.

 

Final Essay

The final product for this series of lessons is an essay. In part, it is a collaborative essay because students will incorporate topic sentences or other statements composed by their classmates, but each individual will be responsible for the vital work of organizing the essay and providing sufficient textual evidence.

Provide students with the following essay prompt:

PROMPT: Identify two themes that are present in the novel, Native Son. Compose an essay that discusses…

…how the author uses motifs and symbols to develop those themes,

…the relationship between the themes and the novel’s central conflict (including how the conflict is resolved)

how the two themes interact and build upon one another as the novel progresses.

 

This is a challenging prompt, but students have been preparing for it over the past three lessons, and they have generated a fair amount of material that can be incorporated into a first draft.

CATE Conference 2017: Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of Literature

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Two Fridays ago (February 17th),  Liz and I attended the California Association of Teachers of English (CATE) Conference in Santa Monica, CA, where we led a workshop on creating critical thinkers through the study of literature.

We had a group of 25-30 English teachers from around the state, all of whom were very nice and very engaged (and a bunch of them bought our book, which was super nice).

[We also had a really really great time! And we would have stayed the whole weekend but, you know…babysitters and kids and all that {thanks, by the way, to Liz’s mom, Ellen, for watching our kids}. And we really really want to thank the people behind the CATE Conference for having us! It was great! Thank you!]

The workshop was based on our book, Method to the Madness: A Common Core Guide to Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of Literature, and began with the rationale for using quality literature to meet the common core standards (and that common core in the English classroom does not mean more informational texts and less imaginative literature). Our premise is that by building units around quality works of fiction, drama, poetry, and creative nonfiction, you can meet all of the common core literacy standards (including the informational text standards).

We then moved on to an activity for introducing close reading (or critical reading) in the classroom. The purpose of the activity (which can be found in Chapter 2 of Method to the Madness) is to help students…

…recognize and identify significant choices made by an author

…analyze and evaluate the effects of those choices (that’s the “So what?”)

…use the appropriate academic language (literary terms) when discussing those choices

…prepare a text for analysis by annotating it.

The activity also helps students recognize that literary terms work together–specifically, in this case, diction and imagery combine to create a particular mood, or atmosphere.

Our next activity was centered on a short story by George Saunders (whose first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, was recently released). The story is titled “Sticks”. It’s just a two-paragraph story, but there’s a lot packed into those two paragraphs. The story was included in Saunders’ 2013 collection, Tenth of December, but “Sticks” is actually an older story that was first published in 1995.

Here’s a picture of Liz reading the story in the workshop:

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Liz and I have been using “Sticks” in the classroom for about a decade. It’s a great teaching tool precisely because it is so short while being so meaty.

For the workshop, we read the story aloud and then put the participants into groups of four. The groups had five minutes to annotate the story and identify as many literary techniques and devices as they could (they were also given a list of these).

At the end of the five minutes, each group was given a piece of poster paper, on which they were instructed to write a statement about the story. The statement had to make a declarative claim and also had to incorporate at least one literary term.

Each group then shared their statement and supported it using specific evidence from their annotated story.

After the workshop, we had a short autograph session, and we got to browse around the exhibition hall for a while (and also pick up swag).

At the KQED booth, we got a selfie stick (I never thought I would ever own a selfie stick) plus a free tutorial on how to use said selfie stick.

Here’re two photos, one demonstrating my selfie abilities pre-stick, and one post-stick (and post-stick tutorial [hey, I just realized: sticks is a motif in this blog post]):

We were supposed to then post the picture on the right on social media with the hashtag on that card. But we’re getting old, and it was already a big day.

Testimonials from Workshop on Teaching Literature in High School Classrooms

On January 9th, we led a workshop at the University of the Pacific in Stockton on creating critical thinkers through the study of literature.

The workshop was based on our book, and focused on the following:

  • The rationale for using quality literature (fiction, poetry, drama, and literary nonfiction) in the middle and high school English classroom.
  • Strategies and activities for introducing and implementing close reading, using George Saunders’ short story “Sticks” and the lyrics of Billie Holliday’s “Gloomy Sunday” as examples.
  • Increasing the quantity and quality of rigorous student writing.

We will be conducting a similar workshop at the 2017 CATE (California Assoc. of Teachers of English) Conference, February 17-19 in Santa Clara, CA.

The following are some testimonials from our wonderful participants:

“Very engaging! I wish more teachers would attend! As an administrator, it is enlightening to see solutions to bringing critical thinking to the classroom through literature.”

 

“So many great things in this workshop. I want to try everything TOMORROW!!! Thank you so much!”

 

“Extremely informative and useful. I found and will implement at least three strategies (close reading, on-demand writing) that I will use right away. Thank you!”

 

“This information needs to be shared with our curriculum director!”

 

“Thank you for all of the methods that I can use in the classroom. As a new teacher with no experience, this information is extremely helpful.”

 

“Really effective and simple strategies. As a first year teacher, I would strongly urge my undergraduate peers to check out this presentation and the Method to the Madness book.”

 

“Informative and entertaining, with plenty that will be useful in the classroom.”

 

“Thank you. Workshop went by quickly and had great, engaging, purposeful information.”

 

“We were offered many examples/useful samples of student work and activities. We can use this material in the classroom for planning—especially how to increase writing.”

 

“Y’all are amazing.”

Teaching “Native Son” by Richard Wright (Part One)

Specific materials for the following lessons are available in our Teachers Pay Teachers store.

For the past two years, I have had the pleasure of teaching Richard Wright’s 1940 novel, Native Son, to high school seniors.

I did not choose this book. I “inherited” the senior IB English classes from an excellent, veteran, and now retired teacher (and good friend), Susan Halseth. I also inherited from Susan her reading list, and teaching the books with which she filled her syllabus, Native Son included, has been a delight.

The intent of this post is simply to share some of the strategies and lessons I’ve used the past couple of years to teach Wright’s novel.

PUTTING NATIVE SON IN CONTEXT

With any novel, a good place to begin is helping students place the book in its larger context (where and when).

With Native Son, I start with something rather informal. I write the years 1919, 1929, 1939, and 1945 on the board, spaced out a bit. Then, maybe in a different color, I add in, chronologically, the year 1940, labeling it as the year that Native Son was published. Then, in pairs or groups, students identify and discuss the significant historical events that surround the novel (respectively: the end of WWI, the beginning of the Great Depression, the beginning of WWII, and the end of WWII).

This is a great way to help students make connections between the literature they are reading in their English classes and the content they have learned in their past or current History classes.

GROUP RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

After this initial discussion of the novel’s context, we move on to something more formal.

Students are divided into groups, and each group is assigned one of the following research topics (each of which includes subtopics):

The Red Scare (in U.S., first and second)

            -Communism

            -Marxism

South Side Chicago

            -Segregation/ghettos/housing policies

            -Hyde Park

The Great Migration

            -The Black Belt

            -The Harlem Renaissance

NAACP

            -origins

            -NAACP in the 1930’s

Scottsboro Boys

            -who were they and what happened to them

            -similar cases or incidents

Richard Wright

            -literary career

            -ties to Communism

Naturalism (literary movement)

-origins

            -characteristics

            -major authors

Each of these topics will help a student reading Native Son to better understand the novel, and each group will spend a day or two (or three) researching their assigned topic and preparing a 10ish minute presentation to the class.

[Note: my students use Google Slides when preparing presentations. Here are some benefits of that: 1) All group members can be working on the same presentation file simultaneously, so everyone has “something to do.” 2) Students don’t need a subscription to Microsoft Office to work on the PowerPoint at home; they just need the internet, and there’s a smartphone app available for free. 3) When the group presents, I’m not seeing the presentation for the first time; I have been able (because the presentation was shared to me) to “check in” on the progress of the presentation as it was being developed, and I’ve been able to give feedback while the students were working on it. 4) No more, “I forgot my flash drive; can I present tomorrow?”—it’s all in the cloud.]

As each group is conducting their research and preparing their presentation, it may be necessary to give the group researching naturalism a bit of extra guidance and support, as it can be a complex topic. For an accessible definition of naturalism, see the quiz below.

Another group that may require extra attention is the group of students researching housing policies in South Side Chicago. This will be a key topic when it comes to helping students understand the naturalist view of Bigger’s character and his actions. In fact, in the third section of the novel, Bigger’s defense lawyer, Boris Max, makes an argument that housing policy is in part responsible for Bigger’s situation.

South Side Chicago in the 1930’s was segregated, but it was not segregated because of explicit segregation policies; rather, segregation was the result of housing policies such as redlining and contract selling—policies that were in place in many American cities and the effects of which are apparent today.

In fact, the city that I and my students live in was redlined, and students have access to a map (from the website of data artist Josh Begley) that shows the housing zones in Stockton at the time in which Native Son is set:

redlining-stockton

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These maps allow students to make a personal and authentic connection to the novel, as many of them live in or around the redlined areas, and they have first-hand experience of the effects of those policies today.

ORAL PRESENTATION RUBRIC

Below is the rubric that I use to score the student presentations (which they are given beforehand). It is a version of the rubric that I use for all such presentations. I made it a few years ago, and it was specifically designed to eliminate things that bothered me about student presentations, such as…

…students going up to present without any idea how they will begin or how they will end.

…the sense that the group copied down information they don’t understand and now are asking the audience to do the same.

…the sense that one or two students did all of the work and then gave the other students slides or cards to read.

…students reading slides instead of talking to the audience.

…the sense that some students, while presenting, are seeing (or reading) these slides for the first time.

Another thing that I like about this rubric is that it requires students to practice citing sources parenthetically and correctly formatting a works cited page.

oral-presentation-rubric
After the presentations, during which students take copious notes (we use Cornell Notes) and are encouraged to ask questions, the class is given the following open-notes quiz:

NATIVE SON CONTEXT PRESENTATIONS QUIZ

Richard Wright was a naturalist writer.  Naturalist fiction explores the effect of external forces—particularly a person’s environment—on a character’s psychology.

As a result, characters in naturalist fiction often feel a lack of control as a result of their environment.

Discuss the extent to which external environmental forces are driving the actions of Bigger Thomas.  Refer to as many of the following factors as possible in your response:

  • South Side Chicago
    • Segregation/ghettos/housing policies
    • Hyde Park
  • The Red Scare
    • Communism
    • Marxism
  • The Great Migration
    • The Black Belt
    • The Harlem Renaissance
  • NAACP
  • Scottsboro Boys
  • Richard Wright’s own life experiences

 

In the next post on teaching Native Son, we’ll focus on the effect of Wright’s choices regarding point of view and on themes and motifs in the novel.

CATE Conference 2017

For anyone who is planning to attend the California Association of Teachers of English Conference February 17-19 in Santa Clara, we will be presenting a workshop on creating critical thinkers through the study of literature.

The session is based on our book and will provide strategies for middle and high school English teachers to increase rigor and inquiry in their classrooms–and meet the demands of Common Core–through the close study of quality works of literature.

The workshop will take place on the first day of the conference, February 17, from 9:15 to 10:45 am.

We hope to see you there!

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Holiday Sale! 35% Off Orders of Method to the Madness!

Get 35% off your order of Method to the Madness: A Common Core Guide to Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of Literature by using this code: RLWEB3516

Go to https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475825374/Method-to-the-Madness-A-Common-Core-Guide-to-Creating-Critical-Thinkers-Through-the-Study-of-Literature

Sale ends December 30th!

Married Couple Abandons Parenting for 3 Months to Write Book

This post was originally published on the blog of B.H. (Bill) James, one of the co-authors of Method to the Madness: A Common Core Guide to Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of Literature:

 

Potential headlines for this story:

Married couple writes book.

 Married couple writes book in only 3 months.

 Married couple abandons parenting for 3 months to write book (ultimate winner).

Married couple surprised by how little they come to hate one another while writing book in only 3 months.

Married couple, as side effect of co-writing book in 3 months, becomes those people at Starbucks with all their computers and cords and stuff and about whom you wonder Don’t they have a home?

Parents of infant and toddler who placed ad in search of parents found at local Starbucks, indexing.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post titled, Things that Have Happened Since the Last Time I Posted on My Blog, in which I singled out five things:

Thing #1: I quit blogging.

Thing #2: I had a second kid.

Thing #3: I (we) took first kid and second kid to Disneyland. Twice.

Thing #4: I wrote a book with my wife.

Things #5: I was informed I have high cholesterol.

In that last post, I went into more detail about Thing #1 and Thing #2. This is Part 2 of that post and will be about Thing #4, skipping Thing #3 for the time being, just because.

Thing #4: I wrote a book with my wife

A full explanation of the book’s intent and the impetus behind it is explained here.

So we (Liz and I) had this idea for a book. We’re both high school English teachers, and it’s a book about teaching high school English.

The idea started out as a book about teaching Slaughterhouse Five, the idea later expanding to a book about teaching Slaughterhouse Five as well as half-a-dozen other books we like to teach.

We batted it around for six months or so, getting serious enough from time to time to draft some chapters and eventually reaching the point at which we began to think about the possibility of submitting it, at which point we learned about book proposals.

So we spent (spent should be precisely defined here as referring to no more than ten to fifteen minutes every few days scratched [into? out of?] an at-home schedule dominated by parenting and grading and Netflix) the next six piecing together a book proposal, which included a query letter and an overview and an annotated table of contents and market research (I say included market research not actually knowing by any degree what market research is and therefore whether or not what we did is it but anyway we analyzed who/what our market is and other books for which the market is the same and how our book was/was not similar and etc.) and a sample chapter.

We sent the proposal out to a handful of education publishers, from which we received rejections, some of which were non-form and encouraging, before finally hearing from a very nice acquisitions editor at Rowman and Littlefield named Sarah (in fact, R&L had been suggested to us by one of our previous non-form and encouraging rejecters).

Sarah asked for some additional materials and some revisions to the sample chapter and then needed to take the proposal to the editorial board. A few days later, she wrote back with an acceptance. We were delighted.

Here’s the said-sarcastically-fun part. Sarah’s acceptance came on July 23rd of 2015. In the same email, Sarah expressed that it would be an advantage for the book—though it would not yet be published—to have an ISBN number and be promotable at the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) conference that November, and for that reason Sarah wanted to know if we could submit to her the final manuscript by early September (this would later be extended to the first of October).

Now, at that point (July 23rd), we had the sample chapter and a couple of other very rough and incomplete chapters, all amounting to less than fifty pages.

We also, at that point, had a nearly-three-year-old and a nearly-three-month-old, as well as full-time jobs: me teaching and Liz at home with the kids, Liz having taken leave from that upcoming school year. I also had a part-time teaching job some evenings and Liz also was working on her Master’s degree.

But I had this memory from grad school of one of the faculty members, a novelist who also wrote screenplays, giving the advice, said advice delivered within an anecdote about a screenplay, that the answer is always, Yes! Like, for example, if “they” ask you if you happen to have any stories/manuscripts/screenplays/whatever about bla bla bla, you always answer Yes, and then go write a story/manuscript/screenplay/whatever about bla bla bla, and it was with this anecdote with its embedded advice that I convinced Liz that despite the apparent impossibility of pulling it off we should just say Yes!

So we did.

For the several months that would later follow the book’s release, when people would ask something along the lines of How’d you do it, I would repeatedly give the same jokey answer: “We just quit parenting for 3 months and did it.”

But we didn’t really quit parenting or abandon our children–Liz in fact clutched our three-month-old and declared that we could not let this affect our time with the kids–though we did for a time parent them less.

We wrote early in the morning. We wrote at night after bedtime. And for a rather large chunk of each of about twelve consecutive Sundays we got a babysitter and went to our local Starbucks.

Things you notice when you spend 10 or more hours per month at your local Starbucks:

  • Much like Walmart, people will wear almost anything to Starbucks.
  • In any span of several hours at the local Starbucks, a lot of people come and a lot of people go, but the four or five people who remain through all of those hours are pretty much the same four or five people who are also there week after week.
  • If you are one of those four or five people, location is everything, and the ideal location depends upon your purpose. For some, it’s those comfy chairs. For us, it was a balance of table space and access to a power outlet.
  • Though you may not start out there, if you stay at the local Starbucks long enough and if you’re willing to repeatedly pack up all of your stuff and move, you will eventually get your ideal spot.
  • If there are two of you, and you each have a laptop and papers and books, you may very likely need to initially split up, but you will eventually (see above) reunite.
  • Starbucks food seems wholesome and even kind of high-end. And you get the impression that they (Starbucks) don’t even really see it as food people would regularly eat, like at McDonald’s, but food people get to go with their coffee or food people need because they’re starving after waiting in line so long for coffee. It seems more like premium food.

But it’s not. In reality, it’s food taken out of a plastic package and put in a microwave, which is what you get when you eat at a gas station (which I happen to know a lot about), except at the gas station you do the microwaving yourself, and when you eat enough re-heated Chicken Artichoke on Ancient Grain Flatbreads, they just start to taste like gas station food.

My first book took three years to write. All the same things happened with this book—frantic drafting with the recurrent thought that nothing that I am typing right now can ever be in a book in fact it’s so awful it can never ever be seen by anyone ever; never-ending laborious revisions such that one reads the same chapters and the same pages and the same paragraphs and sentences over and over and over again; that feeling that when this is over I never want to read or see or even think about this book ever ever again in fact I’m never going to do anything difficult with my free time again just Netflix and ice cream from now on. All the same stuff, just this time crammed into 3 months.

But it all worked out. We finished. On time. And the people we need to thank are: Sarah; our babysitter, Lizzie; our two readers, Susan and Ellen. And of course our kids, for getting along without us for a while.