Teaching To Kill a Mockingbird in

(Not So) Post-Racial Times

AudreyFischandSusanChenelle

Who we are

�  Audrey A. Fisch is Professor of English and Coordinator of Secondary English Education at New Jersey City University.

�  Susan Chenelle is lead English teacher and peer

coach for humanities at University Academy Charter High School in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Who we are & what we’ve done 3

We are the authors of the Using Informational Text to Teach Literature series from Rowman & Littlefield Education.

The first volume, Using Informational Text to Teach To Kill a Mockingbird, was published in April 2014; the second, Using Informational Text to Teach A Raisin in the Sun, will be published any day!

We also have in the works Connecting Across Disciplines: Collaborating with Informational Text, due out in 2016!

A response to the Common Core and the focus on informational text

Our approach

Teachers need to be able to incorporate nonfiction in ways that are meaningful and substantive, and enhance rather than take away from their teaching of literature.

The opportunity of informational text and the Common Core

�  Rethink how seminal literary texts are being taught and the questions we are asking about them

�  Uncover the difficult “hidden history” of race in the United States

�  Using text pairings of informational and literary texts to support our students in engaging in difficult but informed conversations about race in the classroom

Oral history with Dorothy Bolden

December 7, 1978 – Bernard West, interviewer; Atlanta History Center – Living Atlanta Oral History Collection

Growing up white in the 1930s South

What is the backstory here?

1. Discuss: The white women here paint a simple, happy story of black/white relations in the time when Mockingbird was set. What is the story they tell? Do you think they are seeing and/or telling the whole story? Do you find their version of events reasonable and/or plausible? Why or why not? 2. Research: Conduct some basic research to think through some of the elements of this story. Focus on either 1) the stereotype of the black nurse (the mammy) or 2) the institution of black sharecropping. 3. Write: Using what you have learned from your research, discuss the backstory to the interview. How do the women either 1) traffic in stereotypes in their discussion of the black people they knew and/or or 2) misrepresent the realities of labor for black men and women during this time? Use evidence from the interview in your response.

What is Lula so angry about?

1. Act out: In groups of 4, act out the brief encounter between Lula, Calpurnia, and the children at Calpurnia’s church.   2. Discuss: Based on the text, what do we know about Lula? Why do you think Lula speaks out the way that she does towards these two white children? Use Table D-1 to record what you know and your reflections about Lula. What do you think of Lula? 3. Discuss: Lula objects to the children’s presence at the church. She says to Calpurnia: “You ain’t got no business bringin’ white chillun here – they got their church, we got our’n. It is our church, ain’t it, Miss Cal?” What is Lula saying here? What do you think of her objections?   4. Discuss: Compare Lula’s attitude towards the children in this chapter with how they are treated by Reverend Sykes, Calpurnia, and Zeebo. Use Table D-2 to record how the children are treated by the different characters. Why do you think each character behaves as they do toward the children?   5. Write: In the interview, Cecil mentions that she read in a book that “the black people didn’t feel [very attached] about us.” Use Cecil’s remarks here to reflect on the character of Lula. What do you think Lula represents? How is she different from the other black characters? Why do you think Lee chose to include her in the novel? Use evidence from the interview and Mockingbird in your response.

What is a lynch mob?

What was a lynch mob like?

1. Discuss: In the introduction and the two excerpts you have read, you have learned something about the characteristics of lynching in the United States. Use the first two columns of Table B-1 to list some of these characteristics. 2. Discuss: Search the lynching scene in chapter 15 of Mockingbird. Which characteristics of lynching do you find there? Which characteristics are absent? Use the third column of Table B-1 to compare the lynching scene in Mockingbird to your earlier observations about the characteristics of lynching. 3. Write: Compare Harper Lee’s depiction of the lynch mob that comes to execute Tom Robinson with the lynch mobs faced by Clarence Norris and Haywood Patterson. What do you think about the differences? Which do you find more threatening? Use evidence from Mockingbird and the Norris and Patterson excerpts in your response.

Is Atticus a hero?

Is Atticus a hero? 1. Discuss: Freedman notes that while Atticus defended Tom Robinson to the best of his ability, he did not take the case voluntarily. He had been appointed to represent Robinson and would have ended up in jail himself if he had refused.   �  Is this true? What exactly does Atticus say about how he came to represent

Robinson and how does he feel about it? Find evidence from the text on this point. �  In your opinion, how does this affect whether Atticus should be considered a hero or

not?   2. Research and discuss: The article ends with a quote from law professor Timothy Hall: "What Monroe [Freedman] really wants is for Atticus to be working on the front lines for the N.A.A.C.P. in the 1930's, and if he's not, he's disqualified from being any kind of hero," Mr. Hall said.   �  What is the NAACP? What does it do? �  What would it have meant for Atticus to have worked for the NAACP in the 1930s?   3. Write: Should Atticus be considered a hero? Why or why not? Use evidence from Margolick, your research about the NAACP, and Mockingbird in your response.

Using Informational Text to Teach To Kill a Mockingbird

Unit 1: What do Americans have to fear? Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”   Unit 2: Who’s poor? Jens Beckert: “Political Structure and Inheritance Law: The Abolition of Entails”   Unit 3: Does a girl have to be a lady? Lillian Eichler: Book of Etiquette   Unit 4: Does everyone deserve a good lawyer?” Stephen Jones: “The Case for Unpopular Clients”   Unit 5: What is a lynch mob? Clarence Norris and Sybil D. Washington: The Last of the Scottsboro Boys: An Autobiography Haywood Patterson and Earl Conrad: Scottsboro Boy   Unit 6: What’s up with Mr. Dolphus Raymond? Chief Justice Earl Warren, Loving v. Virginia   Unit 7: Is Atticus a hero? David Margolick, “To Attack A Lawyer In 'To Kill a Mockingbird': An Iconoclast Takes Aim At A Hero”

How these kinds of informational texts allowed the students to see why Raisin matters and think and talk about race

�  As one student wrote, the informational text “made the play more relevant … to understand racial discrimination.”

�  Another wrote, “We read the article clearly and slowly enough … My favorite part was when we got to understand real discrimination, facts, and actual stories.”

THANK YOU!

Audrey Fisch afisch@njcu.edu

Susan Chenelle

susanchenelle@gmail.com

www.usinginformationaltext.com @usinginfotext

Find us at the Rowman &

Littlefield booth #304!