Donna McBroom
Curriculum Unit RetrospectiveUsing Curriculum Unit on
"Teaching the Concept of Equality Through Literature"I began the year with an introduction to the phrase in the Declaration of Independence, "AU men are created equal, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I had students write in their journals what that phrase meant to them We discussed what amendments had to be added to the Constitution to make those words apply to everyone. We then began to look at different pieces of literature which pointed out the inequality that existed before the Civil Rights Movement. The novel we read was War Comes to Willy Freeman, a story of a young Black girl during the American Revolution. The final essay question on the novel asked, "What had to change to make the promise in the Declaration come true for people like Willy?"
Another project during the first semester was to look at some amendments to the Constitution, then find a way to put those amendments into some meaning for the students. I was impressed with one group's using the Wen Ho Lee Case of Los Alamos, New Mexico to illustrate the failure of a speedy and public trial as promised in Amendment Six.
After the Christmas break, I showed segments of a video which traced the history of American Indians and discussed the problems they faced with settlers and the U.S. government. We read a short story, "Tsali of the Cherokees" which was about the resettlement of the Cherokee Indians. Then students picked one of the injustices or one of the tribes on the video or in the story, and wrote protest letters about which amendments had been violated and what they wanted the government to do to make reparations in each case.
Following this project, students researched the Civil Rights Movement on the internet and focused on specific events or people for a research paper. I was pleased to see some of the girls write about women Me Carrie Chapman Catt or Susan B. Anthony. Some girls also chose the Chicana Women's Conference. Many students also wrote about Cesar Chavez or Dolores Huerta. Some classes listened to a tape of Cesar Chavez speaking in Albuquerque about boycotting grape growers because of pesticide use. The final nine weeks we are working on several different novels, and I am including various poems such as "Ballad of Birmingham," and "Mother to Soif 'in their units. Two classes of mostly LEP students, and a group of basically LEP students in another class are reading The Watsons Go To Birmingham. In that class some of the students are working on their own with Warriors Don't Cry. My enriched class is working in collaborative groups on three novels: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry , Warriors Don't Cry , and The Giver. For their final projects they are going to compare these three separate cultures in the light of the phrase from the Declaration of Independence. One class is reading The Glory Field , and another class is reading Clotee: The DIM of a Slave Girl. AU of these novels give us the chance to talk about inequality and man's inhumanity to man.
The handouts for The Watsons Go To Birmingham were developed by Martha Fensterniacher at Albuquerque High School. The handouts for The Giver come from a curriculum unit developed by Jane Schaffer, whose style of writing the Albuquerque High cluster is teaching. The handouts for Roll of Thunder ... , come from Curriculum Units, and the other handouts for the other novels are of my own creation. I have included only a few for each novel to give an idea of how I'm working through them. We use TPCASTT on all the poetry and the paragraphs we write are the Jane Schaffer model described in my curriculum unit. At Washington we have been working on vertical teaming with Albuquerque High, so we are including more of the Advanced Placement ideas in our curriculum on teaching reading and writing. The students seem to be engaged in the process, and are turning in some very thoughtful comments and writings. I believe my work with ATI was a great help in giving me a new focus for my literature.