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Milton Brasher-Cunningham has master’s degrees in English and theology, and he taught English for seven years in the Boston Public Schools. He currently teaches ninth-grade English, tenth-grade English (a combination expository writing laboratory and American literature course), and Honors British Literature (for juniors) at Winchester High School, Winchester, Massachusetts. He is also both a songwriter and a fiction writer.
To bring the old horror story into the present.
Donna Denizé has taught English at St. Albans School in Washington, DC, since 1987. She is an oft-published poet and a contributor to scholarly books and journals, including Shakespeare Set Free (The Folger Library). Ms. Denizé has also contributed to projects with the NCTE, the NEH, Mobil Masterpiece Theatre, and the Smithsonian Institution. She has received numerous grants and awards, among them the Distinguished Teacher Award (The White House Commission on Presidential Scholars). She has an M.A. from Howard University in Renaissance Drama and has completed the Ph.D. course work. Ms. Denizé serves as chair of the Faculty Diversity Committee at St. Albans and is the faculty advisor of the school’s literary magazine.
To allow students to become active learners and even teachers as they read
and understand Great Expectations.
(Ninth grade, six weeks)
Great Expectations Assignment and Guidelines for Oral Reports/Teaching the Class:
(Listed in no particular order)
Dirk Detlefsen teaches sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade English in Gaviota, California, and he is presently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 1998–1999 he taught in a middle school in Cairo, Egypt. A theater major in college and an experienced actor, Mr. Detlefsen directs his school’s yearly plays and brings his skills in teaching drama into his literature classes.
To encourage students to find the voice in the novel and to allow them to find their own individual ways into the experience through various projects.
(Sixth grade, four weeks)
Daily: We begin each lesson with a discussion of the previous chapter, especially if it was finished for homework. We then read together 5-7 pages. I usually have each student take a paragraph. When we finish our reading, we find five new vocabulary words to add to our personal dictionaries. The students are required to look them up and use them in a meaningful sentence for homework. We save the last 20 minutes for project time.
Sharon Madison teaches Senior Humanities (AP English and AP U.S. Government) in Fairfax County, Virginia. A Council of Basic Education Fellow, Ms. Madison has expanded the literature in the language-arts curriculum to include more contemporary, minority, and international authors. She has worked across disciplines to create integrated programs of World Studies, AP English, and U.S. Government and to establish common objectives for IB and AP programs. She is a Faculty Consultant for The College Board, scoring Advanced Placement Examinations in Literature and Composition and presenting seminars to international audiences on developing curriculum and preparing students for the AP examinations.
To understand Ceremony in the context of the “monomyth,” as defined by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Day 1
Begin by soliciting from students their reactions to the novel (single adjectives will suffice) and compiling the reactions on the board. In response to students’ reactions concerning difficulties with the novel, introduce the underlying pattern of the novel as it follows Campbell’s monomyth.
Choices:
Day 2
Spend another class period applying the monomyth to familiar works or, if students are ready, discuss how Ceremony fits the pattern. Ask students to go to the text to find examples of Tayo’s progress through each of the stages: separation, initiation, and return. Give students—individually, in pairs, or in groups—a model of the circle and ask them to match examples from the text to each stage. Tayo’s journey will not match perfectly.
Follow-up activities:
Research and discussion questions: Was Silko aware of the pattern when she wrote Ceremony? (She was not.) How might the novel be a reflection of Silko’s journey? What myths of the Southwest Native Americans shed light on Ceremony?
Bring in and/or discuss a variety of films to test the monomyth paradigm. Show The Wizard of Oz (which shows the two worlds through black-and-white and color) or the Star Wars films, which were written to follow Campbell’s monomyth.
Notes:
As Campbell traces the underlying journey of the hero through the myths of many cultures, we come to understand human nature. It is an archetypal journey that reflects culture, literature, religion, anthropology, and psychology. And it may appear to individuals in the unconscious world of dreams or to entire groups of people and their epic histories.
Pauline Moller has been a sixth-grade English teacher and team leader at Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring, Maryland, since 1995. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a Master’s degree in reading/writing/literacy. Ms. Moller has served as writer and editor for the development of Montgomery County’s sixth-grade English curriculum. In addition, she has conducted workshops in Montgomery County on strategies for teaching reading and differentiating instruction. She has presented at the NECC conference and is her school’s technology committee chairperson. Ms. Moller has been nominated for the Sallie Mae First Year Teacher Award and Teacher of the Year.
To transform the text: help students “see” the setting and hear the dialogue.
Day 1, part 1: “Seeing” the setting
Day 1, part 2: “Hearing” the dialogue
Day 2
Frazier L. O’Leary, Jr. has been a teacher of English at Cardozo High School in Washington, DC, since 1976. He has a bachelor’s degree in English from The American University and a master’s degree in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, and he has finished his course work for his Ph.D. in Literature at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He currently teaches AP Literature and Language, Senior English, and SAT Prep. He is a Faculty Consultant with the College Board in both AP and Building Success. He has coached various sports at the junior high, senior high, and university levels and is the happy father of five wonderful children.
To search for Toni Morrison’s characters and style.
As a culminating activity, students are assigned to write an additional chapter, Chapter 16. The only guidelines for this exercise are that the chapter must be at least 250 words long and that it must flow logically and artistically from the end of the book.
I have given this assignment for over twenty years, and none of them has ever sounded alike. I find this an exciting way to end the study of this particular novel especially when the students share their work.
Frazier L. O’Leary, Jr. has been a teacher of English at Cardozo High School in Washington, DC, since 1976. He has a bachelor’s degree in English from The American University and a master’s degree in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, and he has finished his course work for his Ph.D. in Literature at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He currently teaches AP Literature and Language, Senior English, and SAT Prep. He is a Faculty Consultant with the College Board in both AP and Building Success. He has coached various sports at the junior high, senior high, and university levels and is the happy father of five wonderful children.
To bring an author and other resources from outside the classroom into the class so that students can hear the author’s voice and feel his or her purpose and so that the novel can assume a more intense and realistic context.
Do research at the local library and organizations like PEN/Faulkner to find out if any authors are living and working nearby, and then invite one in to read from his or her works and to answer students’ questions. Also invite other people from the community who can discuss their experiences in relation to those in the novel.
One of my classes was fortunate enough to have a visit from Gaines on the eve of the publication of A Lesson Before Dying. They had read the novel, and our discussion was very exciting. One of the highlights was Mr. Gaines’s reading the chapter that included Jefferson’s diary. Mr. Gaines was affected by his own words, and his feelings were infectious.
I invited a former student who had been in and out of prison for the previous twenty years, to visit the classroom. His writing skills, though not so low as Jefferson’s, allowed me to discuss with my class how much art imitates life. We translated some of Jefferson’s paragraphs into standard English so that students could see and hear cultural differences.
Ashby Reid completed her first year of teaching in June 1999. A graduate of the College of William and Mary (B.A. 1994) and George Washington University (M.A. 1998), Ms. Reid teaches middle school English in Arlington, Virginia. She was nominated by Arlington to receive the Sallie Mae First Class Teacher Award. At the 1999 NCTE convention she presented “Orchestrating Mutiny in the Classroom: Classroom Teachers Discuss Their Own Experiences in ‘Giving Up the Ship.’ ”
To help set the stage for reading.
To help students to synthesize their knowledge of the novel by carefully examining the text and creating a visual representation.
Diana Russell has taught in the public schools of Arlington County, Virginia, since 1990. She has worked in the county’s “Transitions” program, which focuses on minority and ESL students. She is a consultant for and member of the National Paideia Faculty and a practitioner of the Paideia method, giving workshops, speaking at conferences, training faculties, and developing materials.
Ninth-grade GT English/History, three weeks
Reading and discussion of the following:
Assignment
Write a personal, reflective essay that considers and cites the black/white community in To Kill a Mockingbird(four citations) and the readings and visual narration listed above (one citation from each). The essay will discuss your understanding of civil rights and the treatment of the various communities in Maycomb, Alabama, taking into account economics, politics, social class, education, and religion.
Betty Williams teaches English at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC. She has an M.A. in counseling psychology and a B.A. in English. Ms. Williams has served as Life Skills Coordinator and Social Services Coordinator at the Boys and Girls Group Homes and Shelters in Silver Spring, MD. She has also been a mental health counselor at the Center for Abused Persons in White Plains, MD. Since 1980 Ms. Williams has been a performer of African American traditional music with the a cappella sextet “Sweet Honey in the Rock.”
by Chinua Achebe
To involve students in the novel on an emotional level.
The class is assigned to adapt any chapter as a:
To help students appreciate the reality behind the fiction.
To extend students’ knowledge beyond the novel.
Students conduct research projects centering on one of the following: