Let America Be America Again Lesson Plan

06.05.13Who's Afraid of Langston Hughes? Adventures in Reading with David Javsicas

Watched i of my favorite reading teachers, David Javsicas, have his 7^th graders through a challenging lesson a few days ago.  They're reading Of Mice and Men and David wanted them to have a bit of context on the book's discussion of the American Dream.  To do so he gave them two embedded texts: one a wiki-esque non-fiction article glossing what the term meant, where it came from and a bit about the history of discussion around it.  Fair plenty- good example of embedding to enrich a primary text and become kids more not-fiction at a higher absorption rate (for more on what all of this means, link to this).  Only and then David took it up a notch and embedded a verse form- a very challenging poem, Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again."

Now, first of all David pretty much had me at "Hughes"… and "Steinbeck" for that affair.   I just think it's so of import to read the works of literature that take shaped the discussion for generations.  So that made me happy to see. Just, you won't be surprised to hear that the kids, unlike me, didn't at first react to Hughes' poem with glee. "Let America Be America Again" is a challenging, complex poem with multiple voices. To wit the get-go stanza or so:

Let America be America again.

Let it exist the dream it used to exist.

Permit it be the pioneer on the evidently

Seeking a home where he himself is costless.

 (America never was America to me.)

Those five lines invoke America and compare it to something it used to be, implying that it is that something no more than, even if the name remains fixed.  And then information technology compares America to an private (a pioneer) and in the midst of that analogy refers to information technology (metaphorically) as "he" even though the argument (almost seeking freedom) refers to the country.  The poem, in short, is narratively complex.  And that's earlier and then a brand new vox enters: "America never was America to me." (Some other voice is speaking? Who is information technology? A unlike person or the narrator bold a different tenor of speaking. And in parentheses! Why parentheses?). The vocalism implies that the version of America that was, which the first vocalisation compares the electric current America to, never existed for at least some people.

No wonder the kids were a bit intimidated.  Only David handled it masterfully, embracing what I like to call a culture of error- he fabricated information technology safe, good, brave even, to not know things about the verse form merely to soldier on.

First he merely permit them spring in and make whatever sense they could of it without judgment:

"For three minutes you're going to only read and make margin notes.  If you're done early, don't get ahead and read my questions. Get dorsum and brand your margin notes better."

I really liked this approach. Focusing on his questions would have underscored for them that they couldn't answer much. Just he let them just wrestle with it and make whatever sense they could of information technology.  That was nice… it fabricated it safe to struggle… and a lot of kids rose to the occasion. But not all of them. One daughter put a sulk on. He went over to her. "I'k confused" she said, a chip irked at him for causing information technology and the pique showing in her voice.  But he was unflappable.  "You lot're supposed to be confused; it's supposed to exist difficult," he told her.  "Start past describing the parts you do sympathise… the first fourth dimension through is all on your own. The signal is merely to do the all-time you can." And with that she was off.

After this David just asked students to share "initial thoughts."  He transcribed them all on the board…those that were spot-on insightful ("He's talking virtually a dream that doesn't be for some people") and those that were simply mis-readings ("If y'all want it, don't worry besides much and you'll get it.")  "The whole bespeak," he told them, "is that it'southward ok if y'all don't become information technology on the first reading. When I read poems, I don't always get information technology at commencement.  The fun of it is to pick it apart."  And off they went unpacking key passages, and, in the course of an hour or so, developing an understanding of the poem, which they wrote about on 4 or more than occasions in various dissimilar means.

A groovy lesson and a rigorous lesson in which it was condom to struggle and take risks all the while.

Langston Hughes; David Javsicas; Culture of Error; Shut Reading

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