Abstract

This five-week unit is designed to help students gain understanding of how literature reflects struggles among people of diverse class, race, and ethnic background. Students will make connections between a novel, issues in American history during the period when the novel was written, and reports on those issues in local newspapers.

Setting:

The five-week unit will be taught to eleventh-grade, college-bound, English/American literature students at McKinley High School in Niles. Niles is a working-class community with a strong ethnic background. The unit ties together various disciplines of literature and writing that the course covers throughout the year.

Goals:

Students will read Carson McCuller's novel, Clock Without Hands. They will then analyze a major character's struggles, values, and beliefs as shaped by that characterâ€™s environment, social status, race and experiences.
Students will compare and contrast three poems to determine how each depicts social conflict among people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Students will research and orally present a collage of local newspaper articles depicting how school desegregation of the 1950's impacted the local community.

Process:

Students listen to "The Trees," a rock song by the band, Rush. Then they identify conflicts between classes or races that the song may be alluding to.
Students select other popular songs that they believe represent struggles between classes, races, and ethnic groups.
Introduce students to poetic elements, and methods for analyzing poetry, including TPCASTT.
Students compare and contrast three poems dealing with racial struggles.
Group discussion of students' poetic interpretations.
Students select one art form such as a painting or sculpture which could illustrate one of the assigned poem's struggles.
Guest journalist or journalism teacher discusses the accuracy of newsprint media, and the factors which may shape a writer's perspective.
Students collect and paste up local newspaper articles on school integration in the Mahoning Valley.
Students present their newspaper collages in front of the class.
Introduce novel elements--including characterization, conflict, theme and symbolism-- to the class.
Students will read Carson McCuller's novel, Clock Without Hands, and record journal entries of conflict, theme, and symbolism.
Periodic discussions of character development, theme, and symbolism.
Students will write an essay analyzing a character's struggles, values, and beliefs, and determine the influences which shaped the person that the character has become by the close of the novel.

Resource:

Timeline of American Literature--This link enables students to see the many pieces of literature throughout the years that have focused on struggles between races.