Week 5: Ideas and Elements for my IRW Unit Plan

 

 Course Theme: 

Poverty, Inequality, and the American Dream

Course Focus and Approach:

My IRW course would be built around the broader theme of “Poverty, Inequality, a

nd the American Dream.” Throughout the entire semester, I would like to move students from reading and writing about personal narratives in Unit One, to reading a longer work of expository journalism in Unit Two, to reading a short novel in Unit 3.  Over the course of these three units, I would draw upon each of the three models of reading that McCormick discusses: cognitive, expressivist, and socio-cultural. Ultimately, the course aims to get students to analyze the socio-cultural context of inequality in America and to critically examine their own experiences within this context. I believe that students need to learn critical reading strategies offered by a cognitive approach, as well as understand the possibilities of putting forth multiple interpretations (emphasized by an expressivist approach), and therefore I would try to integrate all three models into each unit.

Specific Readings and Writings in each unit:

Unit One:

Students would begin the class by reading brief news articles on poverty and inequality in America, examining theories of why inequality is growing worse and why social mobility has stagnated; they would then discuss how this situation affects the realization of the American Dream. I would then have students read Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle, to analyze Walls’ story of her childhood in poverty; the class would discuss Walls’ belief that with individual initiative and perseverance, poverty can be overcome in America, and the American Dream can be achieved.

 

Strategies I would use to promote “active reading” in this unit:

• ·      Students would preview, predict, and write about first impressions and inferences before reading the text.

• ·      Students would compose a portrait of themselves as readers and writers, focusing on what kinds of texts they enjoy reading and the areas in which they have struggled, and on their feelings about the writing process. This “literacy narrative” might also ask students to discuss their primary and secondary languages, prior English classes they have taken, and details about how they have evolved into the readers and writers they are today.

• ·        I would try to “activate schema” before we begin a new text, to elicit what the students already know about the broader topic and to establish a context for their upcoming analysis of the assigned text. In particular, I would have students free-write about their ideas about poverty in America and the American Dream, asking if they believe that the American Dream is attainable today. I might also ask them to interview one or two people who have immigrated to America to compare the responses from the interview with their own experiences.

•       During the reading process, I would draw upon Van Woerkum’s idea that a reader must pay attention to what “is triggered” by the text (269). Making ongoing inferences and analyzing these inferences would help a student focus on what is being triggered as they read.

• ·       I would ask students to practice annotation and to keep a journal (one in dialectical format and one that contains more informal thoughts). In the dialectical journal, students will respond to and interpret key quotes and bring the quotes to class as a basis for discussion. In the informal journal, they will record their ideas and questions as they read, and these can basically be “first impressions” rather than extensively developed ideas; this informal journal assignment is intended to support and validate students’ initial thoughts and reactions.

•        After the reading process, I would have students assess the accuracy of their initial predictions and inferences. 

Students would then develop ideas from their initial free-write about their own experiences with poverty and/or inequality (from the pre-reading stage) into a longer essay that compares this personal narrative with an analysis of Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle, comparing their own experience with Walls’. This would be the focus of Essay 1, the first formal out-of-class essay. Students would peer-review one another’s drafts, have the option to revise the first draft for a higher grade on the final draft, and keep a grammar and vocabulary log along the way, to keep track of grammar errors and new vocabulary words; they would submit these logs with the final essay draft and with their journal responses. After submitting this work, students would reflect in a brief in-class essay on the reading and writing processes, focusing on what worked well and areas they would like to improve on in the next unit.

 

Units Two and Three of this course would follow a similar trajectory, but would introduce readings from different genres. For Unit Two, the students would read Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco’s Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which is both a work of investigative journalism and a graphic novel that looks into four national “sacrifice areas” in the United States, places where corporate capitalism has decimated the environment and communities and has caused residents to live in unrelenting poverty. Because the book takes an overtly political, Marxist view of the degradations of corporate capitalism, I would supplement this reading with texts that highlight the benefits of corporate approaches to poverty and/or that see poverty in America as an individual, rather than systemic problem (perhaps from a “think tank” like the Cato Institute or Heritage Foundation). I would have students assess the tensions between the perspectives in these texts and identify their own views in relation to them. This would draw upon the “literary” and “general” repertoires of students, and may create “reading situations in which a tension between repertoires exists” (McCormick 88), which could prompt students to a deeper understanding of themselves and the course content. Essay 2 would ask students to compare Days of Destruction with one of these supplemental texts, examining the gaps and contradictions between these two perspectives on poverty in America. I would also have students write a Difficulty Paper as they read Days of Destruction, to reflect on their own resistances to and questions about the text’s polemical style and premises.

 

Since the topic for my course is overtly political, I would like to integrate another assignment along the way (perhaps before Essay 2 is due) that gets students to examine their own political viewpoints and take a position on the subject. This might be an advocacy/solution paper, in which students focus on a point made in the reading and explicitly advocate for something to be done about it  (i.e., they could look at the public health problems and ecological devastation produced by coal mining in West Virginia when reading Days of Destruction, and argue for a solution to this problem). This would introduce students to the rhetorical mode of argumentation and encourage them to develop argumentative and persuasive writing skills, skills which can be transferred to other contexts beyond the class itself.

 

Finally, in Unit Three students would read Sherman Alexie’s short novel Flight, which explores the experiences of an orphaned Native American teenager as he time-travels through American history, and eventually discovers the need to see the world from different perspectives and through new eyes. The novel’s focus on our common humanity, even as it emphasizes systemic racism and poverty, blends the emphasis on individual autonomy in Walls’ The Glass Castle with the view of overwhelming systemic inequality in Hedges’ Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, providing a kind of “middle ground” between the two other texts. It also introduces students to a new genre, that of imaginative fiction, and Alexie’s humorous, ironic style can help to lighten up the mood of an otherwise grim subject.

After completing this final novel, I would try to trigger the “activation of new reading” (through research assignments related to the final synthesis essay and connections that students make to other texts assigned in the class). At this point the course would grant students more choices in their final research project as they find and analyze one or two sources on their own, and synthesize these sources with Alexie’s Flight. Because Flight draws upon myriad themes, the opportunities for research are very open; students could research, among other topics: the racial dimensions of poverty, the experience of Native Americans who are experiencing ongoing forms of colonialism on reservations, and the struggles of foster children in America. Because Sherman Alexie is a popular and humorous public figure, I would also incorporate interviews with him on YouTube, along with poems he has written, and relevant songs and video clips related to the issues the novel raises.

Finally, students would submit all of their work at the end of the semester in a portfolio that also contains a reflective essay in which they examine their growth as readers and writers over the course of the semester.

Given that my course focuses on the socio-cultural context of poverty and inequality, I would try to avoid teaching the course from an overtly political angle. Rather, I would like to get students to see how different texts are interpreted differently according to a reader’s cultural context, and then ask what role each particular text plays in today’s society. I would try to get students to make connections between the texts and contemporary society, to see their relevance in light of current debates over poverty and inequality in America.