Exploring History and Social Action with YA Literature

The above title was the name of the presentation that I gave with Paul Binford, Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil, and Laurie Halse Anderson as a respondent at the Kennesaw State University Conference on LIterature for Children and Young Adults. This is really a great event for teachers and librarians in the Kennesaw area and the entire region. ​

Paul and I have been thinking about integrated activities between Social Studies (SS) and English Language Arts (ELA) curricula for several years now. Our work has resulted in several presentations and some papers and book chapters. Gretchen joined the endeavor as a result of a conversation the two of us had with Brendan Kiely at NCTE 2016. Gretchen and I both admire All American Boys. It is a great story from more than one point of view. However, what we like most is the collaborative work that Jason and Brendan represent. We love that these two authors worked together to discuss, wrestle with, and contemplate a difficult subject--racism and the violence that surrounds it in the United States. 

It is important to know that for Paul, Gretchen, and I, we see the work of our presentation as collaborative, inquiry based, and on going. As of yet, we do not have a fixed product even though we have presented and held conversations. In this presentation we focused on the Seeds of America trilogy, March trilogy, and All American Boys. We, as panelists, suggested middle school and secondary cross-curricular, interdisciplinary, and integrated teaching objectives, classroom activities, and supporting texts that encourage historical and textual understanding and meaningful social action.

The first handout is designed to illustrate what a cross curricular unit might include. In a traditional unit or course designed to connect three groups of texts, most teachers would focus on the blue band. This approach would focus on the primary text with, perhaps, only a nod to other sources. On the document we add three more bands: activities, informational text, and additional fiction and nonfiction. In the activities band we suggest teaching activities that are both traditional and innovative within a Social Studies or English Language Arts classroom. We'd love to have others add to the list. The informational text band represents the best instructional push within the common core movement. We agree that ELA teachers can enhance their instruction of literature and literary periods through the incorporation of informational texts including primary documents, newspapers and magazines, and online sources in a variety of formats. In fact, it is worth arguing that while English teachers have added more history to their curriculum, Social Studies classes have been neglected and marginalized in our unabated rush to assessing ELA and Math. In the fourth band, we provide a list of titles that connect to the core text of each column.  Some of these texts are young adult and some are not, but all would be useful if the teaching of the core text was follow-up by a literature circle activity or by independent reading that allowed students to follow their interests related to themes or incidents related to the first text. 

In the rest of this post,  we offer links to the main texts we used to outline our process of an integrated curriculum and we provide copies of our power point presentations and handouts. In addition, we each offer a small statement that explains a portion of independent thinking about the project.  

To begin, Paul gives his perspective: Both adolescent historical fiction and history illustrate and illuminate the human experience.  High quality historical fiction inhabits this intersection of human drama and historical reality, while offering glimpses of truth, beauty, and meaning. Ironically, Chains—a book about the experiences of human “property”—is just such a novel providing the reader with a clear and well-researched historical infrastructure, but also a compelling story.  Each chapter includes a primary source epigram and illustrative examples of the experiences of enslaved persons as told through the eyes of Isabel, the story’s main character.  This book (and others of similar merit) is fertile territory for teaching ELA and Social Studies content, if teachers will but remove their disciplinary shackles. 

I, Steve, am finding more and more satisfaction studying the pedagogical possibilities of young adult historical fiction in the classroom. These books offer dynamic portrayals of moments in history that students are often not familiar with at a deep level. Through an explanation of primary sources, historical reports, and other young adult fiction and nonfiction texts student can conduct I-search projects that enhance their understanding of the period and the real people that inhabit those historical moments. Students can develop critical thinking skills that help then compare the past and the present. Ideas and issues of the past are evident in the present. The ideologies that helped frame the struggle for liberty and independence during the American Revolution are evident in the Civil Rights struggle that is depicted in the three volumes of March and continue to inform the racial unrest that Reynolds and Kiely discuss through their narrative exploration in All American Boys

Gretchen frames some her thoughts about our project like this: All American Boys is a text that builds from the conversations around slavery in Chains and civil rights in the March series to explore racial profiling and police brutality. This book represents our sentiment that we must commit ourselves to conversations about race.  Given that the topics of race and police brutality can be sensitive conversations, it is fitting that this work of fiction, told from the perspectives of both black and white individuals, can allow a "safe space" as students discuss character motivations and actions. This text can be a vehicle for essential discussions about the many effects of racism, social justice movements that have come from these effects (i.e Black Lives Matter), and how we can all shake off apathy and "be the change," especially using nonviolent protests.  Resources that can bring these issues/conversations together include the #fergusonsyllabus and other hashtags/resources facilitated by Dr. Marcia Chatelain, which highlight Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives matter.  In addition, the Bystander Intervention Resource can encourage students to advocate for justice.

In Chains, the two minor characters are early adolescents who are slaves in the midst of the nations fight for freedom. During the course of the narration, it is often easy to forget that they are doing the work of adults. Paul began our conversation by illustrating a Social Studies strategy that we believe can be very useful in the English Language Arts classroom. The documents below show the steps and the source of the strategy. We also provide a photograph of a moment in US history that also shows a moment of child labor. 

Paul also created the next document. This is a table that shows excerpts from Chains, the page number, and the historical significance of the passage. The table has only a small sample of the number of historical details that Anderson has researched and included in the narrative. Just as these details exist throughout Chains, similar tables can be built the text and allusions from March and from All American Boys.  Paul has done this work to create table, but we believe that students can do similar work individually and in small groups.  

The following power point is in many ways an expansion of the first chart. During the course of a presentation a power point, at best, provides a visual source for the conversation that is taking place. It has our contact information, links to a variety of supplemental texts for each main text, and a few links to some primary source information. We hope you find it useful. We also wish to thank Laurie Halse Anderson, who attended the session, responded to our ideas, and enlightened us about her research process.

We had a great time at the Kennesaw conference, and hope you can use the material in your courses as we believe that this model can be a guide for preservice and inservice teachers in the Social Studies and the English Language Arts. Below, please offer your comments to help us expand the three bands: teaching activities, informational texts, and supplemental texts. We can also be contacted through the comments feature and through our email addresses posted below.
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Steven T. Bickmore, UNLV, steven.bickmore@unlv.edu
Paul E. Binford, Mississippi State University, peb137@msstate.edu
Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil, Aquinas College, ghr001@aquinas.edu