Doug Lemov's field notes

Watched one of my favorite reading teachers, David Javsicas, take 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 enough- good example of embedding to enrich a primary text and get kids more non-fiction at a higher absorption rate (for more on what all of this means, link to this).  But then David took it up a notch and embedded a poem- 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 matter.   I just think it’s so important to read the works of literature that have shaped the discussion for generations.  So that made me happy to see. But, 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 first stanza or so:

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 

 (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, even if the name remains fixed.  Then it compares America to an individual (a pioneer) and in the midst of that analogy refers to it (metaphorically) as “he” even though the argument (about seeking freedom) refers to the country.  The poem, in short, is narratively complex.  And that’s before then a brand new voice enters: “America never was America to me.” (Another voice is speaking? Who is it? A different person or the narrator assuming a different tenor of speaking. And in parentheses! Why parentheses?). The voice implies that the version of America that was, which the first voice compares the current America to, never existed for at least some people.

No wonder the kids were a bit intimidated.  But David handled it masterfully, embracing what I like to call a culture of error- he made it safe, good, brave even, to not know things about the poem but to soldier on.

First he just let them jump in and make whatever sense they could of it without judgment:

“For three minutes you’re going to just read and make margin notes.  If you’re done early, don’t go ahead and read my questions. Go back and make your margin notes better.”

I really liked this approach. Focusing on his questions would have underscored for them that they couldn’t answer much. But he let them just wrestle with it and make whatever sense they could of it.  That was nice… it made it safe to struggle… and a lot of kids rose to the occasion. But not all of them. One girl put a sulk on. He went over to her. “I’m confused” she said, a bit irked at him for causing it and the pique showing in her voice.  But he was unflappable.  “You’re supposed to be confused; it’s supposed to be hard,” he told her.  “Start by describing the parts you do understand… the first time through is all on your own. The point is just to do the best 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 about a dream that doesn’t exist for some people”) and those that were just mis-readings (“If you want it, don’t worry too much and you’ll get it.”)  “The whole point,” he told them, “is that it’s ok if you don’t get it on the first reading. When I read poems, I don’t always get it at first.  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 occasions in various different ways.

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

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