The lesson plans to follow reflect the interdisciplinary approach to learning. While the major emphasis of the narration has been literature, there is considerable room for further development in the area of Social Studies. The intent of this unit is to have the English teacher share his responsibilities of teaching the city through literature with other disciplines, mainly Social Studies for historical perspective and to a supportive degree to art and photography, particularly but not exclusively, for those students who are more easily motivated by the visual.
The First Day (Literature)
The first day of the unit, the English teacher will announce to the class that they will be studying about the image of the city in American Literature. The unit of study will be supported in their Social Studies and art classes. A grand list of assignments and activities will be issued to each student stipulating which assignments are required of all students and which are for extra credit. Due dates will also be given. Students will be told that certain projects or activities will be undertaken in social studies and art classes while the remainder will be for English credit. The best examples of completed projects will be displayed in a room size montage, reflecting the range of experiences in urban living.
The First Week
Leaving the indepth study of the origins of the city to the Social Studies teacher, the English teacher may begin class discussion with the question: When you think of the city, what impressions first come to mind? A good technique is to write as many of the responses on the board. No doubt, the range of answers will be from positive to negative. During the discussion the teacher will tell the students that class discussion and activities will be devoted to how the city is represented in literature. During the first week of study selected poems about the city will be presented. These might include:
“London” by William Blake
“Composed on Westminster Bridge” by William Wordsworth
“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by Walt Whitman
“Chicago” and “Fog” by Carl Sandburg
or any other poems that the teacher feels depicts provocative images of the city that will get the student’s attention. *
* Refer to “Images of the City in Modern Lyrics and Verse: A Sequential Approach to the Teaching of Poetry” by Pamela Kabak And Caroline Jackson
The Strange
r
and Modern Fiction: A Portrait in Black and White Yale New Haven Teachers Institute
, I, (1979) pp. 110-151, for excellent suggestions in teaching urban students about the city through poetry.
Focal questions for discussion might include:
What impression of the city do you get from reading this poem?
What words does the poet use to arouse our emotions?
Is the overall image of the city in this poem positive or negative, or a mixture of both?
How does the poet use simile, metaphor, and personification or other poetic devices to create his poetic image?
The First Month and so on
Further reading and discussion of the following:
The Man of the Crowd
by Edgar Allan Poe
The Bowery Tales
by Stephen Crane
“The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot
“Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Miss Lonelyhearts
by Nathanael West
Go Tell It on the Mountain
by James Baldwin
or any other work the teacher feels is appropriate for discussion of man’s relationship to the growth of the American city.
Focal questions for discussion might include:
How are the characters in each work affected by urban living?
What statement is the author of each work making about life in the city?
Point out any paradoxes or ironies presented
Note: A directed study of selected poems and short works about the city should allow students to anlyze how writers view the urban scene. The works need not be confined to the same decade, but should be related in theme. Excellent texts for study include
The Urban
Reader,
edited by Susan Cahill and Michele F. Cooper,
Cities
of the Holt Impact series,
On City Streets
by Nancy Larrick,
The Me Nobody Knows
edited by Stephen M. Joseph, and
The Inner City Mother Goose
by Eve Merriam. Students may also wish to compose their own poems about life in the city. A sample of what two students may do as a class project follows this note.
SAMPLE OF STUDENT WORK
(figure available in print form)
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THE CITY
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City life is crowded,
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Rushing here and there.
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No time to stop and see,
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No time to hear.
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Set to a schedule,
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Unflexible.
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Nobody sees,
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Nobody hears,
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Because nobody cares.
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Kathryn Martinex
The First Day (Social Studies)
The first day of the unit in Social Studies, the teacher will announce that the course of study in class with parappel that of the English class. Gerald Leinwand’s
The City as a Community
provides clear perspectives on the development of urban living and is written at a workable reading level for average high school students. Lengthy lectures on social theory should be held to a minimum. Basic trends should be highlighted through selected readings. Students will be assigned short reports on specific topics. Suggested topics for reports include:
What is a city?
Why is the City a Community?
How did cities get their start?
What is the lure of the city?
which are taken directly from chapter titles in the Leinwand text.
The First Week
Other topics for discussion are found at the end of each article in part two of the Leinwand text. These readings from a variety of sources, modern and ancient, describe selected world cities such as ancient Babylon, Brasilia, and Chicago. The best examples of these reports will be displayed on the class scrapbook.
The First Month and so on
A directed reading of the book
Two Blocks Apart
should be followed by having students write about life in their own neighborhoods. Students may chose to interview one another on the size of family, type of dwelling, places of recreation available, general characteristics of the neighborhood, ethnic composition, proximity to retail stores and any other topics of interest. An interesting assignment might be asking students to make a pictoral map of their neighborhood. The best examples should become part of the scrapbook.
(Art and Photography)
In addition to those photographs presented in the works already cited, the following photographic essay may be used:
Black in White America
by Leonard Freed,
The Family of Man
by Edward Steichen, and
Harlem on My Mind
by Allon Schoener. Photographs may be presented by use of an opague projector available in most schools. Students will be directed to study and analyze selcted photographs of urban scenes and will be required to write short interpretations of what the photographer is attempting to say about his subjects. Some students may elect to take their own photographs of the city which thematically parallel or contrast those that they have studied in class. A collection of photographs from various sources may be organized around established themes to be displayed as part of the class scrapbook along with the short written analyses.
Color pictures of murals appearing in magazines will be available to accompany this unit. They will be on file at the Institute. In addition color slides of murals from several sites in New Haven will be made available. Talented students may elect to make their own mural as a group project.