To begin our discussion of the theme of seperating from parents, we will read the poem “Song in My Front Yard” by Gwendolyn Brooks. The speaker in this poem is a young child who longs to venture into the backyard “[w]here it’s rough and untended and hungry weeds grow.” Wishing to ignore her mother’s warning about “bad” people, she claims that she would like to “be a bad woman, too…And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace …And strut down the streets with paint on [her] face.” Certainly, the metaphorical experience of longing to leave your own front yard is an experience that many of my students can relate to. This speaker’s experience is quite different from Myop’s or Ruby Bridge’s. Her innocence is not stolen from her; she has grown bored with it. She is curious about the parts of the grown up world that she is forbidden to see.
Demonstration Lesson 2: Leaving Your Own Front Yard
Objectives:
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· Students reflect on the dynamics of their relationships with their own parents and guardians
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· Students will use appropriate strategies before, during and after reading in order to construct meaning.
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· Students will interpret, analyze and evaluate text in order to extend understanding and appreciation.
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· Students will recognize that readers and authors are influenced by individual, social, cultural and historical contexts.
Activities:
After reading the poem “Song in My Front Yard” aloud, I will invite students to read it again silently and highlight important words and phrases. After we do this, I read the poem again, only this time anyone who has a word or phrase highlighted, joins in on the reading while that section is read. This is a very non-threatening way for students to get a glimpse of their peers’ perspectives.
Next, students choose what they believe to be the most important phrase in the text. They will write for five minutes about why they chose the word. As they share their reflections a discussion of the poem begins organically. Often as students clarify and extend on their thinking, they address questions like: Why does this little girl want to leave the innocence and protection of her childhood? How aware is she of the reality outside the front yard? How old do you think she is and why? What assumptions is the mother in the piece making about the “charity children”?
Journal writing topics that could be paired with this poem are: Write about a time when you longed to do something your parent or guardian didn’t allow you to do. What do you think your parent’s\guardian’s reasoning was? Describe the kids you were not allowed to play with or the ones that you knew your parents wouldn’t want you to play with. What were your parents worried about? What
should
they have been worried about?
The Cub
“The Cub” by Lois Dykeman Kleihauer is a short story that describes the changing relationship between a boy and his father. The young boy grows up admiring his father’s physical strength and the two wrestle and playfight throughout his childhood. Although at first the father always wins, the day comes when the father doesn’t look “nearly as tall or broadshouldered as he used to.” (317) Bill, the boy, pins his father in the wrestling match and realizes suddenly that he has surpassed his father. Bill rushes out of the room to hide his emotional reaction.
Finding philosophical passages that show Bill’s changing perspective in relationship to his father would be engaging activity for students and would ground their discussion in the text. After reading the story I might ask students to complete this sentence to identify the story’s theme: After reading this story, I think Lois Dykeman Kleihauer wants me to understand…
“Reunion”
by John Cheever is also a story about a father and son. Charlie, the boy, meets his father for lunch in New York City. His parents have divorced and he hasn’t seen his father in three years. The beginning of the story details his feelings, expectations and reactions upon meeting the father. The actual meeting is a rude awakening. The story describes the fathers obnoxious, drunken disrespectful behavior. As readers we never get a glimpse of the boys reaction. After saying goodbye, the boy says, “that was the last time I saw my father.”
This story also provides a great opportunity to analyze philosophical passages. I will direct students to the first paragraph. Phrases like “…as soon as I saw him I felt that he was my father, my flesh and blood, my future and my doom,” provide students the opportunity to assess Charlie’s point of view. Even simpler phrases like, “I hoped that someone would see us together. I wished that we could be photographed,” are telling. Because this story is so short it lends itself to guided practice in locating passages that reveal the characters perspective.
The theme of sons’ relationships with their fathers can be explored in two short poems: “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Rothke and “The Secret Heart” by Robert P. Tristam Coffin. Either poem could be included at his juncture and would provide students with an alternate viewpoint.
A female perspective of the parent/child relationship is presented in “My Mother Taught Me Purple” by Evelyn Tooley Hunt. An adult daughter, the speaker in this poem, remembers how her mother “taught her purple” and “golden” even though the two lived in great poverty during her childhood. This memory turns bittersweet at the end of the poem when the speaker states that her mother “died” from lack of beauty and could not “teach her [the daughter] pride.”
Before reading, discuss how writers can use colors to symbolize abstract ideas and feelings. Explain how traditionally the color purple symbolized two very different ideas: mourning or repentence, but also royalty or nobility. Likewise, gold can be a symbol of wealth and power or something gifted in a way that promises future joy and success.
An excellent piece to conclude this segment with would be “Thank You, M’am” by Langston Hughes. While this classic story is not about a biological parent and child, it examines the significant effect that an adult can have on a child’s point of view. The boy in this story has obviously not been sheltered from the harsh realities in life. He might qualify as one of the “charity children” described in Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem. The boy attempts to steal the purse of Mrs. Luella Bates Jones, an older woman from his neighborhood. The boy (and the reader) are surprised by her reaction. She takes the boy home, washes his face, makes him dinner and gives him the ten dollars that he wanted to steal. Instead of lecturing the boy, she “has done things too” which she would not tell him or even God , “if He didn’t already know.”
In this case we see a variation of the coming-of-age story. The boy recieves kindness and nurturing from a total stranger. He steps from a harsh and unprotected childhood reality into an adult world where kindness and understanding exist. Although we don’t hear anything from the boy other than, “Thank you, M’am,” it is clear from his actions that he wants to gain the older woman’s trust and respect.
Section 2: Journal Prompts
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· Write a few paragraphs comparing and contrasting yourself with one or both of your parents. In what way would you like to be like your parent(s) when you grow up. In what ways would you like to be different?
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· Even though your parents or the other adults in your life generally believe that they are older and wiser, what is it that they don’t “see” or understand?
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· What was one of the “stories” that your parents told you about life? How has your understanding of this story changed?
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· If you could describe your childhood as a color, what would it be and why? How did your parents directly or indirectly “color” your experience?