Steven Kirkpatrick
Annotated Bibliography
Outline
UNIT: Self-Empowerment and Freedom
The following is a brief outline for a 9th grade
English unit dealing with themes of courage and self-empowerment in cultures
with intense social/racial/gender injustice. The unit will utilize poems, trade
books, web sites and media. The emphasis will be on personally discovering the inner
resources to overcome disempowerment, and on collectively finding ways to stop
social injustice.
Trade Books
Resau, L., &
Farinango, M. (2011). The Queen of Water. New York: Delacorte Press.
In The Queen of Water,
Laura Resau has collaborated with María Virginia Farinango to recount Maria
Virginia’s real-life journey from abuse and enslavement to self-discovery. Born
in an Andean village in Ecuador, Virginia is taken from her village of indígenas to be a servant to a mestizo couple, where she experiences abuse,
the disempowerment of modern-day slavery, and has to fight to hold onto her
spirit and humor. Told that the sole purpose of indigenous girls is to serve,
Virginia teaches herself to read and write, and to perform scientific
experiments in secret. The novel
emphasizes contemporary issues of social injustice, and the development of courage
and self-empowerment to overcome them. It is appropriate for ages 13+ with a
Lexile Level of 890L.
For this unit, the novel was be used for at least two
all-class directed reading lessons (with a reading guide) focusing on character
and thematic development, but will also serve as a prompt for an essay in which
students identify the issues of social injustice in the novel, and research
contemporary methods of ensuring social justice.
Venkatraman, P.
(2008). Climbing the stairs. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Padma Venkatram’s Climbing
the Stairs is a coming-of-age novel set in India in the 1940’s. It is the
story of a young girl’s fight for freedom, mirrored by her nation’s struggle
for independence. It is also a story that touches on several other themes
through the political and personal complications that confront the main characters
when an unexpected tragedy strikes. The characters struggle with issues that
confront students as budding global citizens: Should a nation ever go to war?
If so, when and why? What is violence and what is nonviolence? Should a person
ever act violently? The story of Vidya and her family does not seek to answer
these questions, but to raise them through the different characters’ beliefs
and actions, and to show different points of view.
The novel will be assigned as independent reading during the
unit, but students will meet in small-group literature circles (groups of 3-4) at
least 3 times during the unit to fully discuss the novel in the roles of illuminator,
connector, discussion director, or artist.
Periodicals
King, E. (2014). Kayla Won’t Quit. Scholastic Action,
38(1), 10-22.
This article in the Scholastic
Action periodical focuses on a young woman who, despite a terminal illness,
would not abandon her dreams of becoming an athlete. It reflects the unit’s
themes on developing courage during adversity, while offering a glimpse of an
ethnic American.
Students will use this article in conjunction with poems
about courage and self-empowerment (“Courage” by Anne Sexton, and “If” by
Rudyard Kipling) to develop their own working concept of what courage means.
These ideas will be shared on a classroom Edmodo discussion site.
Brown, B. (2014). Could
Hitler Happen Again? The New York Times Upfront: The Newsmagazine for Teens,
6(1), 18-21.
This article in The New York Times Upfront periodical examines the issues of racism in
German culture which led to the Holocaust under the Nazis, and points out the existence
of racial/ethnic/class tensions in our contemporary world.
Students will
analyze this article for effective use of claims, evidence and counterclaims. They
will then respond in their journals to the basic prompt: Could Hitler Happen
Again?
Web Sites
http://www.madre.org/index/meet-madre-1/our-projects-20/peru-voices-for-justice-208.html
Meet MADRE. (n.d.). Retrieved October 24, 2014. (APA format)
MADRE is an international women's human rights organization
which partners with community-based women's groups worldwide facing war and
disaster. The website provides news updates, publications, group contact
information, donation and service opportunities, and other links to progressive
movements for peace, justice and women’s human rights.
While reading The
Queen of Water, students will be directed to access this site as homework (independently),
and discover “real-world” activities or organizations designed to stop the
issues of social injustice reflected in the novel. Each student will prepare a
short, expository essay in which they provide viable activities that can bring
about social justice,
http://discoverhumanrights.org
The Rights of Workers/Modern-Day Slavery. (2010, January 1).
Retrieved October 24, 2014, from http://discoverhumanrights.org
The Discover Human Rights Institute was founded in 2007 to
contribute to the building of a U.S.-based human rights movement. This is the
institute’s website, which provides educational resources and tools to help
people learn about and apply international human rights standards in their
daily lives, their families, their workplaces, and their communities. There are
articles, event/group info, and even lesson plans to encourage people to “get
informed, get involved, and get others interested” in human rights.
While reading The
Queen of Water, students will be directed to access this site in small
groups, and discover effective ways to stop issues of social injustice. Each
group will then make a presentation of their discoveries to the whole class.
Films/Videos
Modern Day Slavery [Motion picture on DVD]. (2011).
USA: PBS Video.
In this streaming video from PBS, Alison Stewart interviews
Benjamin Skinner, investigative journalist and author of "A Crime So
Monstrous," about his work exposing the world of modern-day slavery and
human trafficking.
This video will be shown to the whole class in the first
lesson for the unit, along with other background materials for The Queen of Water. Students will be
given a prompt, “What can be done to bring greater awareness of this issue to the public?" for a response in their journals.
Persepolis [Motion picture on DVD]. (2008). Sony
Pictures Home Entertainment.
Persepolis is a
2007 French animated film based on Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic
novel of the same name. The film was written and directed by Satrapi with
Vincent Paronnaud. The story follows a young girl as she comes of age against
the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution, and gains courage and self-trust amidst
a repressive regime. The title is a reference to the historic city of
Persepolis.
Excerpts from the film will be shown (with handouts) with
students tasked to compare Marjane’s circumstances, attitude and examples of personal
courage with those of one other
protagonist in this unit’s study. The resulting handouts/graphic organizers/outline
(which can be completed in peer pairs) will serve as the basis for an independent
comparison essay.
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