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Posted by:
Sandra Scott
K-12 Classroom teacher
Stone Mountain, GA
Topic:
Two Colleagues Inspire Work
Message:
Two colleagues inspired me to begin my work with literacy in the content areas -- Ian Fletcher and Carol Harless. Ian Fletcher is my history professor and advisor at Georgia State University. Ever since his first course, he included literature along with the history. This combination enriched our discourse and jump-started many lively debates in the classroom. It allowed us to implement the theory historians use to forge their research and analyze the gender, race, and class issues that were subtle, yet restricting in the daily activities of people in the past. Most of all, it opened our eyes to the agency in the formerly perceived slave, woman of color, or prisoner of war and taught us that survivorship and one's story contributes to the social fabric of the past. A period piece creates characters that are from that time period and it gives you more to hold on to figuratively than a newspaper article or a photograph. This background guided my selection process and inspired me to work with our Media Specialist, Carol Harless.
Carol Harless was very open to my queries about working collaboratively. She had a rich background in grant writing and found creative ways to introduce real live authors to students. That sparked my interest in using living author's works in my classroom. If the student can use the fiction to uncover history, then we get to analyze the theory historians use to detect the past. Listening to young juniors in high school discuss class, gender, and race relations and articulate the limitations of the "cult of domesticity" enhances their analytical skills and writing skills. It gives them a language that they did not have in their every day use of English.
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