American Lit. Read Aloud. First Time

1. I am apprehensive today about using the read aloud method in American Lit. I know that this is the best way for students to improve their writing but I am concerned students will not take it seriously or will allow their fears to sabotage the effectiveness of this assignment. 
2. I am afraid that students will either provide useless feedback to their peers or that they will be mean and malicious. I know it is possible for students to provide positive and constructive feedback but I am not sure how to encourage this.
3. Best case scenario: each student walks away from today with a slew of positive and constructive feedback. I hope that each student feels better about themselves as a writer and also has a clear path forward to improve not just this essay but their future essays as well. I hope that students will grow in confidence as writers and be more willing to share their writing in the future.
4. Worst case scenario: Crash and Burn. Everyone is mean to each other or not constructive. Students may get their feelings hurt and allow assumptions about what other people are thinking about them/their writing to take away from what could be beneficial. Today is a risk, both for me and the students. The worst case scenario might lead to failure. What do I do if everything falls apart?

Frederick Douglass: Chapters 5-7

After reading these chapters, two very specific themes stand out to me. 

1. Education is power
2. Slave owners understood this concept and actively worked to keep slaves from gaining an education and, by result, power. 

First of all, the fact that Douglass realized that an education was valuable because his master did not want him to learn to read,  reveals that he was intelligent in the first place. As such, he already contained a quick mind and a disposition for education. This in of itself is remarkable due to the fact that he had spent the first 5-7 years of his life living in an appalling state of neglect. I also enjoyed how Douglass went about learning to read and write. Not only does this demonstrate a startling amount of persistence, but it also shows that a mind that actively want to be educated will find a way even in the most oppressive of circumstances.

Douglass realized at a young age that learning was the key that would unlock the door to a much better life. This realization, or connection, between education and his future was the reason for his success.

Secondly, it seems to me that the very acknowledgment of the reality that an education would "ruin" a slave appears to also be an acknowledgment of a slaves humanity. There is no admitted danger in training a horse or a dog, but "training" is not a word used in the context of slavery. Rather, slaves were intentionally not "educated". If slaves truly lacked humanity and were in fact unequal to their masters, than it would stand to reason that education would not be a dangerous quality in the mind of a slave. This inherent contradiction between the slave owners denial of a slaves humanity and the methods used to oppress slaves, seems to indicate that, despite their political rhetoric, slave owners fully understood the overall humanity of their "property." 

I intend to look carefully at the rest of this piece in order to recognize and dissect some other inherent contradictions in American Slavery. 

The Essential Questions

The following questions will influence how we think about and interact with The Narrative of Frederick Douglass


The Essential Question
In the novel The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, how is education related to human freedom?


Sub Questions

1. What is a human right?
2. Why is reading comprehension a statement about freedom?
3. How does literature affect social justice, social reconciliation, and social transformation?
4. How will strong skills in reading, writing, and speaking make your life better?

Frederick Douglass: A beginning

- What is the purpose of the two letters of introduction?

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is the story about one young slaves pursuit of freedom. As a result, I thought it was interesting that this narrative started with the voices of two individuals who, although abolitionists, had no personal experience fighting for their own freedom. Whether dark irony or simply a sign of the times, that fact that this book required not one, but two Caucasian men to write glowing character references of the African American author speaks more to me about the racist disposition, even in the north, during this time in history.

I especially enjoyed that both William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips felt the need to communicate to the reader that everything Douglass wrote was in fact the truth. Perhaps it never occurred to me that someone would need to lie to make Slavery look bad but apparently people of the day were skeptical about the evil nature of slavery. Perhaps I am looking at History through the both modern and naive eyes, but I don't understand how a person who did not own slaves could convince themselves that slavery was neither harmful nor immoral. Logically, giving complete power over the life of one person to another person will lead to both abuse and corruption.

In closing, the introduction of this novel strongly reminded me of the concept of a co-signer. When I rented my first apartment, I needed my father to act as a co-signer on my lease. By acting as a co-signer, my father  was vouching for my ability to, on a monthly basis, pay my rent. He was also saying that if I was unable to pay my rent, he would be responsible. In the same way, the both Garrison and Phillips use the introduction to "co-sign" on the authenticity and truthfulness of Douglass's narrative. As collateral, Garrison and Phillips offer up their honor and standing within northern antebellum society. Perhaps more than anything else, this "co-signing" of the novel speaks more to me about the authenticity of Douglass's work than the content of the first chapter.