LESSON PLANS

B. The students will take notes on characteristics found in Mississippi fiction and poetry.

C. Students will read a poem by Margaret Walker Alexander.

D. The students will write a short reflection on the characteristic of Mississippi fiction which most resonates in their own lives.

Materials:

Butcher paper, markers.

Procedures:

A. Seat students in a circle, if possible. Ask each student to tell birthplace, hometown of parents, grandparents, places where family celebrations are held. Ask each student to speak briefly about travel experiences.

B. Ask students to get out a sheet of paper and to complete this sentence. “The six most important characteristics of Mississippi are:”

C. On the board or on butcher paper in the center of the circle, write the characteristics the students have listed.

D. Ask students to face the board and take notes on characteristics of Mississippi fiction/poetry, (it works best for me to write my lecture notes on the board before class and cover the board with butcher paper.) Students copy the notes before I began to speak in case we run out of time. Then I can begin my lecture/discussion without feeling rushed. This discussion sometimes runs longer than I intend, especially if there are students who wish to share their experiences and ideas with the class. Basically, this is a class in “discovering what I already know. “ Below is a summary of the lecture. All along connections are made between the lecture and the list the students created.

1. Mississippi literature, like Mississippi culture, is centered on the family and the community. Ties of blood are paramount, (“That old fierce pull of blood,” that Sarty felt in “Barn Burning.”)

2. Mississippi literature, like Mississippi history, is full of violence. First, the violence of the land itself: floods, fevers, hurricanes, droughts, disastrous ice storms, incredible heat waves. Then, there was the violence of clearing the land, without chain saws and bulldozers. Then, the most terrible of all violence—that of slavery, the physical aspects of it, but also the violence done to the family and to the human spirit ( this last to both slave and slave owner.) Then comes the violence of the Civil War; then the violence of the Jim Crow years; finally, the violence of the Civil Rights era.

3. Mississippi literature , like the Mississippi landscape, is as Flannery O’Connor put it “ Christ-haunted rather than Christ-centered.” Religious values play an important part in Mississippi literature.

4. Mississippi literature, like the people of the state, are obsessed with the past. Faulkner spoke for all of us when he said, “The past isn’t dead, it’s not even past.” Traditions are hard to break, even the bad ones. Conflict often arises when a character breaks with tradition. One of our most important traditions is that of story-telling, which may help to account for our status in American literature. Mississippi writers seem to understand plot instinctively, as every good storyteller must in order not to lose his audience.

5. Mississippi literature is almost always concerned with racial relationships. Even when race is not the focus of the story, details will emerge that touch on the racial relationships of Mississippians.

6. Mississippi literature is concerned with language—dialect, idioms, names, nicknames. Students are encouraged to say the names of our counties. They often offer the more colorful names of some of our towns. (They all have a tale about dialect!)

7. Finally, and most importantly, Mississippi literature concerns itself with the land itself. Like the literature of Russia, the land in Mississippi fiction can assume the importance of a character. As Miss Welty pointed out, setting in a Southern story is never a “minor god.” The land yields up everything to the story: the characters, the conflicts, the themes.

E. Students are given hand-outs of Margaret Walker Alexander’s “Jackson, Mississippi,” a volunteer reads it aloud and the class is instructed to list elements of the Mississippi Literature found in the poem.

F. The students are assigned as homework a short reflection piece on how one of these characteristics plays itself out in his/her own life. It must be typed, ½ page, double-spaced.

Day Two: A Personal Sense of Place

Expectations:

A. The students will create a map of a special childhood place.

B. The students will interpret this map to partners.

C. The students will listen to their partners’ interpretations.

D. The students will write the first draft of a memory paper, based on their

personal maps.

Materials:

Typing paper and colored pencils.

Procedures:

A. When the students come into the room, A SENSE OF PLACE in huge letters will be written on the board. Students will be asked to brainstorm on their own paper what that phrase might mean. After 3 minutes, they will be asked for their ideas which will be put on the board. The teacher will explain that many people have tried to define what that term means, including Eudora Welty, who wrote:” A place that ever was lived in is like a fire that never goes out. It flares up, it smolders for a time, it is fanned or smothered by circumstance, but its being in intact, forever fluttering within it, the result of some original ignition. Sometimes it gives out glory, sometimes its little light must be sought out to be seen, small and tender as a candle flame, but as certain.”

B. Students are asked to write that quote in their notebooks.

C. Students brainstorm places they have been which have that “glory:” the Vietnam memorial, etc.

D. Students are asked to visualize a place from their own childhoods which is invested with meaning because of the people who were there or the experiences—good and bad— which they had in this place.

E. Students are given blank white paper. They are asked to draw a map of that childhood place. Colored pens will be available to them. They will be encouraged to label their maps and to be as specific as possible. Students who finish early will be “side-coached” to encourage them to add more specific details. After about 15-20 minutes, they will be asked to find partners and to explain their maps to each other.

F. As they finish explaining their maps, students are told to use their maps as a pre-writing exercise and for homework to write a “Memory Piece” which can be prose or poetry (except haiku!).

Day Three: Adding imagery to create a sense of place.

Expectations:

A. The students will read an excerpt from Eudora Welty’s “The Little Store “ as well as the lyrical list poem from Richard Wright’s BLACK BOY which begins with” Each event spoke....”and ends with “heavy skies on silent nights,” (pp. 8-10).

B. The students will recognize language appealing to the senses.

C. The students will drill on the meanings of visual, auditory, gustatory, tactile, and olfactory.

D. The students will create sensory details to add to their own memory pieces in imitation of Miss Welty. and/or Richard Wright.

Procedures:

A. I explain to the students that this little store is now the George Street Grocery and draw a map on the board to show them where it is.

B. I draw five columns on the board and label them: sight/visual; hearing/ auditory;

touch/tactile; taste/ gustatory; smell/ olfactory. The students write the new words in their notes-books

C. The class reads the excerpt from “The Little Store” aloud or silently with instructions to mark the details which appeal to the senses.

D. The students will offer various examples of sensory details from the story to complete the columns on the board.

E. The students will read aloud the handout from BLACK BOY, taking turns with each “there was...”

F. The students are told to write a second draft of their memory paper, adding sensory details. Both drafts will be turned in tomorrow. The second draft must be typed.

G. They may imitate the style of Miss Welty or they may write a list poem as Richard Wright has done.

Day Four: Geography and a sense of place.

Expectations:

A. The students will recall what they already know about places in Mississippi.

B. The students will collaborate to create a map of Mississippi.

C. The students will compare their maps to the Dept. of Transportation maps.

D. The students will display their map(s) in the hall or the classroom.

Materials:

Dept. of Transportation maps for each student, markers, colored pencils, magazines, tape, construction paper, scissors, at least one grossly elongated map of Mississippi.

Procedures:

A. Students are seated in a circle and asked to read one sentence from their memory pieces. There are no passes for reading one sentence, everyone participates. Students who wish to read more may do so, but this is not the main activity for the day. Students turn in both drafts of their papers.

B. Student are given biographical sketches of the lives of Wright, Welty, Walker.

C. Students are assigned a quiz for the next class period. Material to be covered

includes: the characteristics of Mississippi Literature, the biographical information

just handed out, the vocabulary for talking about the senses, the definition of

imagery, and an explanation of “a sense of place.”

D. Students are given the Dept. of Transportation maps to use as references.

E. Either with partners, in groups, or as an entire class, the students fill in the blank

map(s) of Mississippi. “Side-coaching” from the teacher may include asking them.

about their favorite state colleges, hometowns of the rich and famous, towns

where their families come from, towns where they have played sports, and the

towns of people they have met at various youth activities. They are also

encouraged to include the major highways of the state. The more the map is

decorated, the better it will be hanging in the hall or the classroom

F. At the end of 40 minutes, the students show their map(s) and explain what the various symbols and decorations mean. The map(s) are prominently displayed.

NOTE: This plan is for 4 class periods, with a quiz on the 5^th day, plus time to catch up if the lessons run overtime.

Cleta S. Ellington

St Joseph Catholic School