Gordon Lewis

Incorporating the Immigrant Narrative
into the Teaching of Senior English

Currently, in the Senior high school classes that I teach, I have endeavored to frame the teaching of the heritage of British Literature and its impact upon our culture by introducing the year with a quick overview of world literature beginning with the earliest civilizations, comparing the similarity of themes from one culture to another.  Then tracing the pattern of the Indo-European language and migration, the discussion is led to the earliest literature of the British Isles, Beowulf, and from there, through the history of English literature.  I frequently incorporate the religious heritages of the period studied and reference the numerous allusions to the Bible.

This course has opened numerous vistas that I will be able to incorporate into my teaching and enrich the offerings for my students.  One of the goals of high school English is to assist students in finding their own voice and an instrumental element of this process is an understanding of one’s heritage, both our communal heritage and our personal heritage.  I recalled when reading Crevecoeur’s “Letter III: What is an American?,” that I had first been introduced to this reading in high school and that it had introduced to me at that time the origin of the melting pot concept.  This reading is no longer included in the curriculum in the school where I teach, but I now plan to incorporate the reading as it helps set the tone for the history of communal identity in this country.

In addition, part of the course that I teach incorporates selections of world literature and I now intend to emphasize the national heritage of authors because frequently that heritage may be the personal heritage of a student I teach.  This approach strengthens the pride each student can develop in their personal heritage that may be slighted at the present time in our curriculum just because no one calls attention to the contributions to our society of that particular group.  In fact, I intend to expand the literature presentations purposefully to emphasize the contributions of a variety of immigrant groups to our national fabric.   Although this is not limited to Hispanic authors, I particularly plan to emphasize their contribution because of the large population of Hispanic students in our schools.  I currently include readings by Gary Soto and Sandra Cisneros, although I have failed to emphasize their Hispanic heritage, and I plan to add Pat Mora to the mix of authors presented.

The Judeo-Christian heritage is such an integral part of our society, and although I do reference Abraham and his place in religious history and I also call attention to the numerous allusions to religious teachings throughout literature, I, like most teachers, walk tenderly near any subjects where it might be inferred that there is a teaching of religion in the public school.  The emphasis in this class on the story of national migration so neatly addresses this issue.  The topic of national migration and its impact upon civilization can easily be traced from the Exodus story to the internal migration story of the Blacks in the United States and in the process, it becomes a sociological study rather than a religious study, even though the element of religion is a central theme of both the Exodus and the Pilgrim stories.  This story line leads to the Winthrop sermon, which was introduced to me in this class, and excerpts from Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation which gracefully traces the direct connection between British Lit and the United States and also completes a thread of thought that I currently teach about the impact of Henry VIII in the establishment of the Church of England.  The Pilgrims, as Separatists, as Bradford so clearly points out, are directly connected to the narrative of the Church of England.

The readings from the Black heritage that I hope to incorporate in my teaching are the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglas as well as the writings of Alain Locke from the Harlem Renaissance, a writer who was previously not familiar to me.  I already include a number of readings from Black authors, but the addition of these writers will enrich the offerings for my students.

In addition to the ideas above where I can already visualize the usefulness of this course to the subjects I teach, I have the nucleus of a thought process that I am developing but have not yet matured.  C.S. Lewis, and others, lament the concept of relativism that permeates our society and advocate that there are in fact absolute values that all societies and cultures agree to and that used to be taught in our educational system but have been abandoned by teachers because of the fear of controversy.  Inherent in the processes of discussing the ideas of literature is the discussion of the underlying morality of the concepts under discussion.  To a great extent, much of the discussion in a class on this topic evolves normally just from the literature presented, but there does not appear to be an effort on the part of curriculum designers to particularly target the arena of values of the culture.  It seems to me that with an appropriate selection of readings, the general topic of absolute values get addressed just naturally through the curriculum with no additional focused effort.  Because of the readings in this class, it occurs to me that the immigrant narrative readily focuses on the arena of cultural values and that the inclusion of appropriate selections brings the topic of values to the fore.  However, at present, this is an undeveloped thought process that has potential.

In summary, as I have indicated elsewhere, one of my chief personal objectives in taking this class was to enrich my capacities in the courses I teach.  As indicated herein, I have exceeded my expectations in this regard.  As a personal note to Dr. White, I would also mention that the manner in which class objectives were woven into the fabric of the teaching process was also very useful.  This process provides both a guideline and a rubric for the subjects under consideration and is a very useful tool to use in teaching literature.  I have not seen this process used in quite this manner in any previous class and I recognize the advantages of the approach.  I can see where I can frequently utilize this concept, but with the caveat that high school students lack the maturity of college students and care needs to be exercised so that they are not overwhelmed by the process, which can be difficult.

The readings, the class discussions, the class leadership on topics by other students, and the writing activities for this class have all collectively contributed to what has been a significant learning experience for me.  This class exceeded all of my expectations for the course.