Tag: #steinbeck

Using Literacy for Advocacy

In honor of Advocacy Month, the Writers Who Care blog has invited educators to talk about literacy and advocacy by posting a 90-second video on Flipgrid. My students decided to tweak their prompt to reflect on how we use literacy for advocacy.

Here is the video response from my classroom.

From Of Mice and Men to Advocacy

After students finished reading Of Mice and Men, I challenged them to investigate a contemporary issue raised by the classic text. Students researched and wrote about issues such as sexism, racism, ageism, and ableism. Then, they researched advocacy organizations that aligned to their arguments. Some students reached out to their advocacy groups to learn how to get involved. [ . . . ]  Read More

Guest Speaker Offers a New Perspective on Mental Disability

Last month, three of my classes were treated to a visit by our Student Assistance Counselor, Mr. Jason Grabelsky, a social worker whose role is to offer students support and counseling.

Fiction Helps Us Confront Discomfort

Though I’ve taught Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men for nearly ten years, I’ve never been comfortable with how my students talk about one of the main characters, Lennie, who is cognitively impaired.

Steinbeck introduces Lennie in a comic fashion—he gulps water from a pond so excitedly that he dunks his head underwater, “hat and all” (p. 3)—so it’s natural that students are amused by his childlike behavior. Students often ask if Lennie is “all there in the head,” “stupid,” or “special.” My students were doing exactly as I’d trained them to do: reading closely and analyzing the character’s words and actions. But I had not equipped them with the appropriate language to talk about Lennie’s deficiencies in a sensitive way. [ . . . ]  Read More