Today is Monday, May 4th, and later today I will be ZOOM Master for Fairfield University’s Celebration for Teachers and Teaching. This is the 8th year I get to be emcee and finger snap student and cooperating teachers, our faculty, and our University supervisors. It is always a reflective location, and this morning I’m reflecting a little more.
Why? Great Whatever. Serendipity. Magic. A text message.
In 2018, with knowledge that Nic Stone was coming to the Saugatuck StoryFest, I added Dear Martin to a course on Developmental Reading in the Middle and Secondary School. Since its inception, my students have always done textual lineages (Tatum, 2005, 2007, 2014), but I didn’t start featuring choice texts until around 2015. Why? Because my students came to me with the same gripes that Gallagher (2009) names in Readicide. They did the perfunctory tasks of reading in school to get grades (usually cheating the system), but they fell out of a love for reading in high school. Because of this, I began to promote young adult literature in all my classes – if anything, I wanted my students to find joy in reading again.
Back to Nic Stone. It is customary for me to do an art project with every class, where I give students pieces of a puzzle, and they must respond with a visual representation of their thinking. Usually I ask, “Why read?” and ask them to represent their thinking in artistic form. In 2018, however, I did something different. My students were given MLK quotes to write about, as well as to read Dear Martin for class. Their homework was to bring a copy of their reflection on the activities of MLK and Dear Martin and then take their shape and trace it over their favorite lines from what they wrote.
They think I’m crazy. I am. That’s okay.
What they didn’t know is the shapes I gave them was in the pattern of Nic Stone’s Dear Martin, and that I intended to gift the art piece to the writer when she came to Saugatuck (which I did). My Assistant Dean and a couple of GSEAP graduate students helped to add water color and to put the puzzle back together. We framed it, and it came out well.
What Nic Stone never saw, however, is the writing from students that they traced before it was painted. I learned that the writer rearranged her office space and Wola! Look what was there. Phew. I’m inspired, and I post this blog to thank her, but also in celebration of teachers everywhere. This is also for Dr. Alfred Tatum and Kelly Gallagher. I am, because of them (and I never took a class with either - I just read what they write).
Here are highlights from what they had to say that semester: I’m two years behind myself.
· This class has officially performed Reading CPR on me. The chest compressions began with Dear Martin. That book had me lost in it. It made me feel a rollercoaster of emotions and I found myself reading every chance I got. For the first time I finished the book before it was assigned to be finished. I found myself asking all my English teacher colleagues to read the book, so I would have someone to talk to about it. And I’m a MATH TEACHER. They also loved the book. The next compression was the textual lineages. Not so much mine, but the rest of the class’.
· There’s a question that I keep coming back to, ever since beginning my reading of Dear Martin for our second class. It seemed to me, at first, a silly one, unworthy of the time and attention that Stone’s loftier themes demand. It’s a question of craft, the kind of thing that creative writers will nit-pick about but that often go largely unexplored in high-school curricula. But it keeps coming back, and I know from experience that it will continue to do so until I make some attempt at working it out so I’d like to use this space to do so. The question is simple; the answer, I’d imagine, is not. Why does Stone shift to a screenplay format for her depictions of Doc Dray’s classroom discussion?
· Dear Martin is a harrowing book. It drags you through not only the tremendous pain and suffering of its characters, but through the tremendous pain and suffering of the world at large in which it exists. It is a lot to ask a reader to endure, let alone to grapple with, and yet it succeeds at both. I would argue that a part of that success is due to Stone’s mastery of the fundamental question driving any story: “and then what happened?” Part of that success lies in surprise moments of some really beautiful language, such as “Even from a distance, Jus can tell Jared’s eyes are haunted. Like the floor has opened up beneath him and there’s no bottom to his agony.” Part of that is philosophical truth. And I would argue that my ability to appreciate any of the above started far back when I was free to explore stories in any form. The force of any readerly moment I experience builds upon the forces of all those that preceded it, and I’ve been lucky to have so many.
· Which brings me to Dear Martin. In your response to my last think piece, you payed me a very nice and much appreciated compliment for not being lit-snobby and dismissing YA lit as somehow “less-than.” But honestly, how could I? Look at her bundling of complex ideas; look at her plotting! There’s rarely a “good breaking point” at which to put down the book. Oh good, Justyce and SJ won the debate and it looks like they are totally going to hook up and that would be the perfect place to stop reading for the night. NOPE! Now I don’t just want to know, I need to know why SJ turned away. Look at the end of nearly any chapter and you can see Stone raising the big, burning question that will drive you through the next. Even putting aside the resonant “Bang. / Bang. / Bang.” that separates the books two halves, we can point to the visit with Quan that leaves justice in possession of a phone number for Martel and the Black Jihad, or the strategic use of news segments and newspaper excerpts that leave you needing to check in with these characters and see their reactions.
· Dear Martin would be a challenging a book to teach. The injustices perpetrated versus American black men by police are not only very topical and real but sad and disgraceful. And that’s exactly what Dear Martin attempts to illuminate, even if it falls short in some aspects because the characters are rendered stereotypical, contrived and often strain credibility.
· How did you expect us to stop reading after Manny is killed? I finished the book in one afternoon . I couldn’t stop. I would apologize, but I achieved a flow. I also found myself crying and reading next to a number of swim moms at the Wilton YMCA. I think just being there made me cry harder.
· For example, in Dear Martin, Justyce is able to accomplish similar healing powers through his letters to Dr. Martin Luther King. Although not a painting or drawing that we usually associate with art, Dear Martin uses letters to “supply an ideal platform for youth to notice differences, think critically, consider alternate positions, and make more informed, ethical choices” (33). For Justyce, these letters allowed him to reflect upon his own social issues and injustices and express his feelings and concerns through the art form of writing letters.
· Art is another way to supplement readings and is an interesting way to build interdisciplinary connections. In my use of art in Social Studies, students usually gravitate towards the visuals and it often makes a great companion to a primary source; as a class, we can see how the reading and the artwork connect to themes or build on our historical knowledge.
· Perhaps most incredible were the white teenagers who joyfully appropriate urban black culture, claiming they’re not racist, while they downplay minstrel-style lawn jockeys and presume to tell black people that There Is No More Racial Injustice And Everything Is Peachy Keen. Jared, Blake and the others might as well be tobacco-chewing, overall-wearing Dixie whistlers. Stone really tests our suspension of disbelief. Would a black, Yale-bound student dress “gangsta” and go to a party with these same white kids wearing racist garb, even as a tongue-in-cheek joke? Unlikely.
· So what WOULD Martin Luther King do? Well for one thing, he wouldn’t stay silent. He would have the conversation with as many people who would listen. But sometimes I wish I could do even more. How do we accelerate progress without creating more divisiveness and violence? I wish I knew.
· It’s creating the relationship and dynamics of a classroom in which the children are comfortable with to share themselves, the good, the bad, the frustrating, the happy. It’s where the teacher can create a bond if only within those four walls, where they know they won’t be judged, but they will be listened to and respected.
Here’s to teachers everywhere. And Alfred Tatum and Kelly Gallagher...phew! There is not enough
appreciation in the world for the contributions you've made to reading and English Education. Shoes and elephants, Nic Stone. Thank you for teaching us, too.
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