American Lit Syllabus Gets A Rewrite

What is worth teaching? And how do students learn?

Veteran teacher Moira Birmingham re-examined these classic questions when faced with the job of reimagining Hamden’s American Literature curriculum.

Birmingham presented that new curriculum, which she co-drafted with American Studies teacher Elizabeth Alexander during the pandemic summer, at a meeting earlier this month of the Hamden Board of Education Curriculum Committee, which voted approval. Birmingham did so alongside Julia McNamee, Hamden’s director of language arts, and Kellen Nixon, the founder of Nixon & Co., a consulting group which has been working with Hamden High’s literature department for the past year to promote culturally responsive teaching.

“The genesis of this curriculum began a couple of years ago when we realized that our American Literature curriculum needed to be updated; it wasn’t very current, contemporary, or engaging, and didn’t speak to the questions our students had,” McNamee said.

The old curriculum primarily showcased traditional texts by white writers. Thanks to unanimous approval of the new curriculum by the BOE Curriculum Committee, 11th graders will be greeted with a fresh syllabus when they return to school in the fall, half of which will be filled with works by ​“own-voice” authors.

Some potential books on that revised list include Homegoing, The Nickel Boys, The Underground Railroad, Behold the Dreamers, The Hate U Give, Copper Sun, Between the World and Me, American Beauty, Poet X, Fences, and Their Eyes Were Watching God.

In addition to changes in content, the ways in which teachers fundamentally approach the material will shift.

McNamee explained that, in the past, American Literature classes were structured around individual texts.

In order to encourage more robust conversation that draws on students’ lived experiences and goes beyond the books themselves, Birmingham and Alexander developed seven course units: American immigration, religion and secularism, the American dream, war and its impact on humanity, enslavement, historical fiction, and the search for justice.

The idea is that teachers should aim to lead discussions about these themes, selecting a variety of novels and texts that support and expand on in-class discussions. Next year, the expectation is that teachers will independently select four units to focus on out of the seven options.

McNamee called this a ​“thematic chronological approach.” Students will explore theoretical concepts as they have functioned across history, which will also allow for the integration of contemporary works into every unit, alongside older writings.

Why Change?

The acceptance of the altered curriculum by the BOE Curriculum Committee demonstrates Hamden’s answer to Birmingham’s first question, ​“What is worth teaching?”

The question of why these new materials are so important is connected to Birmingham’s second question: How should teachers go about ensuring that students feel both engaged and safe, especially while grappling with sensitive content and ideas that they may not have previously encountered in a classroom setting?

“We often lose out because teachers find themselves just wanting to flash an image or speak to a part of history, not realizing that they’re taking the joy out of the story,” Kellen Nixon told the Independent. ​“How you share history is extremely important.”

Nixon came to Hamden High last year as a consultant. He first met with Superintendent Goeler and other school administrators in the immediate aftermath of an incident at West Woods in which a teacher cast Black students as slaves in a school play.

Later that year, he was brought into the high school with the original task of assisting with the development of a more diverse curriculum for American Literature.

After spending some time observing teachers and students, he identified other priorities.

“There was discomfort around having conversations on race and identity,” he stated. Nixon realized, ​“I may need to start with culturally relevant pedagogy.”

The way Nixon put it, creating culturally responsive classrooms is arguably the most important component of learning. Culturally responsive teaching connects students’ lived experiences to class content, emphasizing the importance of individual identity in collective learning environments.

Janna Briggs, another consultant from Nixon & Co. who was brought on in November, added clarification: ​“We’re not there to tell students what to think or what to believe, but to make them critical thinkers.”

“Students don’t like school because they can’t relate to any of the content,” she asserted. ​“How can we get students to buy into what we’re trying to teach them? One of the biggest things is relevance.”

In other words, texts by authors featuring a variety of perspectives and worldviews could facilitate greater engagement within classrooms through assisting students in locating the relevance of broader ideas and histories to their own lives. Building personal connections to diverse texts assists students in learning how to fundamentally make meaning, which underlies the capacity to care enough to think critically and engage deeply with complicated content.

Will Children Get Depressed?

Parents, teachers, students, and community members alike have long advocated to see a more varied assortment of texts taught in Hamden classrooms, as well as for more culturally sensitive and responsive leadership within and across schools. However, these concerns have only recently gained the traction and budget necessary to potentially create concrete change.

It is unclear exactly what catalyzed these changes now rather than years ago. Julia McNamee recalled having articulated the importance of expanding the diversity of Hamden’s curriculum during her original job interview. Revisions to that same curriculum are now being implemented the year of her retirement.

Before room was finally made in the budget for books and consultants, teachers found other thrifty ways to start shifting how American literature was taught.

Birmingham recalled posting on the site Nextdoor to ask Hamden residents if they had copies of specific texts that they would like to donate to the school. That sparked interest within the broader community— many folks unfamiliar with the texts commented, ​“Oh! I wanna read those books,” Birmingham reported.

One year the Institute of American History partnered with the production Hamilton to offer 10 dollar tickets to classrooms. In order to win the tickets, students had to produce poetry, songs, or prose about the revolutionary era.

Birmingham took advantage of that opportunity. Not only did the students get to go see Hamilton live, but one student was selected to perform a poem he wrote on stage before the show.

“It was very dramatic,” Birmingham said. ​“People gasped at just the right points.”

Bringing the class to Hamilton turned out to be a pilot of sorts for bringing other contemporary media into the class.

When McNamee asked for volunteers to work on a new curriculum last summer, Birmingham and Alexander stepped up. In September, they were ready to start testing out the new texts to ascertain student and teacher experiences with reading different books and holding deeper, potentially more emotional conversations.

Birmingham remembered introducing the book Copper Sun by Sharon Draper to her students. ​“When we first started reading it, I had one student who said, ​‘oh my god, this is gonna be too depressing,’” she said, adding that the book depicts a brutal rape scene.

“It’s intense. It’s heavy,” Birmingham asserted. However, after finishing the book, she said students thanked her ​“for going there.”

Cassidy Morgan, a rising senior who took that pilot course with Birmingham last year, expressed her opinions of the new, ongoing changes with the Independent.

“This year we had a lot of conversations about social justice,” she said. ​“Usually, if we’re getting into a conversation that could be uncomfortable, we’ll stop it. We’ll brush it off.”

“These discussions need to continue. It should be more than an assignment or project,” she urged. She said that having more honest and nuanced discussions strengthened her appreciation and respect for her teacher and peers. ​“Ms. Birmingham seems to have a really eye-opening point of view,” she reflected. ​“She’s not afraid to say her opinions.”

Morgan said she preferred many of the new books to those that have long been in the curriculum. ​“Catcher in the Rye,” she said, for example, ​“wasn’t centered around anyone of color. It wasn’t a book I could relate to.”

For her final project, she was able to write about the Treaty of the Five Nations. ​“We don’t talk a lot about Native Americans and their history,” she said. ​“I’m Native American myself, so it was really cool for me because I just wasn’t expecting an assignment like that.”

Morgan recognized these shifts in the classroom as ​“broader changes in the world.” She said, ​“We have to keep talking about it, so more change is made. So we can make a real impact on society and on our futures.”

Mixed Reviews

Last year, each of the six American studies and literature teachers piloted two of the seven units. Weekly meetings with the consultants began in tandem with the piloting of these new texts.

Briggs framed the situation as such: ​“Now we have this new curriculum, and it’s gonna cause us to have conversations we’re not used to having… you have to approach those conversations with care, and the understanding that we all bring our lived experiences to the table.”

Nixon said that having those 45 to 90-minute conversations while school was often virtual was especially challenging. Usually, Nixon and Briggs would be able to go into physical classrooms, interact with and observe teachers and students, and model teaching strategies.

“It’s just not enough time to really take people through a wealth of content, allow them to engage, and give feedback.”

Nixon and Briggs began by surveying teacher and student needs. They found that the primary issue was one of engagement, unsurprisingly so during a year of rocky hybrid schooling constraints.

Given the evident limitations, teachers’ reactions to the meetings were mixed.

Alexander said that the sessions were, overall, ​“well received. But what we all came up with is that we’ve all already been doing this. One session was how do you get to know your students and their identities— we all do that from established rapport from the beginning of the year.”

“They’re not really here to discuss the actual curriculum. They’re here to help us with diversity… If we didn’t appreciate diversity, we wouldn’t be working in Hamden,” she said.

Alexander said she had hoped that the consultants would focus directly on discussing and developing the curriculum and individual lesson plans. She also wished those sessions had functioned as more collaborative spaces where teachers across grade levels could brainstorm strategies and content alterations in a collective fashion.

While Alexander herself volunteered to integrate newer books into the curriculum, she also lamented department decisions to eliminate other texts. She said that a lot of books, like To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn, were cut because they were believed to perpetuate ​“white savior narratives.”

Alexander emphasized the importance of training teachers to teach books from the appropriate perspective. She explained that she does not see Huck Finn as a white savior, stating that ​“Jim is the most intelligent character in the book; Huck doesn’t save him, Jim saves Huck.”

Birmingham, on the other hand, said that while she and Alexander felt at ease with the newer literature, she saw ​“more teachers developing comfort they didn’t have before,” as the year progressed.

“I think he [Nixon] was making people feel more brave about working with controversial subjects,” Birmingham reflected.

What About Protests Vs. Critical Race Theory?

One reason there is such discomfort among teachers when it comes to talking about race, identity, and structural oppression is a legacy of parental backlash.

“Teachers often get yelled at by members of the community,” Birmingham stated, citing a recent instance in which a parent was upset that a teacher acknowledged and led a discussion on white privilege in an African American studies course.

“These aren’t so much theories but perspectives,” Birmingham said. ​“And literature is all about perspective.”

Briggs said that this concern was incorporated into her meetings with teachers. She said best practice is to have ​“teachers talk to parents about what’s going to be discussed.”

“Be transparent. These are topics that are gonna come up. I am not here to tell your child what to think, but we are literally just going to explore these topics.”

Finally, Briggs advised, ​“invite parents to opt out.”

Parents, she said, ​“should not opt out, because students are gonna have to navigate these conversations at some point, anyway. But there’s something about the fact that people are being transparent, are giving you options, that creates a bit of ease.”

Keep Conversation Going

Consultants and teachers alike described this as the beginning of a long process of restructuring how teaching and learning occur rather than the final end goal.

Kellen and Briggs will begin working with the middle school next year, promoting more sensitive and responsive teaching strategies throughout Hamden’s entire school system.

McNamee also noted that, if it was up to her, she would make certain themes required across classrooms, such as the ​“enslavement” or ​“immigration” units.

In addition, many pinpointed the long-term goal of bringing teachers of color into Hamden to better reflect the demographics of the student population. Currently, all the American studies and literature teachers are white.

Birmingham and Alexander, who have both been involved in hiring committees, said that it is extremely difficult to recruit teachers of color. They said that when they ask teens in their classes whether they’re interested in teaching one day, nobody raises their hand.

Birmingham suggested creating a scholarship to financially support students from the Black and Hispanic Student Union who want to go into teaching. This could start a pipeline for ​“hiring within.”

Birmingham said that while meeting with Nixon and Briggs continuously ​“won’t transform us into teachers of color, it will keep a conversation going.”

Briggs concluded that while Hamden has considerable work to do, she has observed a standard of rigor and enthusiasm on the part of teachers that is uncommon in other schools across the country.

The administration, she said, has also shown dedication to long-term change. ​“They recognize that this is not a sprint,” she said. ​“They’re already talking about beyond next year.”