1. NCTE 2013 Annual Convention
The Transactional ELA Classroom: Deriving Humanistic Understandings from Literature
NCTE 2013 Annual Convention
Presenters:
Carol Cavanaugh
Julie Matson
Cheryl Tucker
Copyright: 2013

2. What is Transactional Reading?
Includes aesthetic reading which generates “feeling”
Starts with essential questions and an issues-centered curriculum
Requires texturing and contextualizing
Engages students in new meaning making:
Multi-modal, multi-genre texts; people; self
Elicits response and responsibility

3. What is Race?

4. Race is defined as: 1. a family, tribe, people, or nation of the same stock 2. a group of individuals within a biological species able to breed together 3. a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits

5. Now Let’s Take a Closer Look

6. The Great Gatsby Focus Beginning of discussion on race
Hierarchy based on race
Skin color and religion as part of race
Fitzgerald’s connection with the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance

7. Passing Focus: Obligation to race Racial consciousness
Skin color and concept of beauty
Harlem Renaissance

8. Doing a Close Reading of the Text
“One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me?” Countee Cullen

9. Passage #2
“ ‘My God! What an awful chance! She must be plumb crazy.’ ‘Yes, it certainly seems risky,’ Irene admitted. ‘Risky! I should say it was. Risky! My God! What a word! And the mess she’s liable to get herself into!’ ‘Still, I imagine she’s pretty safe. They don’t live here, you know. And there’s a child. That’s a certain security.’ ‘It’s an awful chance, just the same,’ Gertrude insisted. ‘I’d never in the world have married Fred without him knowing. You can’t tell what will turn up.’ ‘Yes, I do agree that it’s safer to tell. But then Bellew wouldn’t have married her. And, after all, that’s what she wanted.’” (62-63)

10. Passage #3
“She had to Clare Kendry a duty. She was bound to her by those very ties of race, which, for all her repudiation of them, Clare had been unable to completely sever. And it wasn’t, as Irene knew, that Clare cared at all about the race or what was to become of it. She didn’t. Or that she had for any of its members great, or even real, affection, though she professed undying gratitude for the small kindnesses which the Westover family had shown her when she was a child. Irene doubted the genuineness of it, seeing herself only as a means to an end where Clare was concerned. Nor could it be said that she had even the slight artistic or sociological interest in the race that some members of other races displayed. She hadn’t. No, Clare Kendry cared nothing for the race. She only belonged to it.” (75-76)

11. Passage #4
“ ‘They always come back. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.’ ‘But why?’ Irene wanted to know. ‘Why?’ ‘If I knew that, I’d know what race is.’ ‘But wouldn’t you think that having got the thing, or things, they were after, and at such risk, they’d be satisfied? Or afraid?’ ‘Yes,’ Brian agreed, ‘you certainly would think so. But, the fact remains, they aren’t. Not satisfied, I mean. I think they’re scared enough most of the time, when they give way to the urge and slip back. Not scared enough to stop them, though. Why, the good God only knows.’ Irene leaned forward, speaking, she was aware, with a vehemence absolutely un- necessary, but which she could not control. ‘Well, Clare can just count me out. I've no intention of being the link between her and her poorer darker brethren. After that scene in Chicago too! To calmly expect me — ‘ She stopped short, suddenly too wrathful for words. ‘Quite right. The only sensible thing to do. Let her miss you. It's an unhealthy business, the whole affair. Always is.’ Irene nodded. ‘More coffee,’ she offered. ‘Thanks, no.’ He took up his paper again, spreading it open with a little rattling noise. Zulena came in bringing more toast. Brian took a slice and bit into it with that audible crunching sound that Irene disliked so intensely, and turned back to his paper.” (80-81)

12. Passage #5
“Most likely she and Clare would never meet again. Well, she, for one, could endure that. Since childhood their lives had never really touched. Actually they were strangers. Strangers in their ways and means of living. Strangers in their desires and ambitions. Strangers even in their racial consciousness. Between them the barrier was just as high, just as broad, and just as firm as if in Clare did not run that strain of black blood. In truth, it was higher, broader, and firmer; because for her there were perils, not known, or imagined, by those others who had no such secrets to alarm or endanger them.”(92-93)

13. Passage #6
“‘Yes,’ Wentworth said, ‘that's it. Everybody seems to be here and a few more. But what I'm trying to find out is the name, status, and race of the blonde beauty out of the fairy-tale. She's dancing with Ralph Hazelton at the moment. Nice study in contrasts, that.’ It was. Clare fair and golden, like a sunlit day. Hazelton dark, with gleaming eyes, like a moonlit night.”(115)

14. Passage #7
“The man hung rapt on her words, though he was the husband of Felise Freeland, and the author of novels that revealed a man of perception and a devastating irony. And he fell for such pish-posh! And all because Clare had a trick of sliding down ivory lids over astonishing black eyes and then lifting them suddenly and turning on a caressing smile. Men like Dave Freeland fell for it. And Brian.”(144)

15. Passage #8
“She was caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed. A person or the race. Clare, herself, or the race. Or, it might be, all three. Nothing, she imagined, was ever more completely sardonic. Sitting alone in the quiet living-room in the pleasant fire- light, Irene Redfield wished, for the first time in her life, that she had not been born a Negro. For the first time she suffered and rebelled because she was unable to disregard the burden of race. It was, she cried silently, enough to suffer as a woman, an individual, on one's own account, without having to suffer for the race as well. It was a brutality, and undeserved. Surely, no other people so cursed as Ham's dark children.”(152)

16. Passage #9
“ ‘I don't believe I've ever gone native in my life except for the sake of convenience, restaurants, theatre tickets, and things like that. Never socially I mean, except once. You've just passed the only person that I've ever met disguised as a white woman.’ ‘Awfully sorry. Be sure your sin will find you out and all that. Tell me about it.’ ‘I’d like to. It would amuse you. But I can't.’ Felise's laughter was as languidly nonchalant as her cool voice. ‘Can it possible that the honest Irene has — Oh, do look at that coat! There. The red one. Isn't it a dream?’ Irene was thinking: ‘I had my chance and didn't take it. I had only to speak and to introduce him to Felise with the casual remark that he was Clare's husband. Only that. Fool. Fool.’ That instinctive loyalty to a race. Why couldn't she get free of it? Why should it include Clare? Clare, who'd shown little enough consideration for her, and hers. What she felt was not so much resentment as a dull despair because she could not change herself in this respect, could not separate individuals from the race, herself from Clare Kendry.”(156)

17. Passage #10
After the boys had gone up to their own floor, Irene said suavely: ‘I do wish, Brian, that you wouldn't talk about lynching before Ted and Junior. It was really inexcusable for you to bring up a thing like that at dinner. There'll be time enough for them to learn about such horrible things when they're older.’  
‘You're absolutely wrong! If, as you're so determined, they've got to live in this damned country, they'd better find out what sort of thing they're up against as soon as possible. The earlier they learn it, the better prepared they'll be.’
‘I don't agree. I want their childhood to be happy and as free from the knowledge of such things as It possibly can be.’ 
‘Very laudable,’ was Brian's sarcastic answer. ‘Very laudable indeed, all things considered. But can it?’
‘Certainly it can. If you'll only do your part.’
‘Stuff ! You know as well as I do, Irene, that it can't. What was the use of our trying to keep them from learning the word 'nigger' and its connotation? They found out, didn't they? And how? Because somebody called Junior a dirty nigger.’
‘Just the same you're not to talk to them about the race problem. I won't have it.’
They glared at each other.  
‘I tell you, Irene, they've got to know these things, and it might as well be now as later.’
 ’They do not!’ she insisted, forcing back the tears of anger that were threatening to fall.
Brian growled : ‘I can't understand how anybody as intelligent as you like to think you are can show evidences of such stupidity.’ He looked at her in a puzzled harassed way.  
‘Stupid!’ she cried. ‘Is it stupid to want my children to be happy?’ Her lips were quivering.  
‘At the expense of proper preparation for life and their future happiness, yes. And I’d feel I hadn't done my duty by them if I didn't give them some inkling of what's before them. It's the least I can do. I wanted to get them out of this hellish place years ago. You wouldn't let me. I gave up the idea, because you objected. Don't expect me to give up everything.’” ( )

18. Passage #11
“‘So you're a nigger, a damned dirty nigger!’ His voice was a snarl and a moan, an expression of rage and of pain. Everything was in confusion. The men had sprung forward. Felise had leapt between them and Bellew. She said quickly: ‘Careful. You're the only white man here.’ And the silver chill of her voice, as well as her words, was a warning.”(175)

19. The Crisis NAACP Publication

20. We mix so well ... the four Durrant girls Solent News & Photo Agency
Twins in the News
Closer than ever... The million-to-one black and white twins Kian and Remee turn seven
By PAUL HARRIS and LUCY LAING
PUBLISHED: 16:54 EST, 30 March 2012 | UPDATED: 18:12 EST, 30 March 2012
Twincredibles
We mix so well ... the four Durrant girls
Solent News & Photo Agency

21. NPR Articles on Skin Whitening

22. “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

23. “Heritage” by Countee Cullen

24. “Race and Class Identity in The Great Gatsby and Passing”

25. Engaging Students with the Texts
Around the room activity
Socratic Seminar

26. Around the Room Activity
Instructions:
Working in pairs, students start at a blank poster paper and are given a specific question/task to complete. All responses are written on the poster.
Students then travel clockwise around the room and respond to each poster. They can ask questions, build on ideas, add insight, etc.
Students then end where they started, review the work on the poster, and present the work. During this time they can highlight key ideas, ask for clarification, and debate ideas with which they disagree.
Sample Questions/Tasks:
Select one quote from “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” that you both think is significant to understanding McIntosh’s thesis and write it on the paper.
Select several lines from “Heritage” that you both think are significant to understanding Cullen’s poem and write them on the paper.
Write down one analytical question about McIntosh’s article, and record it on the paper.
Discuss how you are able to connect McIntosh’s article with Passing. Record your ideas on the paper.
How do you personally relate to the ideas presented in “Heritage”?
How do you personally relate to the ideas presented in “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”?

27. Student Samples How does Cullen represent ideas about racial identity?
How does McIntosh represent ideas about racial identity?
Student Samples

28. Write down an analytical question for McIntosh’s article.
Discuss how you personally relate to the ideas presented in “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”.
Student Samples

29. Socratic Seminar Part One
The relationship between Irene and Clare
Clare’s power over Irene
Irene’s response to “passing” 
The value of money 
Clare’s physical appearance
EYES 
Clare’s VOICE 
Heat 
Isolation

30. Socratic Seminar Part Two
The relationship between Irene and Brian
The evolving relationship between Irene and Clare
Brian’s dissatisfaction with his current life
Happiness, Freedom, Safety
Clare’s and Irene’s views of motherhood
Clare’s propensity toward satisfying her own desires
Definition of race and the obligation to one’s race

31. Socratic Seminar Part Three
The relationship between Brian and Irene
The relationship between Brian and Clare
Irene’s conception of race and loyalty to race
Comparison between Brian’s and Irene’s views of discussing race with the children
Irene and motherhood as compared with previous sections
John Bellew’s reaction to discovering the truth about Clare
The ending (Oh my gosh – did you see that coming?!)

32. Their Eyes Were Watching God
Focus
Racial Hierarchies
Race and Beauty
Harlem Renaissance

33. Of Mice and Men
Focus:
N-Word
Racial Hierarchy
Race and Power

34. A Streetcar Named Desire
Focus
Mingling of Races
Racial Hierarchy

35. To Kill a Mockingbird Focus: Social Justice Racial Hierarchy
Race and Power
Racial Profiling

36. Doing a Close Reading of the Text
Part One:
Divide the large paper in quarters, and label the columns with the following headings: Community, Scout, Jem, Atticus.
Carefully read each passage below, and decide whose racial attitude it best describes.
Cut the passage out, and glue it in the appropriate column.
Part Two:
Review the evidence in each column of your chart, and think about what this evidence reveals about this group/person’s racial attitudes. Consider the following: What attitude does this group/person have related to race? Is it consistent? What does it reveal about the group/person?
Develop a thesis statement for each column.
Use the space below to write a well-developed analytical paragraph for each group/person using the thesis statements you create.

37. “The Courthouse Ring”

38. Articles on Trayvon Martin

39. Engaging Students with the Texts
Do you think racial profiling still exists?
Scenario: You’re walking alone at night. A black man wearing a hoodie and backpack approaches you. What do you do?
What do you now realize about your own preconceptions and/or biases? How will this learning inform your actions going forward?

40. Beloved Focus: Slavery Power Obligation to Race Racial Consciousness
Racial Hierarchy

41. Doing a Close Reading of the Text
Beloved Book I: Three Depictions of Infanticide Objective: To compare Sethe’s, Schoolteacher’s, and Stamp Paid’s accounts of the infanticide that Sethe commits. Your group will look at one of these depictions in terms of the following: Elements of language such as detail, word choice, figurative language, and so forth as they contribute to the tone and overall representation of the excerpt. Why each character views the scene the way he or she does. What preconceived biases does the description reaffirm? Be prepared to teach your passage to the class Group 1: Schoolteacher pp. 175 – 177 Group 2: Stamp Paid pp. 183 – 185 Group 3: Sethe pp. 192 – 193 *As you listen to the other groups’ presentations, take notes.* Compose a well-developed response that explores how the act’s meaning is a product of the viewer/narrator’s personal values and beliefs. Your response should highlight the author’s use of diction, figurative language, sentence structure, and any other resources of language as they contribute to the passages’ effectiveness.

42. Beloved Close Reading
Schoolteacher
Sethe
Stamp Paid
Why does each character view the scene the way he or she does? What preconceived biases does the description reaffirm?

43. Engaging Students with the Text
Socratic Seminar
Imagery Assignment adapted from readwritethink.org
“This is not a story to pass on.” (275)

44. Socratic Seminar Part One
Morrison’s use of repetition
Morrison’s use of imagery: color, water, trees, etc.
Significance of storytelling
Role of the community
Past vs. Present
Narrative Structure
Biblical/Religious allusions
Identity and how the characters define themselves (consider gender identification)
Three versions of the infanticide
Brutality of slavery

45. Socratic Seminar Part Two
Impact of Baby Suggs’ character – specifically her speech in the Clearing
Historical allusions
Shift in 124 being spiteful to loud
Community versus isolation – Sethe: “There is no world outside my door.” (185) “The world is in this room.” (183)
Letting go of the past
Regret and shame
Secrets
Plans
Imagery: tobacco tin, red ribbon, jungle, tree
“… definitions belonged to the definers – not the defined.” (190)
Style
the presentation of the past – flashbacks, stories, just told in present tense, etc.
shift in point of view
stream of consciousness

46. Socratic Seminar Part Three
124: spiteful, loud, quiet
Denver and abandonment
Lay ‘em down, Sword and Shield
Role of community
Representation of white people
Story comes full circle – How? What changes? What remains the same? Why?
“There are too many things to feel about [Sethe].” (272)
What’s the purpose of the last chapter?
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.” ( )
“ ‘Sethe,’ he says, ‘me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.’” (273)
“You your best thing, Sethe. You are.” (273).\
“It is not a story to pass on” (274 and 275) and “This is not a story to pass on” (275)
Novel as a Whole (You’ll notice that many of these topics are specific to Part III as well.):
Problems with a ghost as main character
Shocking scenes – Which scenes stay with you and why?

47. Imagery Assignment
“I wanted the reader to be kidnapped, thrown ruthlessly into an alien environment as the first step into a shared experience with the book’s population – just as the characters were snatched from one place to another, from any place to any other, without preparation or defense” (Morrison xviii).
 After reading the opening chapters of Beloved, you worked in small groups and gave the novel a sense of organization by representing the key events of chapters 1-4 solely through images. Remember, the objective here was not to produce works of art, but instead to review major events and the means by which Morrison organizes them. Now, you are going to do the same thing for the novel as a whole. In other words, visually represent how the novel works as a whole solely through the use of images. Before you begin, think about which images you want to include and how you want to organize your work.
 Here are the specifics: 
1. Form groups and get a piece of easel paper and some markers or colored pencils.
2. Represent the novel in its entirety through the drawing of images. You may refer to the text as necessary. You may focus on the literal, the abstract, the figurative/symbolic, the chronology, or a pivotal scene.
3. Prepare an explanation of your representation including the rationale behind your artistic decisions.
4. Post your paper in the room.
5. Go for a gallery walk with your group to look at each of the other group’s representations of the novel, and answer the following questions:
What images are central to each group’s representation?
What method of organization has each group used?
How does each group’s representation compare to your own? Consider elements that your group included that the other groups did not and vice versa.
What questions do you have about each group’s choices?
Present your work to the class explaining your rationale behind your artistic decisions, and answer the questions generated during the gallery walk. This presentation should be 5-8 minutes long.

48. Student Samples

49. Student Samples

50. “This is not a story to pass on.” (275)
What do we make of the paradox that Morrison creates in her novel? She opens with her dedication: “Sixty Million and more” and ends with “This is not a story to pass on.”(275)
How does Beloved help us confront a past that has been silenced/revised/mitigated?
What do we make of the entertainment industry’s recent productions on slavery?
Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino (2012)
12 Years a Slave, Steven McQueen (2013)
“New Slave”, Kanye West (2013)

51. From Teaching the Universe of Discourse
“The interrelation of life
and literature is both more precise and more organic than is commonly expressed in the truism
that one can learn one through the other.”
-James Moffett

52. From Teaching Literacy for LOVE and WISDOM
The third dimension of transactional life…is wisdom in general—presence to, reverence for, and responsibility toward life as a whole—which antedates democracy and needs to be seen as the largest and fullest goal of democratic life.
-Jeffrey Wilhelm & Bruce Novak

53. Works Consulted
Crocker, John, and Celena Kusch. "Race and Class Identity in The Great Gatsby and Passing." USC Upstate Undergraduate Research Journal. 2.Fall (2009): n. page. Web. 8 Nov
Cullen, Countee. "Heritage." Poetry Foundation. PoetryFoundation.Org, n.d. Web. 8 Nov
Gifford, Nina, ed. "The Harlem Renaissance: A Unit of Study for Grades " Annenberg Learner: Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum. The Annenberg Foundation, n.d. Web. 8 Nov 2013.
Gladwell, Malcolm. "The Courthouse Ring: Atticus Finch and the Limits of Southern Liberalism." New Yorker. 10 Aug 2009: n. page. Web. 8 Nov
Harris, Paul, and Lucy Lang. "Closer than ever... The million-to-one black and white twins Kian and Remee turn seven." Mail Online. 30 Mar 2012: n. page. Web. 8 Nov
Khoabane, Pinky, dir. "Skin Whitening: A Global Practice." Dir. Radhika Parameswaran. Around the Nation. National Public Radio: 9 Jul Radio.
Larsen, Nella. Passing. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, eBook.
Larsen, Nella. Passing. New York: Modern Library, Print.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Grand Central Publishing, Print.
Library, CNN. "Trayvon Martin Shooting Fast Facts." CNN U.S.. 29 Aug 2013: n. page. Web. 8 Nov
McIntosh, Peggy. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Independent School. (1990): n. page. Web. 8 Nov
Moffett, James. Teaching the Universe of Discourse. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, eBook.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage Books, Print.
Pyatt, Jamie. "Twincredibles." Sun . 22 Jun 2010: n. page. Web. 8 Nov
"Race." Def. 3. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Springfield: 2004.
Rosenblatt, Louise. The Reader the Text the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. : Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994.
Tabirian, Alyssa. "Sen. Cardin: ‘But For Racial Profiling…Trayvon Martin Would Be Alive Today’" CNS News. 31 Jul 2013: n. page. Web. 8 Nov
Weinberg, Charles. “Narrative Structure and Perspective in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” readwritethink.org. NCTE. Web. 13 Nov
Wessling, Sarah Brown. “Everything’s a Conversation: Reading Away Isolation in Supporting students in a time of core standards: English language arts, grade 9 – 12.” Urbana, Illinois: NCTE, 2011.
"What is Race?." Public Broadcasting Service. PBS.org, n.d. Web. 8 Nov 2013.
Wilhelm, Jeffrey, and Bruce Novak. Teaching Literacy for Love and Wisdom: Being the Book and Being the Change. New York: Teachers College Press,
Copyright: 2013
Lessons and materials in this Powerpoint presentation are for classroom use only; not for sale or publication.