Buck 1

Ashley Buck

EDSE 786

Dr. Mary Styslinger

11-06-17

Workshopping the Canon: The Crucible

According to Dr. Styslingers work, the first step to workshopping the canon is to push

the focus from product to understanding. As a teacher, focus must move away from having

students create, though that is important, and toward making sure students understand the

reading. The focus of an English classroom should be that of fostering a life-long love of, or at

least ability to read. As it stands now, many English teachers attempt to do this, but fall short and

merely teach students that their connection to the text does not matter; all that matters is what the

teacher says about the text.

I am working on a text set for The Crucible (Miller, 1953). After determining that I want

my students to focus on reading and skills they can gain from the novels we read, the next step is

that of finding a unit focus. My focus is going to be on how to deal with intolerance and

discrimination. Those issues are huge in the world right now, especially in high school to young

adults. For them, their whole world centers on their peers, and if they are being discriminated

against, learning how to deal with that issue will be an important skill for them to possess.

I will begin workshopping The Crucible by introducing the subject. Before we even start

talking about the book, I want to introduce the idea of intolerance and discrimination. I will let

students choose one of the articles I have found that show some form of discrimination in the

world today, and I will then ask them to relate it to their lives. I will tell students that the same

pressures that they are feeling are not new, and read Let Them Play (Raven, 2005) to them,
 Buck 2

which I discovered through Workshopping the Canon (Styslinger, 2017). My students pressures

matter, but there are times when discrimination has led to the punishment of innocent children,

or even death. This method of introducing The Crucible would likely pique their interest, and

hopefully get them to join me in reading it. Before jumping into reading the play, I will have

students do a web quest to find background information on the Salem Witch Trials. Once

students have some background knowledge, I will read act one, scene one of The Crucible with

them as a class, then we will discuss any confusions they may have. I will also ask students to be

taking note of any discussion questions they think they could ask, and let them know that we will

be doing something with them later.

After reading the first scene of the play, I will tell them that we are going to do book

clubs. I will have prepared them beforehand to book clubs with proper scaffolding. We will have

at least three days where that is the main focus of our lessons, and I would start the clubs as the

last unit in the second quarter. I will host a book talk for each of the novels that are available to

be read for book clubs. I would have each student write their top four choices of novels, and

assign them accordingly. Students will meet with their clubs on Mondays and Thursdays, and at

the first meeting, they will create a reading calendar to hold themselves accountable. Every other

day that we meet other than those days, I will read a scene of the play and we will discuss the

scenes from different points of view and through different lenses.

The book club books that they can choose from to read are If You Could Be Mine

(Farizan, 2013), The Handmaids Tale (Atwood, 1985), Homeless Bird (Whelan, 2000), The

Raging Quiet (Jordan, 1999), and The Heretics Daughter (Kent, 2008), Beyond the Burning

Time (Lasky, 1994), and Dear Martin (Stone, 2017). The Handmaids Tale is about a future

society where women no longer have control over how many children they want to have. If You
 Buck 3

Could Be Mine is a novel that focuses on the lesbian relationship between two Iranian girls.

Homeless Bird is about an Indian girl who is married off at a young age, but almost immediately

becomes a widow who is hated by her deceased husbands family, while still forced to live with

them. The Raging Quiet is also about a girl (this one from the dark ages) who is married off and

quickly widowed, but she lives in a coastal village and is accused of witchcraft because she

learns to communicate with a deaf boy. The Heretics Daughter is about the Salem Witch Trials

told from the point of view of one of the children of an accused woman and how they deal with

that in their relationship. Beyond the Burning Time is also about the child of one of the accused,

but this one focuses on the fight to free her mother. Dear Martin is told from the perspective of a

black boy who is on the path to an Ivy League college when he and a friend are pulled over by an

off-duty cop and get into an argument that ends in gun shots.

Each of these works deal with some form of intolerance or discrimination, and they are

all told from very different perspectives. I would definitely use a permission slip with Homeless

Bird and The Raging Quiet, and I would need to do some more research on the rest of them

before knowing if I would need one for them. The works vary in length and complexity, and I

feel that anyone in need of reading instruction would still have a choice, as well as anyone who

was more advanced.

Students who need help with their reading comprehension will have an entire group of

readers who will be reading the same novel as them and can help them. If anyone gets behind or

lost in whats going on, they can talk with their group and help one another understand what they

are reading. They will have their book club groups to help them with understanding their book

club books, as well as the play we are reading together. I will be reading each chapter of The
 Buck 4

Crucible aloud, and checking for comprehension along the way with chapter questions that they

will be expected to answer either as I am reading, or at home for homework after I have read.

For act one, scene two, I will introduce my students to theoretical lenses. I know that

sometimes teachers assume that critical theory is too advanced for all but AP, IB and upper

classman honors level students; I feel that, with proper scaffolding, all students are capable of

handling it. I want my students to have faith in their abilities, and doing something like this with

a CP class would be the perfect thing for them to begin to understand that they have the ability to

do higher level work than they would have ever dreamed. I would start with a lens that seems a

little bit easier than some of the others: feminist theory. Using a sample theoretical perspectives

resource from Prestwick House that I found to introduce feminist theory, I would ask students to

list all the characters in the play, and we will work together to map out how they fit into the

society around them. After we have the character map made and everyone has copied it down, I

will ask which characters the class thinks hold the most power in the Puritan society. We will

also make a list of those who have the least. Every student who suggests a name must have a

reason they think so, or they can phone a friend they think can help them. Using our character

list, I will have students list the names of the accusers, and then the victims. We will look at

which characters who were accused, executed, and released, and what role gender played in each

facet. Would the story would have changed had any of the key players been of the opposite

gender? Would certain characters still have been discriminated against? In order to ensure that

students who are quiet or shy get to share their thoughts, I will have students write the answer to

this last prompt down as an exit slip. At the close of that portion of the lesson and before they

pass their papers to the front of the room, I will tell them that they have just analyzed the play

from a critical theoretical perspective.

 Buck 5

After this lesson, the next class that does not include a book club meeting will be us

focusing on more of the history of Puritan society. I would introduce pieces of The Salem Witch

Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community under Siege (Roach, 2002) and Death in

Salem: The Private Lives Behind the 1692 Witch Hunt (Foulds, 2010). The first book is one that I

think, after research from http://historyofmassachusetts.org, covers the trial in chronological

order of events. The second book focuses on the personal lives of those involved in the trials,

ordered by the roles they played (i.e. victims, accusers, clergy, etc.). I chose this one because of

the humanizing aspect it gives to the characters.

I also think that a Socratic seminar would be interesting to have because of the nature of

this play. There is a lot to debate about the play, so I think it would be interesting to see how

students perceive it. The next class day that is not devoted to a book club meeting will be a

practice Socratic seminar. We will focus on intolerance and discrimination, with rules in place

that we will establish the day that we practice. We will write those rules that we come up with

together on the board. My non-negotiables are that everyone will be respectful, and everyone

must participate with at least one meaningful comment. I will tell students that the next Socratic

seminar will be graded.

After getting through the end of Act Two, I will tell students to pull out their list of

discussion questions and read over them; if there are any questions they think will lend well to a

discussion of intolerance or discrimination in Puritan society. I will then tell them that we are

going to have a graded Socratic Seminar about the girls reactions when accused of committing

witchcraft. I will facilitate this discussion, asking the first question: why did they accuse so many

innocent people of witchcraft? For this seminar there will be five seats in the center of the circle,

with the outer circle focusing on the things that are going well and how we can improve other
 Buck 6

things for the real seminar. The inner circle will debate my question and keep moving forward

with as little input from me as possible. There will be a sixth seat, a hot seat, where students who

feel they have something important to add to discussion can have their input.

Throughout the unit, we will read news articles about real-world events of discrimination

and intolerance, and discuss possible actions the offending parties could/should have taken. We

will take what we have learned from The Crucible and our book club books about dealing with

intolerance and discrimination and apply it to these real world situations.

Throughout everything we read, I will have students keeping a list of unfamiliar

vocabulary they come across. They will jot the words down in the back of their notebooks

(whether a binder or an actual notebook is up to them). By the end of the unit, I expect them to

have at least ten that they have found either in the reading we have done in class, or from their

book club novel.

As a culminating project, I will have students write as if they were being tried as a witch

in the Salem trials, and how they would deal with that intolerance/discrimination. They will write

a narrative or come up with a soundtrack to describe their journey, or they can choose to write an

Act Five, after where The Crucible ended. If they choose to create a soundtrack, they will need to

explain why they chose the songs they did. With either choice they make, they will use two of

their ten new vocabulary words in some manner in this project. I will go over some grammar

rules before beginning this project (proper use of capitalization and punctuation, and anything

else I have noticed students struggling with in their writing over the unit).

We will work on the final project for at least a week; each day will be set aside for a

specific task, but students can move forward if they finish early. The first day will be set aside

for creating a first draft. I will introduce the project and options, then give students the rest of the
 Buck 7

period to draft. The second day, I will introduce the peer editing process, in which students will

have two peers read their pieces and mark areas where they are confused, where they want more

detail, and where they like what is being said/the way something is said. The third day will be a

day for revisions and teacher conferences, where students will come to me with something

specific that they want help with and have five minutes each. The fourth day will be a

continuation of this, where I can read over what they have changed and see if anyone has further

questions. The fifth day, we will write final drafts. However, each day will be adjusted for where

the majority of the class is). I am not sure how long this might take, and I want to be sure I give

the class enough time without giving them too much.

In grading their final project, I will have a rubric that I will share with all students so that

they know exactly what grade to expect based on the work they give me. I will make sure that

they know I will take off for the grammar rules that I taught them, but if it is something we did

not go over, I will not take off. I am not testing them on knowledge they were given in the past

just on what they have learned in my class. I will also be sure to take into account their first

drafts, the work they did with peers, the editing they did, and the conferences they had with me

when I go to grade their final drafts.

At the end of the culminating project, I will let students vote on a movie to watch, either

The Zookeepers Wife (Abberley, 2017) or Hidden Figures (Chernin, 2016). I want to reward

them for hard work, because I know what I am asking is a lot that they probably will not be used

to unless they are an Honors or AP/IB class. After the movie, I will have students write me a

single paragraph about how intolerance or discrimination caused the calamities that occurred in

the movie, and how it could have been better dealt with. I want students to have the skills to deal
 Buck 8

with intolerance and discrimination in a way that can be productive and change-causing in a

society that does not appreciate being told they are wrong.
 Buck 9

Works Cited

Abberley, J., Levin, D., Patricof, J., Tollin, R., & Zubick, K. (Producers), & Caro, N. (Director).

(2017). The zookeepers wife [Motion picture]. USA: Focus Features.

Atwood, M. (1985). The handmaids tale. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

Chernin P., Gigliotti, D., Melfi, T., Topping, J., & Williams, P. (Producers), & Melfi, T.

(Director). (2016). Hidden figures [Motion picture]. USA: 20th Century Fox.1

Farizan, S. (2013). If you could be mine. (n.p): Algonquin Young Readers.

Foulds, D. (2010). Death in Salem: The Private Lives Behind the 1692 Witch Hunt. (n.p.): Globe

Pequot.

Jordan, S. (1999). The raging quiet. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Kent, K. (2008). The heretics daughter. New York: Little, Brown and Co.

Lasky, K. (1994). Beyond the burning time. New York: Scholastic.

Miller, A. (1953). The Crucible. New York City: Penguin Classics.

Multiple Critical Perspectives. (2008). Prestwick House. Retrieved from

https://www.prestwickhouse.com/samples/302712.pdf

Roach, M. (2002). The Salem witch trials: A day-by-day chronicle of a community under siege.

(n.p.): Cooper Square Publishers.

Stone, N. (2017). Dear Martin. (n.p.): Crown Books for Young Readers

Whelan, G. (2000). Homeless bird. New York: Harper Collins.