unit 1 - socratic seminar / washington high school7. derek walcott, “the antilles: fragments of...

Unit 1 Community

1. Sandra Cisneros, from The House on Mango Street

2. Chris Abani, “On Humanity”

3. Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”

4. Self-Evaluation

5. Seamus Heaney, “The Routine and the Revelation”

6. Wangari Maathai, “The Hummingbird Perseveres”

7. Derek Walcott, “The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory”

8. Edith Wharton, from Summer

Teacher Guide Lesson 1, Unit 1 Socratic Seminar

Ongoing Unit Overview

During this unit, the student will locate herself as part of a small community of Advocacy classmates. While the primary focus will be behavioral—setting and following norms, speaking in turns—the student will begin the practices of deep reading, writing, and thinking that mark effective Socratic seminars.

Lesson Overview

In this lesson, students will examine a selection from Sandra Cisneros’ 1984 novel The House on Mango Street. Students may be familiar with this book from middle school, as it has become a highly popular coming-of-age selection. In this passage, the main character questions the idea of age and the expectations that come with it. This passage comes first as a way of tapping into the tentative feeling students may have at the beginning of a new school year—and a new seminar community. The lesson plan is built into each step, and each can be completed by reading the prompts aloud. Arrange the classroom desks into a circle. After connections, take time to establish group norms for discussion before moving on to annotation and individual questions. (It is helpful to write the group norms where everyone can see them and keep them posted throughout.) Make sure to revisit the norms before the large group discussion, and then give students at least ten minutes to reflect in their seminar journals.

Potentially Difficult Vocabulary To begin the year, the passage chosen is intentionally highly accessible. As such, it contains very little difficult vocabulary.

Helpful Strategies and Discussion Questions

- Using a timer to track each step is crucial. - Post group norms on a whiteboard or project using MS Word. - Process-oriented questions:

o What were the high points of our conversation? o What were the low points? o What behaviors worked well and what didn’t? o How well did we follow our group norms? o Do we need to change any of the norms, or add new

ones?

Socratic Seminar Name: ________________________________ Date: _________________________________ Advocate: _____________________________

Author: ________Sandra Cisneros__________ Title: ___from The House on Mango Street___

Step 1 – Connections – 5 min. In a discussion circle, everyone shares a short answer to the question below.

Our first piece is about age. How old do you feel right now? Step 2 – Group Norms – 8 min. Before we start, we will decide on a set of norms—a guiding set of behaviors—for our discussions. Below, everyone writes down one norm that is important to her/him. Then, share thoughts as a discussion circle before deciding to keep, change, or add to the list on the right. Your Norm Class Norms

1. One person speaks at a time. 2. Everyone listens to the person speaking. 3. Everyone participates. 4. __________________________________________ 5. __________________________________________

Step 3 – Read/Annotate – 8 min. – One person reads the piece aloud. Then, everyone silently annotates, marking at least three things and writing a comment for each.

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that

when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and

three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to

feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything is just like yesterday, only

it is today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you

are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid and that’s the part of you that’s

still ten. Or maybe some days might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re

scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown

up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell

Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a

tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the

next one. That’s how being eleven years old is. You don’t feel eleven. Not right away.

It takes a few days, weeks, even sometimes even months before you say Eleven when

they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve.

Step 4 – Individual Question – 2 min. Create an individual question that you can share with the class and write it below.

(Example: Is it possible to feel older than your current age, or are you fooling yourself?) Step 5 – Sharing Individual Questions – 5 min. Each seminar member shares her/his question. Note five interesting questions by writing down the speaker’s name.

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5. Step 6 – Large Group Conversation – 15 min.

Highlight interesting questions from Step 4 and discuss in a large group. Revisit the group norms before discussing.

Step 7 – Reflection – Writing – 10 min, in journal. Do you feel overall that your classmates agreed or disagreed with you about Sandra Cisneros’ piece? How well did we follow the group norms? What behaviors should we continue next class, and what do we need to get better at?

Context for Today’s Piece: Born in Chicago in 1954, Sandra Cisneros is an American writer whose most famous work is her 1984 debut novel The House on Mango Street, from which this passage is taken. As a child, Cisneros existed in two different cultures, as her family traveled back and forth between the United States and Mexico frequently. Cisneros credits this cultural diversity with offering her many unique stories to tell as an adult. The House on Mango Street has become a classic modern coming-of-age story in America, detailing Esperanza Cordero’s journey to Chicana Womanhood in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in urban Chicago.




Lesson Overview

In this lesson, students will examine a piece written by Chris Abani on what it means to be our true selves. It is possible students will reject his argument that we can only be who we really are when we are around others. This is of course encouraged, as a goal of critical discussion is not blindly accepting the text as the authority. The vocabulary this week is slightly more challenging, so be sure to post potentially difficult vocabulary for students, or tell students their meanings beforehand. After a round of connections, revisit group norms for as long as needed—older classes might need to cover this quickly, while younger classes might benefit from more debate on the practices of good discussion. After reading and annotating Abani’s text, move through the remaining steps on the handout as indicated. The reflection question this week is split between Abani’s text itself and how the group discussion went.

Potentially Difficult Vocabulary For this piece, it may prove beneficial to post the following words and definitions on a whiteboard: - transcendent: rising above the ordinary; exceptional. - sentimental: feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia,

usually in an excessive way. - accumulation: the gradual gathering of something. - compassion: sympathy, pity, or concern for others’ wellbeing.


- Post questions on a whiteboard or using Microsoft Word. - Process-oriented questions:

o Is Chris Abani right about being around others? o How have you seen “Ubuntu” in your life? o What does he mean when he says we are most beautiful

when we are most ugly? o What were the high points of our conversation? o What were the low points? o What behaviors worked well and what didn’t? o Do we need to change any of our group norms?


Author: __________Chris Abani___________ Title: __________“On Humanity”__________


In this passage, Chris Abani argues that we are our truest selves when we are around other people. Do you prefer being by yourself or around other people?

Step 2 – Revisit Group Norms – 3 min. Rewrite your group norms below, and then decide as a group if any changes need to be made.

1. One person speaks at a time. 2. Everyone listens to the person speaking. 3. Everyone participates. 4. _________________________________________________ 5. _________________________________________________


My search is always to find ways to chronicle, share, and document stories about

people—everyday people. Stories that offer transformation, that lean into transcendence,

but that are never sentimental, that never look away from the darkest things about us.

Because I really believe that we’re never more beautiful than when we’re most ugly.

That’s the moment we really know what we’re made of. I grew up in Nigeria with a

whole generation of students protesting a military dictatorship, which has finally ended.

Not just me, but a whole generation. And I’ve come to learn that the world is never

saved in huge gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible

acts of compassion—everyday acts of compassion.

In South Africa, they have a phrase called Ubuntu. Ubuntu comes from a

philosophy that says: the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity

back at me. But my humanity is more like a window. I don’t really see it, I don’t pay

attention to it, until there’s a bug dead on the window, for example. Then suddenly I see

myself, and usually, it’s never good. It’s usually when I’m cussing in traffic at someone

who is trying to drive their car and drink coffee and send emails and make notes. What

Ubuntu really says is that there is no way for us to be human without other people. It's

really very simple, but really very complicated.


(Example: How can something be both “very simple” and “very complicated”?) Step 5 – Sharing Individual Questions – 5 min. Each seminar member shares her/his question. Note five interesting questions by writing down the speaker’s name.

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Step 7 – Reflection – Writing – 5 min, in journal. Do you agree with Chris Abani that we show our true selves when we are around other people? When is it okay to be by yourself—or when is it better to be by yourself? Can you be your ‘true self’ when you are not by other people? Finally, how well did we follow the group norms? What behaviors should we continue next class, and what do we need to get better at?

Context for Today’s Piece: Born in 1966 in Afikpo, Nigeria, Chris Abani is a Nigerian-American author and part of an accomplished generation of Nigerian writers that includes Chimamanda Adichie and Teju Cole. Though Abani is most well-known for his 2004 novel Graceland, he began writing much earlier. At the age of 16 he wrote a political novel and was imprisoned by the corrupt Nigerian government for six months as a result. He continued writing afterward and was sent back to prison, ultimately landing on death row before his friends bribed his way out of jail—and Nigeria, to England and then the US. In this selection from a longer lecture, Abani, who has seen humanity at its ugliest, wonders what it means to be truly human.




Lesson Overview

In this lesson, students will consider a passage from Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me.” This passage is potentially controversial, not necessarily for the text itself but because it can open up a discussion of race. To wit, it might be helpful to frame the discussion as perhaps the first real practice of group norms; “one person speaks” becomes much more important—and more difficult—if many people have something to say and want urgently to say it. Controversy aside, this passage can be considered broadly as well. The connections question offers an opportunity for students to speak not specifically about race but how one looks in general—students may think about, say, how their personal dress causes others to treat them. After refreshing group norms, the remaining steps proceed as outlined in the Socratic Seminar sheet, and the reflection questions are split again on text and process.

Potentially Difficult Vocabulary For this piece, it may prove beneficial to post the following words and definitions on a whiteboard: - saunter: to walk slowly and relaxed, without hurry or effort. - cosmic: relating to the universe, or stars; hugely important. - snooty: showing disapproval of others deemed beneath you. - discrimination: unjust treatment based on categories like race,

sex, or class.

Helpful Strategies and Discussion Questions - Post questions on a whiteboard or using Microsoft Word. - Possible discussion questions:

o Do you have experiences being treated differently based on how you look?

o Is it okay to be angry when you are treated differently? o What does “My country, right or wrong” really mean? o What do you think Hurston’s last paragraph means? o What were the high/low points of our conversation? o How well did we follow our group norms?


Author: _______Zora Neale Hurston _______ Title: ___“How It Feels To Be Colored Me” __


In this passage, Zora Neale Hurston talks about discrimination. If you feel comfortable responding, have you ever been treated differently because of the way you look?

Step 2 – Revisit Group Norms – 3 min.

This week we will continue practicing our class norms. As a group, write the norms below and make any changes that are necessary. 1. _______________________________________________________________ 2. _______________________________________________________________ 3. _______________________________________________________________ 4. _______________________________________________________________ 5. _______________________________________________________________


At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty-Second Street Library, for instance. The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.

I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My country, right or wrong. Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.

But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany [randomness] propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless. A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held—so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place—who knows?


(Example: Is Hurston right not to be angry when people discriminate against her?) Step 5 – Sharing Individual Questions – 5 min. Each seminar member shares her/his question. Note five interesting questions by writing down the speaker’s name.

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Step 7 – Reflection – Writing – 10 min, in journal. Overall, do you agree or disagree with Hurston? Do you admire her attitude toward discrimination? Is your experience like or different from hers? Also, do you agree or disagree with your classmates? Finally, what do you think she means when she says, “My country, right or wrong”? Is she proud of her country? Are you? Reflect on our group norms. How well did we follow them? What behaviors should we continue next class, and what do we need to get better at?

Context for Today’s Piece:

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was an American author and anthropologist who wrote during and after the period known as ‘the Harlem Renaissance.’ Born in Alabama, Hurston grew up in Florida, where she would spend most of her life. Hurston drew on Southern Black culture, and especially its folklore, in her writings, as is evident in her most famous novel, the 1937 work Their Eyes Were Watching God. Though she is widely respected now, she did not enjoy much popular success during her life; she died in poverty in 1960 with her books largely out of print, and only 15 years after her death was her work rediscovered and popularized by writers like Alice Walker.




Lesson Overview

In this lesson, students will evaluate themselves as discussion participants according to Model 1 and Model 2 practices for engaging in group discussions. The seminar process is as parallel to normal protocol as the self-evaluation allows. Students begin with a connections round and then annotate a short passage of text on Model 1 and 2 practices. After this, students will engage in an extended writing (10-15 minutes) wherein they answer the questions as a way of determining their individual abilities in a group discussion. During this step, students may touch on elements of self about which they feel shy; make sure students know they need never share something they feel uncomfortable sharing, but likewise ask them to write at least one sentence that they would be willing to say aloud to the class. After writing, students will share some or all of their writing and discuss before reflecting on the questions provided for their journals.

Potentially Difficult Vocabulary For this piece, it may prove beneficial to post the following words and definitions on a whiteboard: - exhibit: to show or give the appearance of. - mindset: the established set of attitudes held by someone. - harmonious: in tune; in cooperation. - enact: to put a process into place; to start something.


- Before sharing student work, it may be helpful to refresh

students to the group norms. - During this seminar, silence is more than acceptable—you

need not force responses to student writing, and you should be prepared to have conversations with students after class as needed.


Author: _____________N/A______________ Title: __________Self-Evaluation 1_ _______


Today we will evaluate ourselves as seminar participants. We will use Model 1 and 2 practices for discussion as guidelines to understanding how competitive or collaborative we are. What, to you, is the difference between competition and collaboration?

Step 2 – Read/Annotate – 10 min. – One person reads the piece aloud. Then, everyone silently annotates. Comment on at least five things and write in the margins/spaces!

Participants in a seminar discussion group can exhibit many practices—some

productive, some negative. Some participants are born compassionate leaders while

others want only to prove their peers wrong. But seminar participants need not resign

themselves to a “luck of the draw” mindset. There are ways to think about conversational

practices, ways of speaking, and tone that provide us with very real goals for personal

growth—and that allow participants to cultivate the best practices for making meaning in

a group discussion.

Researchers like Chris Argyris and Donald Schön have developed what they call

“Model 1” and “Model 2” behaviors for learning. The approaches outlined below apply

this thinking to behaviors each individual member of a seminar can enact. Thinking

about these practices allows seminar participants to evaluate progress and see ways

toward improvement.

In short, Model 2 behaviors increase learning and the collaborative potential of

a seminar community. Model 1 practices are considered normal—perhaps natural—but

working to develop Model 2 practices will allow seminar members to function more

effectively as individual members of a group. This will likewise allow the group to enjoy

more harmonious thinking and discussion, which will in turn help the search for and/or

creation of meaning from questioning texts.

Step 3 – Individual Writing – 10 min. Respond to the questions in the space below. What Model 1 practices do you exhibit in a discussion? What Model 2 practices do you exhibit? What are the positive things you bring to a group discussion, and how can you continue those positive traits? What do you need to work on as a discussion participant, and how can you do so? What support do you need, and what support can you provide for others?

Step 4 – Sharing Individual Writing – 15 min. Each Seminar member shares from her writing, with each participant saying aloud at least one sentence. (Reading everything is also acceptable.)

Step 5 – Reflection – Writing – 10 min, in journal.

Has your understanding of how you participate in a group discussion changed after listening to your classmates speak? How would you characterize our seminar group—more in line with Model 1 or Model 2 practices?




Lesson Overview

In lesson five, students consider a passage from a commencement speech delivered by Seamus Heaney in 2000. True to commencement form, this passage offers broad advice for students as they begin their futures in the ‘real world.’ Toward that end, it may be helpful to try to focus the group discussion not just on the past but also their futures. For instance, the debate between staying in or leaving a community can engender strong feelings, and this piece can tap into that line of discussion—though it does not necessarily have to. The vocabulary is at times dense, and it may be useful to tell students this in advance; helpfully, Heaney does not leave any sentences without context clues. This marks the first week without a specific step for group norms, but of course revisit them as needed before going through the steps outlined.

Potentially Difficult Vocabulary For this piece, it may prove beneficial to post the following words and definitions on a whiteboard: - bewilder: to confuse greatly. - revelation: the new knowledge of something surprising,

especially when given to humans by a supernatural force. - canny: having smart or good judgment; reasonable; logical. - uncanny: strange or mysterious.


- Post questions on a whiteboard or using Microsoft Word. - Use a ‘fishbowl’ discussion seminar; give the outside circle a

specific task, such as tracking the conversation. - Step out of the conversation entirely for a period of minutes. - Possible discussion questions:

o Do you believe that extraordinary things happen in life? o How do you find the balance Heaney is talking about? o Do we have an obligation to others to “stay grounded”

for our friends, families, or community? o What were the high/low points of our conversation? o How well did we follow our group norms?


Author: _________Seamus Heaney_________ Title: ____“The Routine and the Revelation”__


In this piece, Seamus Heaney talks about believing in extraordinary things, like miracles. Has anything extraordinary or miraculous happened to you in your life?


You stand between whatever binds you to your past and whatever might be

unbounded in your future. One kind of wisdom says, Keep your feet on the ground. Be

faithful to the ancestors. Another says, Lift up your eyes. Spread your wings. Don’t

renege [go back] on the other world you have been shown. All of you are likely to be

caught between these conflicting wisdoms and indeed you are unlikely ever to be able to

choose confidently between them, now or in the future. And so my advice to you is to

understand that this in-between condition is not to be regarded as a disabling confusion,

but that it is rather a necessary state, a consequence of our situation between earthy

origin and angelic potential.

I want to tell you an old Irish story. One day, a group of monks were holding a

meeting, and as they were talking they saw a ship sailing over them in the air, moving as

if it were on the sea. When the crew of the ship saw the meeting and the inhabited place

below them, they dropped anchor. The anchor came right down to the floor of the

church, and the priests seized it. A man came down out of the ship after the anchor, and

he was swimming as if he were in water till he reached the anchor. So the priests were

dragging him down. “For God’s sake, let me go,” said he, “for you are drowning me.”

Then he left them, swimming in the air as before, taking his anchor with him.

I take this story to be a kind of dream instruction, a lesson about the need to keep

the lines open between the two levels of our being, the level where we proceed with the

usual life of the meeting, and the other level where the visionary and the marvelous

present themselves suddenly and bewilderingly. We must, in other words, be ready for

both the routine and the revelation. Never be so canny as to ignore the uncanny.


(Example: What makes something miraculous?) Step 4 – Sharing Individual Questions – 5 min. Each seminar member shares her/his question. Note five interesting questions by writing down the speaker’s name.

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Step 6 – Reflection – Writing – 10 min, in journal. Do you agree with Seamus Heaney that we need to find a balance between “keeping our feet on the ground” and “spreading our wings”? Have you ever been in a situation where you had to decide to stay grounded or not? How did you know which path to choose? Finally, do you agree that extraordinary things do happen in life? How do you recognize them when they do? Reflect on our group norms. How well did we follow them? What behaviors should we continue next class, and what do we need to get better at?


Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) was an Irish poet, playwright, translator, and professor. Born in Northern Ireland, a disputed area of much violence conflict between Irish Catholics and British Protestants, Heaney saw a broad range of humanity to draw from in his life of writing. Many consider him one of the most important poets of the Twentieth Century, and for his efforts he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. In this passage from a speech given to college graduates, Heaney frames ordinary life with the language of poetry, to help us understand that we must be ready to and recognize the extraordinary when it happens.




Lesson Overview

Lesson six focuses on a selection from a 2006 speech delivered by Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai. Compared to the previous piece by Seamus Heaney, Maathai’s vocabulary and theme are considerably simpler; a hopeful effect of this is to reengage students who found the Heaney piece too complex. Maathai relates a parable about a hummingbird that tries to save a burning forest despite impossible odds. On this broad topic, your group conversation may go in innumerable directions, from sports to academics to general life. A somewhat higher-minded thread of conversation relates to the bigger theme of community: is it the individual’s obligation to help their community or the community’s obligation to help the individual? This is the second week without a specific step for revisiting group norms, but again consider doing so as needed before proceeding through the steps.

Potentially Difficult Vocabulary For this piece, it may prove beneficial to post the following words and definitions on a whiteboard: - equitable: fair and unbiased; equal. - disempower: to make a person or group less powerful,

confident, or important.

Helpful Strategies and Discussion Questions - Post questions on a whiteboard or using Microsoft Word. - Use a ‘fishbowl’ discussion seminar; give the outside circle a

specific task, such as tracking the conversation. - Step out of the conversation entirely for a period of minutes. - Possible discussion questions:

o Is the hummingbird in this story foolish? o Are the other animals in this story evil, or just realistic? o Does the individual make the community or does the

community make the individual? o What were the high/low points of our conversation? o How well did we follow our group norms? o Do we need to update our group norms?


Author: ________Wangari Maathai ________ Title: ____“The Hummingbird Perseveres”___


In this piece, Wangari Maathai talks about the need to do our part to help others. Would you rather help others or receive help?


For us to enjoy peace, we need to manage our resources more responsibly and we

need to share these resources more equitably. It is what we do individually that is

especially important. I want to tell you a story. It is a story of a huge forest that suddenly

caught on fire. There was a big fire raging and all the animals came out of the forest. As

they came to the edge of the forest, they started watching the fire, feeling very

discouraged and disempowered. Every one of them thought there was nothing they could

do about the fire, except for a little hummingbird. The little hummingbird said, “I can do

something about this fire. I’m not going to sit on the side and watch the forest burn.”

So the little hummingbird ran toward the nearest stream. The little hummingbird

took a drop of water, and put it on the raging fire. Then back again, it brought another

drop, and kept running up and down. In the meantime, the other animals discouraged the

hummingbird. They told it, “Don’t bother, it is too much, you are too little, your wings

will burn, your beak is too little, you can’t do much about this fire.” Some of these

animals that were discouraging it had big beaks that could have brought more water than

the hummingbird. But they didn’t. They were very busy being discouraging.

The hummingbird decided not to be discouraged. It kept going up and down to

get the water and put it on the burning forest. And as the animals were discouraging it,

the bird looked back to these other animals, without wasting any time, and saw how

desperate, discouraged and persuaded they were to stay on the sidelines and not get

involved. One animal said, “What do you think you are doing?” And the hummingbird,

without wasting time, looked back and said, “I’m doing the best I can.”


(Example: Is the hummingbird foolish or admirable?) Step 4 – Sharing Individual Questions – 5 min. Each seminar member shares her/his question. Note five interesting questions by writing down the speaker’s name.

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Step 6 – Reflection – Writing – 10 min, in journal. Do you think the hummingbird in this story is foolish? Overall, do you agree with Maathai that it is important for people to struggle even in the face of certain defeat? Maathai separates the individual person from the bigger community; do you think it is more important for the individual person to take care of the community, or for the community to take care of the person? Reflect on our group norms. How well did we follow them? What behaviors should we continue next class, and what do we need to get better at?


Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was a Kenyan environmental and political activist. After studying at Benedictine College (in Atchison, KS) and the University of Pennsylvania, Maathai returned to Kenya to pursue political goals through grassroots activism. In 1977, she founded the Green Belt Movement, an organization designed to keep and restore the environment through activities like planting trees in large-scale numbers. In 2004, she became the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This passage, from a longer speech, showcases her belief that people must work both individually and as a larger community to achieve change.




Lesson Overview

Lesson seven features a passage from Saint Lucian poet Derek Walcott’s 1992 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. In this complex speech, Walcott talks about the nature of building, breaking, and rebuilding, arguing that we take things for granted before they are broken—but that the love necessary to rebuild is stronger than what we took for granted. The vocabulary in this piece is challenging indeed; be ready to answer students’ questions about words, but guide the class to the first two sentences which serve as Walcott’s overall “thesis.” Despite the challenging nature of the piece, there are many avenues for possible group conversations—what have students taken for granted, what have they lost, what have they rebuilt, and what can they rebuild in the future? After the connections question (which may take longer than usual), the steps proceed according to the routine established and outlined in the lesson plan.

Potentially Difficult Vocabulary For this piece, it may prove beneficial to post the following words and definitions on a whiteboard: - fragment: a broken piece of something. - symmetry: containing the exact same parts or look on all sides. - reassemble: to gather together again; to rebuild. - shard: a broken piece of something, especially glass.


o Is your experience like Walcott’s—in your life, your family’s life, or your community’s life?

o What have you had to rebuild in your life? o Do you sometimes have to move on and not rebuild

something that has been broken? o What were the high/low points of our conversation? o How well did we follow our group norms? o Do we need to update our group norms?


Author: _________Derek Walcott __________ Title: The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory


In this piece, Derek Walcott talks about the love that is required to rebuild something important. What is something in your life that you have had to rebuild?


Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that

love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the

pieces is the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles the fragments

of my African and Asian heritage, the cracked heirlooms whose fixing together shows its

white scars. This gathering of broken pieces is the care and pain of the Antilles, my

island homeland. If the pieces are separate and fit together poorly, they contain more

pain than their original sculpture. The art of my homeland is this rebuilding of our

shattered histories, our shards of vocabulary, our islands becoming a symbol for pieces

broken off from the original continent.

And this is the exact process of the making of poetry, or what should be called not

its “making” but its remaking. Poetry is perfection’s sweat but must seem as fresh as the

raindrops on a statue’s face. It must combine the world and the statue, including the past

and the present, if the past is the sculpture and the present the beads of dew or rain on the

forehead of the past.

Poetry is an island that breaks away from the mainland. The languages of my

homeland seem as fresh to me as those raindrops on the statue's forehead. Deprived of

their original language, captured tribes create their own. They bring together fragments

of an old vocabulary, from Asia and from Africa, and combining them with an old, joyful

rhythm in the blood that cannot be conquered by slavery. That is the basis of the

Antillean experience, this shipwreck of fragments, these echoes, these pieces of a huge

tribal vocabulary, these partially remembered customs. They are not decayed, but strong.


(Example: Is it easiest to build something, break something, or rebuild something?) Step 4 – Sharing Individual Questions – 5 min. Each seminar member shares her/his question. Note five interesting questions by writing down the speaker’s name.

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Step 6 – Reflection – Writing – 10 min, in journal. Do you agree with Derek Walcott that people take things for granted until they have lost them, or they are broken? Is there anything that you have taken for granted in your life? Is it possible to rebuild what you have taken for granted? Finally, Walcott says that the “Antillean experience” is bringing together broken fragments. How does your experience compare to his? Reflect on our group norms. How well did we follow them? What behaviors should we continue next class, and what do we need to get better at?


Derek Walcott is a poet and playwright born on the Antillean island of Saint Lucia in 1930. Walcott’s family has both African and European heritage, a heritage that reflects the complex history of his nation as well as the complex subject matter of his poetry. After being raised in Saint Lucia, Walcott studied in Jamaica before writing and teaching in Trinidad, the United States, and Britain. For his work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1992, becoming the first Caribbean writer to receive the honor. In this passage from his Nobel acceptance speech, Walcott discusses the complex history of the Antilles that we find in his poetry.




Lesson Overview

In the final lesson of Unit 1, students consider a passage from Edith Wharton’s 1917 novel Summer. In this passage, the character Mr. Royall of a small, poor town called North Dormer delivers a speech about how to improve their community—the best answer, he argues, is simply “to be glad we live there.” Thus, Royall offers a unique and simple argument for how to engage in community-building—one about which students likely will have much to say. Answers will likely run a spectrum, from students who love where they are from to students eager to leave. The connections question taps into this line of conversation, but the discussion need not focus on the city at large—a community could also be a class, a school, a family, a country, and so forth. After connections, each step proceeds as outlined in the lesson plan.

Potentially Difficult Vocabulary For this piece, it may prove beneficial to post the following words and definitions on a whiteboard: - gravely: doing something seriously or somberly in appearance. - landscape: all the visible features of a countryside or land,

usually related to how nice it looks. - elsewhere: somewhere else.


o Is making a community great as simple as this passage suggests? What is a “great” community after all?

o What communities are you a part of? o Do you enjoy all of them? o What do you owe your community? o What does your community owe to you? o If you dislike your community, what can be done? o What were the high/low points of our conversation? o How well did we follow our group norms? o Do we need to update our group norms?


Author: _________Edith Wharton__________ Title: ___________from Summer___________


In this piece, a character gives a speech about how to make a community great. Are you committed to your community, or do you want to leave?


He looked about him, and said gravely: “Our city is a poor little place, almost lost

in a mighty landscape: perhaps, by this time, it might have been a bigger place, and more

in scale with the landscape, if those who had to come back had come with the feeling that

they wanted to come back for GOOD... and not for bad... or just for no reason....”

“Gentlemen, let us look at things as they are. Some of us have come back to our

native town because we’d failed to do well elsewhere. One way or other, things had gone

wrong with us... what we’d dreamed of hadn’t come true. But the fact that we had failed

elsewhere is no reason why we should fail here. Our very experiments in larger places,

even if they were unsuccessful, ought to have helped us to make our city a larger place...

and you young men who are preparing even now to follow the call of ambition, and turn

your back on your old home—well, let me say this to you, that if ever you do come back

home it’s worth while to come back to them for their good.... And to do that, you must

keep on loving your home while you’re away from it. And even if you come back

against your will—and thinking it’s all a bitter mistake of Fate—you must try to make the

best of it, and to make the best of your old town. After a while—well, ladies and

gentlemen, I give you my recipe for what it’s worth: after a while, I believe you’ll be able

to say, as I can say today: ‘I’m glad I'm here.’ Believe me, all of you, the best way to

help the places we live in is to be glad we live there.”

He stopped, and a murmur of emotion and surprise ran through the audience. It

was not in the least what they had expected to hear, but it moved them more than what

they had expected would have moved them. “Hear, hear!” a voice cried out in the middle

of the hall.


(Example: Is it possible to decide to be glad about where you live?) Step 4 – Sharing Individual Questions – 5 min. Each seminar member shares her/his question. Note five interesting questions by writing down the speaker’s name.

1.

2.

3.

4.



Step 6 – Reflection – Writing – 10 min, in journal. Do you agree with the character speaking that we can decide to love the community we live in? Do you love your city, or do you prefer a different one? Can you love your city but still want to leave it? Whose responsibility is it to make your city great—yours, your friends’ or family’s, the government’s? Finally, what is a “great” community? Reflect on our group norms. How well did we follow them? What behaviors should we continue next class, and what do we need to get better at?

Context for Today’s Piece: Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was an American author of novels and short stories. Born into a wealthy family, Wharton drew on her experiences with the upper class in her literature, writing famous critically revered novels like The House of Mirth (1905) and The Age of Innocence (1920), the latter of which won Wharton the Pulitzer Prize. In this passage from the 1917 novel Summer, the character Mr. Royall espouses his opinion on what it could take to turn their small, poor town, North Dormer, into a thriving city.

unit 1 - socratic seminar / washington high school7. derek walcott, “the antilles: fragments of...

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