Borders and Belonging: Literature and Conversation
Help me give my students access to a range of culturally relevant, contemporary, engaging novels that explore the complexity of identity and characters' lived experience navigating borders and belonging, this one being The Incarus Girl.
Our students are buzzing with energy, curiosity, and enthusiasm for pursuing their passion as creative writers, dancers, actors, visual artists, and musicians. A diverse group of artistically talented young people from every ward in the city, our students' commute to school might be as short as fifteen minutes or as long as two and a half hours.
At our school, we create a space where every individual student embraces their identity as a Scholar-Artist, and together we co-create an inclusive learning community.
It is vital that students have books in their hands so that they can see how through sharing their individual stories and reading other people's stories, we learn from each other's experiences and discover our shared humanity.
My Project
As their Senior English teacher, I want to inspire students' curiosity and life-long love of reading. That is why one of my primary goals is to ensure representation of diverse voices in our English curriculum and include a range of culturally relevant, contemporary, engaging texts.
Students need to encounter writers and characters who look like them and those whose lived experiences are new to them.
Then we can create space for conversation about the complexity of identity. What do borders mean to you? How do you navigate borders? Can we build a more inclusive community?
Students will form book clubs and use the skills we have practiced to facilitate rich conversation and discuss books that matter to them.
One book I have added as a possible selection for students is The Icarus Girl, by Helen Oyeyemi, which draws on Nigerian mythology. It is, according to one critic, "a moving study of identity and alienation. "
"Remarkable. . . . As original as it is unsettling, The Icarus Girl runs straight at the heart of what it means to belong.– O, The Oprah Magazine“
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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