Making Literature Relevant: Centering Contemporary African American Women Writers in a Teacher-Developed Curriculum Unit

• In Event: Teachers as Co-Constructors of Truth, Knowledge, and Curriculum: Exploring Three Teachers Institutes© Across the United States

Abstract

Karen Brinkley, a middle school English teacher at Philadelphia’s Cook-Wissahickon School, wrote the curriculum unit “Exceptional Women: We See You!” while a fellow in the in the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia (TIP) seminar Taking up the Mantle: African American Women Writers after Morrison. This paper, co-written by Brinkley and TIP Director Edward M. Epstein, will how the TIP experience enabled her to write a unit that melded the truths she experienced as a teacher with the knowledge she gained through her research and through the materials that were shared by her peers and the seminar leader.

Brinkley’s observation that the perspective of her own students was still underrepresented in literature was a guiding principle behind the unit. The teacher’s urgency to effect change was motivated by her 20 years of teaching in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP), the 19th largest school district in the United States (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2020).

Brinkley’s research led her to critical issues regarding access and equity that urban public school students consistently encounter. She examined the impact of the “American Dream” in connection to May 17, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education case—a ruling that ended legal segregation but did not address different outcomes for Black and White Americans, particularly in education (Duncan & Murnane, 2014). Citing Mario, she concluded that underrepresentation was a critical factor among the complex and overlapping causes behind the achievement gap: “Nobody denies the literary merits of William Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, or Charles Dickens. But what happens when the reading list is composed solely of texts written by mostly white, mostly male authors?” (2021, p. 2).

Brinkley’s developed an English Language Arts standards-aligned curriculum unit for seventh and eighth-grade students focusing on culturally responsive literature (Muhammad, 2020). Her approach in this regard was guided by Quimet, who stated that “culturally relevant literature is important because it can lead students to academic achievement, create educational equity and critical consciousness within a classroom community, and teach all students to take on a global perspective and understand cultural competence” (2011, p. 3).

Brinkley’s seminar, led by University of Pennsylvania English Professor Herman Beavers, enabled her to research the historical inequities behind literary underrepresentation, which continues to fuel an achievement gap at her school and others like it around the nation. The material introduced both by the professor and by Brinkley’s peers helped her identify contemporary literature—including works by Jacqueline Woodson and Zetta Elliot—that she believed would inspire in her students and help close the achievement gap.

This paper will show how the Teachers Institute approach, which invites participating teachers to suggest seminar topics and asks professors to alter their syllabi to meet teacher needs, helps teachers find truths that are relevant to the lives of diverse students in U.S. schools today. Centering teachers in this way enables districts like the SDP to make their teachers and students conscientious stewards of the multicultural world we live in today.

Authors

• Karen Brinkley, School District of Philadelphia
  Presenting Author

• Edward M. Epstein, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author