QUESTION: Making the Autobiography of Malcolm X Pop!

[Wisdom]

Hello! I'm teaching Malcolm X for the first time to "regular" level juniors. My biggest concern is that they will be intimidated by its length and not read it, my second concern is the best way to focus them as we read. Any and all thematic or instructional help would be appreciated!! 

[Anna J. Small Roseboro]

A couple strategies that encourage students to keep reading include reading for a specific purpose that means something to the reader and combining the reading with audio and video resources.

Consider beginning with an essential question the students choose from the handout on this link 4321 Prompts and Essential Questions.  Depending on the size of the class, I'd recommend you choose 4-6 that best fit what you're studying this school year and invite students to sign-up for one that interests them most.  Groups should be no larger than 5 students. Post a wiki or create a sign-up sheet with a column to match the number of the question. 

Then, as you work your way through the book, allot in-class time for those who are in the same group to meet for ten minutes at the beginning or end of the period, to talk about ways they are "answering" their essential question using the notes from the 4321 journal entries. (Some may be reluctant to share the personal connections. Do honor their privacy on that.)

At the end, you could have students do a presentation of some sort where they share with the class their "answers". Or, you can have the students create a one-page artistic or graphic depiction that answers their question.  See Art to Teach Literature for the Geometric Characters and Literary Strips.

Check with your library to for an audio version of the book and obtain a copy of the video starring Denzel Washington. (You know that both are PG-13, so I urge you to be selective about the scenes you show.

This can be a very exciting experience for you and the students. So go ahead and give it a try.  It's worth the effort.

[Wisdom]

Great stuff! Thanks so much for taking the time to answer so thoroughly!! I'll check it all out...

[Ryan Goble]

Jane,

Woza, what an EXCITING book to tackle. I would work hard to frame every chapter with high-interest related texts OR have groups of kids jigsaw each chapter with accompanying high-interest texts. To those ends, here are some ideas to whet your palate...

1. I think this book is at my parent's house but you can get it pretty cheap used - By Any Means Necessary By Spike Lee With Ralph Wiley (only $7 used at Amazon (no pic)). I remember this "making of" story to be very powerful as Lee details the fact that his movie was being made at the same time as Oliver Stone's JFK and compares the funding situations for both projects. As I recall, the studio was constantly cutting Lee's budget while pouring money into Stone's project. Ultimately, Lee had to get supplemental funding from private investors including Michael Jordan.

2.This FRONTLINE does a nice job breaking down the famous 1968 Blue-eyed experiment. You can replicate it in class for a period, watch clips of the film or read a short article about it.

3. Just last week this happened - 'White Privilege' Lesson In Delavan-Darien High School Class In Wis.... You can read multiple POV on the event like 'Teach kids the real story about race' in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel or this ditty from FOX News "Public School Teaches 'White Privilege' Class." These nicely link to the more abstract Blue-Eyed issue.

4. There is a whole book from '95 about teaching Malcolm to check out - Teaching Malcolm X: Popular Culture and Literacy

5. You could have kids to a look at race and popular music through the 1960s or "Popular Music and Race Then and Now" kind of thing for each chapter. Some model lessons might include something from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame lesson plan collection like 'Keep on Pushing: Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement' or a Mindblue classic like Mindblue's Ben Harper 'Sounds and Vision' PDF. The Ben Harper study guide deals with a great track called 'Like A King' that compares Rodney King and MLK. It was hard to write but always a powerful discussion starter. Of note, Lee begins Malcolm X with footage of the King beating. Speaking again of Lee, dude has excellent music taste so you might use select tracks from the X soundtrack as a starting point for independent study as well.

6. One of my favorite comic artists who deals with racial themes is Keith Knight's (Th)ink comics.

7. Lastly, Rethinking Schools is always my go to place for teaching about things like race, gender and the environment. Consider subscribing to see full articles but this is excellent "Diversity Vs. White Privilege" and is collected in their book Rethinking Multicultural Education.

These should give you ideas for multimodal texts or activities that could bookend chapters or chunks of the book. Let me know what you dig and we can chat more! (Breath). This is an amazing book - you are lucky to be able to teach it!

Also thinking you might cross-post this question in the American Lit or US History group as well so history teachers drop their ten cents. 

[Wisdom]

All right! I have the books you recommended and have begun the journey with The Great Books segment on the Autobiography...excellent original footage, some re-enactments, one scene from the movie. I'm working on the music part, too. I'm going to take some excerpts from Jay-Z's book, a Public Enemy video...we'll see how it all mashes up! The white privilege piece of it is interesting, too, though it looks a little hot to handle...You're the best!

[Sonjanita moore]

These look good. I've done a few sessions on protest music, used white privilege articles in a number of ways. These lessons always elicit good commentary and student engagement.

[Sonjanita moore]

This autobiography changed my life as a student and as an African American. I think it's admirable that you're willing to tackle such a controversial text! Thanks for doing that!

Now, for ideas. I last used the book as part of my Critical Media course (I'm going to try to upload some documents but I fear the formatting may be off, so forgive me for that). Our second quarter was focused on "Perspectives and Bias". I wanted to model how to navigate between various perspectives on the same story so we read the entire AOMX, read excerpts from his daughter, Ilyasah's autobio, read some articles, listened to speeches, watched doc clips and ultimately, critiqued Spike Lee's film X. Because of connections I had to the Nation of Islam I was able to acquire some information about that time period that I shared with students, as well in the form of quotes for homework review (checking to see if they were more fact or opinion). Students also wrote to Ilyasah Shabazz - she didn't write back though. Perhaps consider screening parts of the recent cable movie "Betty and Coretta." or using snippets from the Eyes on the Prize series. Here's a sample of the basic lesson plan I gave out to students....

Tuesday,  11/28/06

Daily Aims:

• I can give 3 facts about/related to Malcolm X

Unit Questions: What roles do “perception” or “ perspective” play in the way a story is told?
Journal/Opener: Create a KWL chart in your journal. Write 3 things in K column and 2 questions in W column. (type 2)
Readings/Handouts: Autobiography of Malcolm X
Activities: (a) Discuss KWL and make note of: the setting, his purpose for writing it and how this relates to essential & unit questions (above)
(b) READ ALOUD/READING CIRCLE: chapter 1

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Homework: Finish reading Chapter 1 of the text. Write 1 new thing you learned about Malcolm in the L column of your KWL

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Thursday,  11/30/06

Daily Aims:

• I can cite 1 conflict in Malcolm’s family life
• I can name 1 black leader in America from Malcolm’s childhood (from 1920’s)

Unit Questions: What roles do “perception” or “ perspective” play in the way a story is told?
Journal/Opener: question & answer session/review chapter 1
Readings/Handouts: Autobiography of Malcolm X
Activities: Chapter 2 reading…finish chapter 2 and read chapter 3 by 12/5.

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Homework:  CREATE a family tree for Malcolm Little (his tree will change/grow as he gets older). READ UP TO PAGE 59 by 12/5 (18 pgs or about 4-5 pages per day until Tuesday).

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Tuesday,  12/5 /06

Daily Aims:

• I can analyze the relevance of chapter titles to events in an autobiography

Unit Questions: What roles do “perception” or “ perspective” play in the way a story is told?
Journal/Opener: Question and answer regarding chapter 2-3
Readings/Handouts: Autobiography of Malcolm X
Activities: school fusion post: 1. based on readings, WRITE 3-5 sentences about the titles used for the first 3 chapters. Why did he choose those? How do they relate to the events of the chapter?  2. RESPOND to the posts of at least 1 classmate by Sun, 12/10.

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Homework: catch up on readings (up to pag 66) and assignments.

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Thursday,  12/7/06

Daily Aims:

• I can analyze the actions & attitudes of the narrator of an autobiography

Unit Questions: What roles do “perception” or “perspective” play in the way a story is told?
Journal/Opener: Class Choice: read aloud or read silently from Chapter 4.
Readings/Handouts: Autobiography of Malcolm X
Activities: Reading chapter 4 (based on vote) and begin on journal entries

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Homework:  COMPLETE 5 journal questions

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Here's 1 of the student letters

Dear Ilyasah Shabazz,

Hello Ilyasah Shabazz I am a student of the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School. My name is Luvenia ___ and I am 16 in the 11th grade. I read selected parts of your book “Growing Up X” I read your book in a class I have called Critical Media. I have also read the book “Autobiography of Malcolm X as told by Alex Hayes” in my Critical Media class.  And we have recently just finished watching the movie. I am writing you to tell my thoughts on the book and ask questions. One question that I have is do you ever wish you did go to your father’s funeral? Question two is how do you think things would be in the world today if you father didn’t pass away? And my 3rd and final question is where is little Malcolm and how is he doing and handling himself? I would like to thank you for taking out time to read my letter.

Take care,

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another way that I have made use of excerpts of AOMX was to discuss it in the context of doing family histories - the connection here was that Malcolm felt disconnected from his family/ancestors and was thus drawn to the family structure of NOI and could identify with adding the "X" to the end of one's name to symbolize the unknown. Alex Haley, in interviewing Malcolm and hearing of his disconnection with his roots, was inspired to document the Kinte family story  (ROOTS).

Lastly, I've used it as a supplemental reader to a study of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense or the Black Power Movement, in general. The original BPP founders read and studied Malcolm's teachings among other revolutionaries and scholars. One of their first "jobs" as a formal group was to provide security to Sis. Betty Shabazz when she was in California for an interview. I use a book called "THE ROCK AND THE RIVER" by K. Magoon which is based in Chicago 1960's and examines the dichotomy between the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement (this is a 7th/8th grade book that is highly engaging for students.

Hope this helps.

[Sonjanita moore]

I taught a unit on perspective/point of view/bias and led up to Malcolm X as a case study. Here are some of the things we did specific to MX:

We read/listened to the autobiography (audio cd. I'm sure you can download a free mp3 of the book from your local library).

I know people who are in the Nation of Islam and had someone come in to speak to/answer questions about Islam and Malcolm X. I also had other Muslims come in (different day or via video).

We watched the film by Spike Lee (pretty much the whole film).

Read excerpts from his daughter's book (Ilyasah Shabazz and wrote letters/emails to her). http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Up-X-Ilyasah-Shabazz/dp/0345444965/re...

I had students interview different people in their community, family or the school about Malcolm X. I encouraged discussions with people of different ages and races/cultural backgrounds.

I may have even shown them a college paper I wrote on the book (didn't do this each time, but at least once).

Students at a lower level read the Walter Dean Myers version of Malcolm's life http://www.amazon.com/Malcolm-By-Any-Means-Necessary/dp/0590481096

Then, students created blogs or some other multimedia project of their choice (with my approval) after conducting research.

[Sonjanita moore]

LOL!! I see that I responded to this already.