Teaching Mockingbird

Who is in your classroom? How might your students’ own identities and life experiences shape their encounter with this novel? How might you use journals, exit tickets, or other tools to better understand how students are responding to the novel? How can you directly address the novel’s repeated use of racist epithets and ensure that the experience of reading and discussing the novel doesn’t further marginalize some students? (Facing History’s Teaching Mockingbird guide contains resources that can help.) Are students prepared and developmentally ready to critically engage with the novel? Given that Mockingbird is often taught in middle schools, might your school consider moving the text to a high school-level course?

Educators always need to consider the purpose behind our curriculum choices and articulate learning goals for our students. With a novel like Mockingbird, which has been a fixture of many curricula for decades, it’s especially important to intentionally develop learning goals. What do you want students to learn from their engagement with this novel? How might your students’ identities and experiences—and current events and contemporary issues—influence what they can gain from studying it?

Readers experience the story through the eyes of a young narrator who often doesn’t grasp what she is seeing. Use historical sources that more fully portray the world of the novel, including the brutal injustices of Jim Crow and white supremacy in 1930s Alabama. Also, consider the context of the 1950s, when Harper Lee was writing Mockingbird. How did Lee seek to shape her readers’ thinking about race and justice? Why was the novel so celebrated when it was first published? What new ideas, insights, and imperatives have emerged in the 60 years since?

Harper Lee’s Black characters—Calpurnia, Tom, Lula, and others— are less fully realized than Atticus, Scout, Miss Maudie, and other white characters. Incorporate supplementary sources that more fully voice Black experiences in the 1930s and prompt students to consider the events of the novel from those perspectives. A wide selection of such resources and related activities is included in Facing History’s Teaching Mockingbird guide.

Teaching Mockingbird responsibly today involves inviting students to critically engage with the text and its implications—not communicating an established set of moral lessons. Even as students follow Scout’s coming of age and awakening to the injustices of her world, they can also consider the novel’s limitations as a guide for racial justice—including how the story presents Atticus as a white savior (though he actually fails to save Tom from a violent death) and stops short of confronting white supremacy and systemic injustice.

To Kill a Mockingbird should not be the only book in your syllabus that addresses issues of race and racism. If you teach Mockingbird, what other texts come before and after it? How might you thoughtfully select texts that complement Mockingbird by exploring other periods, voices and perspectives? Our friends at Learning for Justice produced some text selection tools that you may find helpful.

One way to help classroom communities establish shared norms is by discussing them openly through a process called “contracting.” Some teachers already customarily create classroom contracts with their students at the start of each course. If you do not typically do so, we recommend that before beginning your class’s journey through this Facing History unit, you engage the students in the process of creating one. Contracts typically include several clearly defined rules or expectations for participation, and consequences for those who do not fulfill their obligations as members of the learning community. Any contract created collaboratively by students and the teacher together should be consistent with the classroom rules already established by the teacher. Many Facing History teachers differentiate their own classroom rules, which are non-negotiable, from the guidelines set forth in the classroom contract, which are negotiated by the students with the teacher’s guidance. Some sample guidelines that might be included in a class contract are provided below.

We have also found that the classroom environment is enhanced by emphasizing journal writing and employing multiple formats for facilitating large and small group discussions. Throughout this unit, we suggest specific teaching strategies designed to encourage students’ critical thinking and encourage each of them to share their ideas.

We encourage you to frequently remind your students that, regardless of the classroom strategy you are using or the topic you are addressing, it is essential that their participation honors the contract they helped create and follows your own classroom rules. In addition, we strongly recommend that you post the contract in a prominent location in your classroom and that when students stray from the guidelines set forth in the contract you refer to the specific language in the contract when you redirect to them. You might find that when one student strays from the guidelines of the contract, other students will respond by citing the specific expectations listed in the contract.

Consider the following list of guidelines for your classroom contract. As you work together to create your own, we encourage you to include (or modify) any or all of the items on this list:

1. Listen with respect. Try to understand what someone is saying before rushing to judgment.
2. Make comments using “I” statements. (“I disagree with what you said. Here’s what I think . . .”)
3. If you do not feel safe making a comment or asking a question, write the thought down. You can ask the teacher after class to help you find a safe way to share the idea.
4. If someone says an idea or question that helps your own learning, say “thank you.”
5. If someone says something that hurts or offends you, do not attack the person. Acknowledge that the comment—not the person—hurt your feeling and explain why.
6. Put-downs are never okay.
7. If you don’t understand something, ask a question.
8. Think with your head and your heart.
9. Share talking time—provide room for others to speak.
10. Do not interrupt others while they are speaking.
11. Write down thoughts, in a journal or notebook, if you don’t have time to say them during our time together.

Dehumanizing Language

Harper Lee includes the the "N" word deliberately to illustrate the society she writes about. Therefore, when quoting the text of To Kill a Mockingbird and in the historical documents included in this guide, we have chosen to let the word remain as it originally appeared, without any substitution. The dehumanizing power of this term and the ease with which some Americans have used it to describe their fellow human beings is central to understanding the themes of identity and human behavior at the heart of the book.

It is very difficult to use and discuss the "N" word in the classroom, but its presence in the novel makes it necessary to acknowledge it and set guidelines for students about whether or not to pronounce it when reading aloud or quoting from the text. Otherwise, this word’s presence might distract students from an open discussion about characters and themes. We recommend the following articles to help you determine how to approach the term in your classroom:

1. “Exploring the Controversy: The ‘N’ Word” from Huck Finn in Context: A Teaching Guide (PBS)
2. “Straight Talk about the N-Word” from Learning for Justice (Southern Poverty Law Center)
3. “In Defense of a Loaded Word” by Ta-Nehisi Coates (New York Times)

You may also wish to point out the use of the word “negro” in the novel. In earlier times, this was an acceptable term for referring to African Americans. While not offensive in the past, today the term “negro” is outdated and inappropriate unless one is reading aloud directly from a historical document or work of literature.

Accusations of Rape

Accusations of rape play a central role in both the story of To Kill a Mockingbird and the history of the Scottsboro Boys, which is included in this guide. While explicit depictions of rape do not appear, the accusations in these stories may simultaneously be difficult to understand for some students and all too real for others.

Discussions of rape are complicated in relation to To Kill a Mockingbird and the Scottsboro Boys because both of these stories involve false accusations that play into racial fear and hatred. Experts tell us that most accusations of rape are not false. There is material provided later in this guide to help explore the beliefs and stereotypes that led to the false accusations students will learn about.

It is possible that some students will have additional questions or comments on the topic of rape outside of the context of the book. It is important to preview how you might respond to such questions and comments in case they arise. If they do, make sure to return to the class contract you have established with students to guide any discussion that follows. You might also consider alerting your building administrator to the fact that the topic of rape—critical in the analysis of the novel—might be brought up in your class in case any concerns about the discussion arise in the broader school community