Darfur

Because the second part of English 9 has Night and To Kill a Mockingbird in its curriculum, I decided to revolve the entire trimester around human and civil rights. We start out the first few weeks of the trimester studying nonfiction and we've read things like Rosa Parks' "My Story," Nelson Mandela's "Glory and Hope," and Charlayne Hunter-Gault's "In my Place." We analyzed Sam Cooke's song lyrics for "A Change is Gonna Come." We've also read a few more current newspaper articles about people standing up for something they believe in, and one of them was about IU students trying to raise money for the genocide in Darfur.

This website is a great resource and my students seemed very interested in the issue. In fact, when I asked, most of them had no clue about Darfur. I also used the following YouTube videos. 1) 2) Overall, I think I really was able to get my students to THINK. Hopefully, talking about all of these issues now will prepare them for Night and To Kill a Mockingbird.