A Short Unit on Peace & Empathy
“ He showed signs of his greatness all the time. Under more normal circumstances he would have been a personality to reckon with. He had a contribution to make, and he wasn’t given the chance to.”
The Jewish Giant
A Short Unit on Peace & Empathy: After reading All Quiet (and the other 3 novels as well - The History of Love, Candide, and The Things They Carried) we pause - so to speak - for a midyear encounter with shorter works. The order given below is not necessarily the order we did these - that depended on the timing of Winter Break.
The first of these is Silent Night - The Christmas Truce: a nonfiction book about the heartbreaking but miraculous truce on the frontlines of World War 1, in 1914. From that book we read two extended excerpts. The students work in groups one day - and we have a discussion/listening session the second. This is usually right before Winter Break and the timing couldn't be better.
Next, is "Truth" - a poem by American poet, Randall Jarrell about a young boy in London during the blitz and his grappling with the lies that he's been told (Ah- yes - we are back to our overreaching theme for the year of "Truth").
To continue our theme of empathy we do a lesson on "The Jewish Giant" - an incredible radio story from NPR about real life "giant" Eddie Carmel and his not to be taken tragically all to short life.
We continue in that vein with one of the most important (and emotional) discussions that we have all year - on bullying. We begin by reading aloud a short article by Richard Lindberg on the bullying he and his friend faced in elementary school - and the scars it left, that won't go away. From there, we open the discussion up to a conversation about bullying. For twenty years, the students were the most honest and heartfelt they would be all year - and I believe we walked out of the class the better for it.
Finally, the day before Winter Break - our last class of the calendar year - I invite former students to come back and I bring all of my World Literature Classes together and we read Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory". Originally read to alleviate the heavines of Capote's In Cold Blood - students asked me when I would be doing the reading the next year - and it quickly became a tradition.
This story about a group of passengers on a train in Italy - during World War 1, is a great way to introduce students to the idea of Home vs. Front that will be so pervasive in their next novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. It is also short enough, that it can be read and discussed in a single class period. And as the icing on the cake - at the very finish of the school year, we read another story by the same author - "The Jar". There are four different ways to teach this story - that are included here: 1) Read Aloud & Discuss 2) Read silently (AP) & Discuss 3) Group Work 4) Ringmaster Teacher Led Discussion.