by Rama Janamanchi
In my classroom, we watch Chimamanda Adiche’s The Danger of a Single Story early in the year. I use it as a touchstone throughout the year to remind students to look beyond the obvious and the stereotypical in all the literature we read.
Ross Gay’s poem, A Small Needful Fact, is central to understanding how we all have stories that reveal another dimension of ourselves. When I first taught this poem, Eric Garner’s name was still familiar for most of my students. Last year, I had students ask who Eric Garner was. So the lesson below was born inspired by a Folger workshop at NCTE last year led by the inimitable Missy Springsteen-Haupt.
We begin by reading the poem chorally. Then I call on 2 volunteers to read part of this article as if they were newscasters. They are asked to take turns reading the first 4 paragraphs in the article. Then the class reads the poem again silently. Then the 2 students stand and read the paragraphs aloud again. This time, as the article is being read, the rest of the class reads aloud “A Small Needful Fact” until the newscasters are done reading the 5 paragraphs.
As voices of the ‘newscasters’ are slowly drowned by the poem, we return to discuss the impact of having both narratives run concurrently. This is especially true when the poem’s ending lines up with the fourth paragraph recounting Garner’s final words.
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