Diverse, Meaningful, and Necessary

Literature can take many forms, as the students in St. John’s Lutheran School’s Language Arts: 7 have discovered over the last few weeks.  Diaries, graphic novels, first-person biographies, film, magazine articles – each has its  role to play and all have been woven into the Second Quarter LA: 7 curriculum.

As a part of the school’s new English Language focus, students in the SJLS Middle School study a particular Quarterly theme across grade levels.  The themes serve to connect divergent pieces of literature, although the literature chosen for each grade level is unique to that particular grade.  The Second Quarter theme currently under study is simply entitled, “Survival.” 

In the Seventh Grade, “survival literature” runs the gamut of artistic to historical to fictional, yet each piece has something to say to the lives of Seventh Graders. The literature we will study during the “Survival” unit this year will be Anne Frank’s famous Diary (in film and in a graphic novel), Jeannie Houston’s autobiography of her internment within a U.S. War Relocation Camp in the 1940s, Farewell to Manzanar, and a series of fellow internees’ brief accounts of camp life provided digitally by the United States National Park Service.  Scholastic ART  magazine guided the students to observe how Pacific Northwest Native American tribes used tribal art to address the stories of survival across generations.  Lynda Mullaly Hunt’s fictional account of a Middle School student’s struggle with dyslexia,  Fish in a Tree, rounds out the major works to be studied this Quarter.  Thankfully, not everyone needs to survive a concentration camp – some, like the character in Hunt’s book, desperately need survival skills simply to get through Middle School!

The goal of all literature is to broaden the students’ understanding of the world around them by allowing them to experience the lives of others – both real characters from the past and imaginary characters from the authors’ imaginations.  From such understanding develops empathy, respect, and an awareness of others’ plights.  The Lord Himself calls us to care for each other, respecting the poor and the needy.  There are poor and needy individuals aplenty in this Quarter’s literary pieces!  Hearing the students’ comments, I’m pretty sure that the “Survival” unit’s lessons will stick around in my students’ consciousness for a while.  At least, that’s our hope!

Kevin G. Smith, Grade 7