Along with all the excitement there is in beginning a new school year, we begin this on at a time of intense anger in our nation. A large part of that anger is about racism and other forms of prejudice against people one sees as different from oneself. Whether we see it clearly or not, every young person in a classroom is affected by this atmosphere, and it is so easy for them to use it to feel the world is unfriendly. Meanwhile, I learned from Aesthetic Realism that it is the same world that’s in every subject we teach. Can there be kindness, justice, in how people see each other? And how can learning the subjects in the curriculum be a means of opposing prejudice in all its forms, and having greater respect for all people, and for the world itself?
That was what I was hoping for when I taught the 9th grade English lessons, I describe in the following article. Based on the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method, these lessons enabled the NYC students I describe here, who’d had great difficulty reading and had met anger and prejudice in their young lives, to change deeply, in a way that moves me to this day. Not only were they more just and less angry, but they came to love reading as they’d never imagined they could.
Lessons on Rhyme, Using the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method