Revisiting Mockingbird During Banned Books Week

Posted by Kaitlin Smith on September 25, 2019

Banned Books Week is here once again—and it invites us to reflect upon the narratives that we choose to amplify within our communities and those we choose to silence. One text that continues to provoke these questions for American educators is Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird

In 2018, PBS identified Lee’s novel as the “most-loved” book in the United States in the Great American Read—an eight-part television series that celebrated popular texts based on a national survey that examined “how and why writers create their fictional worlds, how we as readers are affected by these stories, and what [the] 100 different books have to say about our diverse nation and our shared human experience.” 

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Teaching To Kill a Mockingbird Through a New Lens After 35 Years

Posted by Deborah Hibbitt on May 15, 2018

I have spent my whole life living in the south but often find conflict between my roots as a southerner and the complicated history of racism. As a teacher for 35 years, I’ve tried to use literature to develop empathy and understanding to combat bigotry and hatred. To Kill a Mockingbird has long been one of the novels I’ve used to attempt this.

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Professional Development, Teaching Resources, workshop, race

How To Assess the Strength of a Democracy

Posted by Dan Sigward on December 11, 2017

On December 15, 1791, the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution—known as the Bill of Rights—were ratified. Designed to spell out limits to the federal government’s power and to protect the individual liberties of Americans, these amendments include many of the hallmarks of the country’s democratic ideals: freedom of speech, the press, and religion; and the protection against being punished by the government without due process of law. 

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Democracy, Reconstruction, Weimar Republic

Teaching To Kill a Mockingbird Through a New Lens After 35 Years

Posted by Deborah Hibbitt on April 11, 2017

I have spent my whole life living in the south but often find conflict between my roots as a southerner and the complicated history of racism. As a teacher for 35 years, I’ve tried to use literature to develop empathy and understanding to combat bigotry and hatred. To Kill a Mockingbird has long been one of the novels I’ve used to attempt this.

I am always ready to learn something new so when I learned about Facing History’s workshop, “A New Approach to Teaching Mockingbird,” I was intrigued. It turns out I found deeper connections to the novel than I had ever anticipated—some that took me all the way back to my childhood in the south.  

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Professional Development, Teaching Resources, workshop, race

Student Voice: The Power of Identity

Posted by Stacey Perlman on March 1, 2017

Cicada Scott, the winner of last year's Facing History Together Student Essay Contest, wrote an eloquent essay about life as a non-binary gender teenIn light of recent news about the rollback of federal protection for transgender students, Cicada's reflection on the power of understanding one's own identity is more timely than ever. Read our Q&A with Cicada and check out this year's prompt for the 2017 Facing History Together Student Essay Contest. Submissions are open until March 15. Students and teachers will have the chance to win more than $25,000 in scholarships and awards.

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Contests, Student Voices, Writing, LGBTQ

How To Assess the Strength of a Democracy

Posted by Dan Sigward on January 18, 2017

This Friday, the United States will inaugurate its 45th president, Donald Trump. The tensions and divisions that were unearthed by the 2016 presidential campaign will not be put to rest once President Barack Obama transitions power to this new administration. Instead, they will require active, thoughtful, and responsible participation of citizens to work through together; our responsibilities as citizens do not end at the voting booth. This inauguration is an appropriate time to reflect and renew our engagement as committed participants in a healthy democracy. As we take stock in our own role in this, how do we also help students make sense of these divisions and assess the strength of democracy and civil society?

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Democracy, Reconstruction, Weimar Republic

To Free a Mockingbird

Posted by Sam Kiss on October 6, 2016

To celebrate LGBTQ History Month this October, we are honoring voices like Sam Kiss'. His essay was a finalist in the 2016 Facing History Together Student Essay Contest, which asked students to draw upon themes from Harper Lee's classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. He shared his personal story about what it was like to come out to his family as a transgender boy. 

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Student Voices, LGBTQ

Four Ways to Bring Mockingbird into the Classroom

Posted by Lindsay Gutierrez on August 17, 2016

As a high school English teacher, my goal is to produce globally aware students who see the larger context of the curricula we are studying. Texts, such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, are valuable lenses to educate my students about what it means to be humane, active participants in their classroom and the world. Before attending Facing History’s Teaching Mockingbird seminar, I thought about how to approach the novel in a way that would encourage my pupils to explore the complexity of human behavior and decision-making. But I was also looking to be inspired about how to most effectively end my semester-long unit on Race and Membership using the novel. Now, I have a plethora of strategies to discuss the dilemmas that develop when conscience comes into conflict with societal rules of behavior.

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Professional Development

Behind the Essay: A Q&A with Student Contest Winner Cicada Scott

Posted by Stacey Perlman on June 7, 2016

Cicada Scott, a senior from Manitou Springs, Colorado, received the $2,500 Benjamin B. Ferencz Upstander Award for the 2016 Facing History Together Student Essay Contest. To celebrate LGBT Pride Month in June, we go behind the scenes to learn more about what inspired Cicada to open up about being a non-binary gender teenager. Preferring pronouns like "them" and "they," Cicada describes non-binary as a "catchall category for people who are neither exclusively male or exclusively female."

After graduation, they plan to attend college at the University of Colorado, Boulder. They are looking into studying robotics but are still deciding the right major. 

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Contests, Student Voices, Writing, LGBTQ

Vote Today! Help Us Choose This Year's Student Contest Winners!

Posted by Aileen McQuillen on April 18, 2016

We couldn’t believe it ourselves: Over 4,000 students entered our 2016 Facing History Together Student Essay Contest!

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Topics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Contests, Student Voices

At Facing History and Ourselves, we value conversation—in classrooms, in our professional development for educators, and online. When you comment on Facing Today, you're engaging with our worldwide community of learners, so please take care that your contributions are constructive, civil, and advance the conversation.

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Welcome to Facing Today, a Facing History blog. Facing History and Ourselves combats racism and antisemitism by using history to teach tolerance in classrooms around the globe.

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