If you teach American literature, chances are you’re touching on the theme of the American Dream somehow, through book clubs, a poetry unit, a look at Gatsby, or an essential question that binds together a variety of genres and perspectives. So when I received this request for our Plan my Lesson series, “How about a fun way to introduce the American Dream unit for juniors, about 36 of them,” I was ready. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how you might introduce the concept of The American Dream through a series of multimedia activities, first letting students choose which ones to explore, then letting them respond with multimedia of their own, creating a collage of dream experiences for the class to view.
Start with your Agenda and a Quickwrite
As usual, I suggest you have your agenda up on the board as students come in, to cut down on questions and help guide the flow of class. But today, instead of an attendance question, consider opening with a short opportunity for individual reflection and writing. This switch is an indicator of our current political climate, in which I think it’s going to be complicated to discuss immigration in class. I don’t want to put kids on the spot to try to argue for their views during an attendance question meant to build community, so letting them write individually feels like the gentler option. A student whose parents are currently afraid to leave the house because of ICE raids, for example, is probably going to have strong feelings during any discussion of The American Dream.
Define The American Dream Together
Before launching into the main activities of the day, take a minute to ask students for help defining The American Dream on the board. Put up a variety of responses, there doesn’t need to be any one right answer. We’ll be revisiting this initial definition later on.
Let Students Choose Texts to Explore
Next up, it’s time to consider a variety of perspectives on the American Dream, letting authors and artists reflect on that dream alongside students. I suggest you create a clickable slide with texts you want to make available, and then guide students to explore as many as they can in the time you allow. Let them choose based on their interest along the way. Some students may consume two texts, others all of them. That’s OK.
Below, you’ll see some models of similar choice-based exploration I’ve created in the last few weeks. I’m not creating one here, because I think the texts will vary a lot from class to class. Again, our current political climate makes choosing these texts a complex task. I’m not going to choose for you, because I don’t know your community, but I’m going to share a starter list of possibilities below. Once you make your choices, you can create a clickable slide with quick descriptions of the options so students know what they’re clicking into.
American Dream Text Possibilities (Starter List):
- Death of a Salesman Trailer (Royal Shakespeare Company)
- American Gothic Painting (Painting at The Art Institute of Chicago)
- Reyna Grande: A Migrant’s Story (Video on Youtube)
- The Sun is Also a Star (Movie Trailer)
- “American Dream” (Video from the Beltway Poetry Slam on Youtube)
- “Let America be America Again” (Poem by Langston Hughes at Poets.org)
- “Immigrant Photos by Augustus Sherman” (Photos from Ellis Island at the National Park Service)
- “An American Sunrise” (Poem by Joy Harjo at Poets.org)
- “American Dreamers Mural” (Mural by Shepard Fairey and Vils, Photo at Obey Giant) – you’d want to pull the photo out of the blog post
- “Lincoln, Nebraska 1977” (Photo by Keith Jacobshagen at the Spencer Museum of Art)
- American Dream Exhibit (Punto Urban Art Museum)
- “Gold Mountain Dreams” (PBS: Bill Moyer’s Becoming American: The Chinese Experience”)
- “This Hill we Climb” (Amanda Gorman on PBS Youtube)
- “I hear America Singing” (Poem by Walt Whitman at The Poetry Foundation)
- Start-up Story: “Jerry Yang” (The Immigrant Learning Center)
Interpret the Texts with Multimedia
Next, after students have explored several pieces of multimedia, invite them to return to one or two they were most interested in. Their task will be to showcase the perspective of that text or texts in a collage of media by pulling a key quotation, adding an illustration of some kind, and creating a six word memoir to represent their interpretation of the story behind the piece(s) they’re showcasing.
So, for example, here is a collage of the three elements based on Reyna Grande’s video, “A Migrant’s Story.” This model was created in Canva, but students could also create on paper or in Slides.
Here’s another example, designed around Langston Hughes’ poem, “Let American be America Again.”
If you’d like to give students a starter template to design in Canva, here’s a link to make that easy.
A Gallery of Dreams
Once students have completed their piece, it’s time for a gallery walk or virtual tour. If they’ve created digitally, have everyone drop their work into a collaborative slideshow that they can explore. If they’ve created on paper, have them tape them to the wall or face them out on their desks as everyone walks around to view the dream gallery. As students explore what their classmates have created, ask them to choose and write down five descriptive words or phrases for the American Dream based on the pieces around them.
A Final Definition
Now, in the last few minutes, revisit the initial definition the class came up with for The American Dream on the board. Grab a giant post-it or piece of butcher paper that you can put up on the wall and leave up throughout your unit, and refine that definition. Invite students to share some of the descriptive words and phrases they wrote down as they viewed the gallery, and see how/if the definition shifts at all.
