DOI: 10.14305/jn.19440413.2024.17.2.01 ISSN: 1944-0413

Critical Literacy Approaches to Teaching Canonical Texts: Analyzing Race in To Kill a Mockingbird in Rural, Predominately White Classrooms

Ashley Graegin, Margery Gardner
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In the 21st century, U.S. legislation continues to push for teacher censorship and seemingly depoliticized curriculums that ignore systemic issues regarding race, gender, sexuality, and other social justice topics. With the understanding that texts can never be politically neutral, English language arts (ELA) teachers must adopt critical approaches to teach required, and often hegemonic texts, and help students cultivate criticality and critical race consciousness. In this study, we aim to explore strategies that can be used to promote critical readings of canonical texts and how the topic of racial oppression can be broached in rural, predominantly White secondary English classrooms. Our case study explores how one rural teacher in an all-White seventh-grade classroom uses critical approaches to teach Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. We obtained our data through document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and non-participant observations that occurred three days a week for seven weeks in spring of 2024. Our data was then recorded, coded, and analyzed according to case study methods informed by grounded theory methodology. We observed two main pedagogical strategies (using a sociopolitical lens and exploring multiple perspectives) that the teacher used to promote critical literacies. We found that teaching To Kill a Mockingbird required contextual framing that included the introduction of sources such as court cases, accounts of resistance movements, and contemporary literature such as Brown Girl Dreaming (Woodson, 2014).

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