Welcome to the University of Dallas' UD Reads. This curriculum has been written by Erin Begle, an English IV teacher at MacArthur High School in Irving, TX and a UD graduate. Erin and Education professor Dr. Carmen Newstreet have collaborated to offer a variety of resources that are sure to enhance your students' experience and reading of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad.
Essential Questions:
Standards associated with the following Resources TEKS (World History, US Government, US History, English I-V)
Goodheart, Adam. (2015). The Secret History of the Underground Railroad: Eric Froner explores how it really worked. The Atlantic
Children’s Literature
Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan
Moses: When Harriet Tubmen Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford
The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Virginia Hamilton
Music
Song Lyrics Used for Communication:
Wade in the Water: YouTube
Steal Away: YouTube
Sweet Chariot: YouTube
Follow the Drinking Gourd: YouTube
Go Down Moses: YouTube
Literature Circle Lessons - possible titles to complement The Underground Railroad:
March Trilogy (graphic novel) - by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, & Nate Powell (suggestion by Marla
Gibson, Houston Middle School, Irving ISD)
Their Eyes Were Watching God- by Zora Neale Hurston
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Americanah- by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
Kindred- by Octavia Butler
Born a Crime- by Trevor Noah
How to Be an Anti Racist - by Ibram X Kendi
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Modern Day Applications:
Potential Field Trips:
Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum (Live or Virtual Field Trips available)
Human Rights Wing Virtual Tour of the Dallas Holocaust Museum
Interactive Lesson “Understanding Unconscious Bias”
*Current Special Exhibition (until January 12, 2020) “The Fight for Civil Rights in the South”
*Free to all Title I schools; Irving ISD provides free bus transportation to the museum
Essay prompt
“GROSS (NPR): You know, toward the end of the book, one of the character - you know, they're talking about what to do and how to help black people and who can be helped and who maybe can't be helped, so let's not spend the energy trying to save them. And so one character says, we're not all going to make it. Some of us are too far gone. Slavery has twisted their minds, an imp filling their minds with foul ideas. They've given themselves over to whiskey and its false comforts, to hopelessness and its constant devils. Those who will not cannot respect themselves. It's too late for them. So it's this debate. It's, like, is it too late for someone? And a character says, we can't save everyone, but that doesn't mean we can't try. Here's one delusion - that we can escape slavery. We can't. Its scars will never fade. And to me, like, that's what the book is really about, how the scars of slavery will never fade.”
From your perspective, what is this book really about?
Socratic Seminar
Oprah’s Book Club Discussion Questions - Students complete a Socratic Seminar starting with the questions listed here for
discussion. (Students can create their own questions for multiple levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy)
Quilt Squares to assemble into classroom quilt
Quilt Codes - Students create their own quilt with art supplies and create a code for their past self to ease the journey, or a quilt that codifies their own life.
TED Talk Analyses Jigsaw
TED Talks- Jigsaw Opener - Students, in groups, pairs or individually, watch one TED Talk and present the key points to a larger group or the entire class.
Compose a Fugitive Slave Advertisement
Fugitive Slave Advertisements - Students select one name and create a backstory for the primary document listed in the Columbia University directory of fugitive slaves
Slave Advertisements from University of North Carolina, realia from the era
Supplemental Materials:
“Confronting the Reality of Slavery” - NPR Interview with Colson Whitehead “Fresh Air” Podcast
The Origins of Lynching -10 minute video
NewsELA - “Defund the Police”, “House Hearing on Reparations for Slavery Coincides with Juneteenth”
CommonLit - “EXCERPT FROM SOUTHERN HORRORS: LYNCH LAWS IN ALL ITS PHASES”, “Letter from Frederick Douglas to Harriet Tubman”
CDC Tuskegee Experiments Information
Harriet Tubman- Letters and activities
The University of Dallas has announced a new director of civil rights, Luciana Milano. Milano, who has a Bachelor of Arts in government from Harvard College and a J.D. from Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, began her new role on Oct. 12.
+ Read More“This is the first time we’ve had a scholarship in honor of a great Catholic intellectual — and now, within the last year, saint,” said President Thomas S. Hibbs, Ph.D., BA ’82 MA ’83, by way of introducing the St. John Henry Newman Scholarship in Philosophy recently endowed by alumnus Matthew Hejduk, MA '98 PhD '06, and his wife, Julia Hejduk, Ph.D. Julia was a colleague of Hibbs during his time at Baylor University, where she teaches in the Classics Department.
+ Read MoreMichelle Cortez-Gonzales, MFA ’20, was a Fort Worth ISD high school teacher with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Texas at Arlington when she decided to go back to school to get her master’s. At the recommendation of a friend, she visited UD, and knew immediately from the wooded area around the Art Village, the architecture of the buildings, and the faculty members she met that UD was the place for her.
+ Read More
