The purpose of this chapter is to provide teachers with a guide on how to use novel studies to promote social and emotional learning. Using research-based practices, the teachers outline multiple approaches to the novel Invisible Man ranging from teacher-led discussions to student generated research. The approaches include relevant discussion topics pertaining to social climate and to students' personal identities. Additionally, the teachers provide scaffolded approaches and suggested methods for fostering a culturally responsive classroom through the use of the novel. The overall purpose of the unit is to challenge students to understand those that are both alike and unlike them and to understand how this may affect their life experiences, increasing their social awareness. Though the teachers used Invisible Man as their anchor text, they advise that any complex text that provides students with a new outlook or understanding of the world in which they live will also work effectively.
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Social and emotional welfare of students in K-12 education has become increasingly important with inclusion of programs such as Positive Behavior Intervention & Supports (PBIS, 2021); in addition, diverse and inclusive classrooms have become an imminent focal point in education (Morrell, 2009). However, diverse and socially just classrooms is not a novel theory. Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell’s (2008) text, The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools is based on these very ideas within urban school settings. They specifically focused on the importance of rethinking urban school reform from one that moves away from strategy to one that rather focuses on student agency, capitalizing on what students bring from their lives into the classroom. Much like Duncan-Andrade and Morrell called for critical pedagogy in urban classrooms in 2008, the ever-changing social climate has proved the need for critical pedagogy in all classrooms. Critical pedagogies provide “teachers and researchers with a better means of understanding the role that schools play within a race-, class-, and gender-divided society” (Duncan-Andrade and Morrell, 2008, p. 23). Literacy education is the very vessel and English Language Arts classrooms are the very environment where critical pedagogy and SEL converge to create more socially just classrooms where students’ lived experiences, thoughts, and opinions drive instruction.
Justina Schlund (2019) in her article, “Examining the intersection of literacy, equity, and social and emotional learning” highlighted this very idea and the effectiveness of integrating SEL and literacy as it “has the potential to nurture more inclusive and equitable classrooms, schools, and communities” (Schlund, 2019, p.20). By providing a place where students can freely exchange ideas and create a learning community of understanding, classrooms become a microcosm of students' lived experiences, and a place where they can navigate the rules of their social words (Loureiro, 2017). In 2020 alone, students were forced to learn how to navigate a global pandemic, on-line learning, and social injustices. They did this while being socially isolated from classmates, teachers, and in some cases, family. Adolescence is a time when students need an outlet to express emotions, and may, instead, find themselves isolated from the very place that normally would help them make meaning of these events, their classrooms; however, if a classroom is a microcosm of the very world in which students reside, they can find solace and peace with authentic dialogue amongst peers (Loureiro, 2017). Promoting socially just classrooms where dialectics or the Socratic Method (Pullman, 2013) drove instruction, became the ideal setting for this unit as the teachers found the Socratic Method a great way to promote authentic dialogue. The Socratic Method is where students ask and answer questions with each other to stimulate critical thinking and better understand presupposed ideas (Pullman, 2013). It is for these reasons teachers continue to use literature and classroom discussion as anchors in ELA classrooms. The proceeding unit outlines two teachers’ experience using Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison as a vessel for embedding SEL in an Advanced Placement Literature classroom. With each year, this novel became increasingly relevant to students’ lives, and with each year, students express their gratitude for having the opportunity to discuss relevant and, at times, unsettling real-world topics within the safe confinements of their classroom.