The first time I read the phrase “seminal texts,” I rolled my eyes. Surely, I thought, no one writing the Common Core standards has ever met a high school student let alone tried to teach.
How, I thought, was I supposed to get students excited about the American Enlightenment? There’s so much vocabulary and so many names and dates. It honestly felt like an overwhelming task.
Almost ten years later, I have a better idea of how to engage students in the American Enlightenment. Is it still a challenge? Yes. Are seminal texts still part of the Common Core? Of course.
At this point in my career, I have a better understanding of why seminal texts are part of the Common Core. There’s a lot students can and should learn (and unlearn) about the foundations of this country.
“American” is an identity that is always evolving. Our students are the next group of writers, thinkers, and leaders who will redefine what it means to be American. Whether “American” becomes a progressive, vital, and glorious part of the world community or stagnates and fails is a decision that rests with our students.
For all of these reasons, it’s important to get students engaged and excited about the American Enlightenment. Keep reading for 5 ideas about how to engage students in this difficult subject!
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American Enlightenment Essential Questions
We know that relevance is an important part of helping students engage in content. For this reason, I’ve worked to develop essential questions that help focus an entire unit of study.
- What does it mean to be an American?
- How does literature reflect and affect history?
- What makes democracy valuable, and what are its flaws?
- What did the Founding Fathers get wrong, and how can we fix it?
- Why and how have the foundations of the United States remained relevant?
- Is rhetoric dangerous? What obligation does a speaker or writer have to their audience?
- Who or what is responsible for shaping what it means to be an American? How will you help shape what it means to be an American?
Essential questions are one of my favorite ways to keep students focused and engaged in a unit. Regardless of which essential questions you choose, try writing them on an anchor chart at the front of the classroom. Revisit them systematically throughout the unit, perhaps at the beginning and ending of each reading.
As the unit progresses, add to the anchor chart, noting where different readings and discussions address the essential questions. As the unit progresses, students may even want to amend the essential questions to better reflect their interests, passions, and perspectives.
Use Journals and Discussions
I’m a big believer in bell work, and journals are a perfect way to open class! Using the essential questions as prompts is a great way to keep students engaged, even in difficult material.
When my students struggle with the American Enlightenment, I sometimes ask them to make a series of text connections. As students connect their reading to the modern world, they have a better idea of why the material is relevant. Grab all my journal prompts for the American Enlightenment today!
Similarly, discussion is a great way to keep students engaged. To kick off discussion, I love using an anticipation guide like this one! Anticipation guides are great because we can revisit them throughout the unit.
I also use a combination of silent discussion, small group discussions, and Socratic Seminars, emphasizing that each discussion strategy requires a different set of skills. To prepare students for discussion, ask them to brainstorm a series questions about a text. You may also want to model the difference between thick and thin questions.
If you’re short for time, you can also focus student discussion on the essential questions. You can also use any writing prompts you’re going to have students tackle. Oftentimes, I find that having students discuss a writing prompt acts as an effective alternative to traditional brainstorming.
Visualizing for Engagement
Visualization is another great strategy for keeping students engaged. For the American Enlightenment, students often make a timeline to visualize key events as they relate to our readings.
To keep the timeline simple, I put a piece of painter’s tape on the board. Then I give students the time range of the American Enlightenment. For larger classes, I ask each student to find 1-2 events to add to the timeline. For smaller classes, I ask students to find 3-4 events to add to the timeline. I can model by adding key events like the dates of the American Revolution.
Another visualization strategy is to ask students to draw their journals! Two prompts that work well for this are “What does an American look like?” and “What does the American Dream look like?” In both cases, the resulting conversation is usually a positive show of critical thinking. This invites connections to the essential questions. This is also a good way of helping students understand the limitations of terms like “American” and “American Dream.” Students can consider how to make these terms more inclusive or attainable.
The Rhetoric of the American Enlightenment
From a curriculum standpoint, the American Enlightenment is where I teach rhetoric. To review ethos, pathos, and logos, I love using this card sort. It’s a quick, fun way to help students activate prior knowledge.
At the junior level, my students are focused less on ethos, pathos, and logos. They are more focused on how writers adapt and enhance those basic rhetorical devices. As a result, we focus on sound devices and syntax. To make the shift from identifying to analyzing rhetorical devices, we often use these rhetoric task cards.
To further study rhetoric, students may complete a SOAPSTone analysis of a speaker. They may also try their own hand at persuasive writing. Since the American Enlightenment is associated with civics, students can write letters to school or government officials. Students can persuade policymakers to make reforms that affect young people. As an alternative, students can practice their formal writing by composing a persuasive email.
Incorporating Paired Texts
Since rhetoric is not isolated to the American Enlightenment, this can also be a good opportunity to introduce some paired texts. Comparison allows students to gauge how American rhetoric has evolved. They can synthesize and evaluate its influence in the contemporary world. Here are some suggested text pairings:
- Thomas Paine’s The Crisis No. 1 and Patrick Henry’s “Speech to the Virginia Convention” compare the relationship of the colonies to Britain with enslavement. It’s important to discuss why this comparison is problematic. However, there’s an opportunity to include Black voices. Reading “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” from The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois helps to interrogate racism in the founding of the US and in the development of the American identity.
- In many ways, the Transcendentalists are the rhetorical ancestors of the American Enlightenment. Pairing the American Enlightenment with “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau is a great choice.
- Freedom was a key part of the American Revolution. FDR’s Four Freedoms Speech challenges students to evaluate how the rhetoric of freedom evolved and how it continues to evolve.
- Additionally, JFK’s Inaugural Address is memorable and packed with rhetoric! JFK’s famous call to “ask what you can do for your country” resonates well with the sentiments of the American Enlightenment. Students could also read “The Immigrant Experience” by JFK. They could interrogate how the US has treated immigrants and what role they play in making the United States. Immigrants are a significant piece of the American melting pot. So I’ve put together this collection of text suggestions about the immigrant experience.
- For a more challenging text pairing, the World War II-era essay “Words and Behavior” by Aldous Huxley criticizes the way humans use the rhetoric of war. Read against the American Enlightenment, Huxley’s essay becomes apt commentary.
- Finally, for a more contemporary text pairing, consider “Privileged” by basketball player Kyle Korver. To be literate during the American Enlightenment was likely a sign of privilege. Similarly, the Founding Fathers were all inheritors of privilege. They helped establish what qualities would be and would continue to be privileged in the United States.
Everything You Need to Save!
To save you some time and money, I’ve put together the American Enlightenment Bundle! Its 100 pages and 100 questions that cover seven key pieces of early American literature! Grab it today!
