First Annual Ernest J. Gaines Summer Teaching Institute

Last Friday, the first annual Ernest J. Gaines Center Summer Teaching Institute concluded. The institute spanned five days, and participants met from 8:30-11:30 each morning. Teachers from Lafayette Parish and Evangeline Parish participated. During the institute, participants read and discussed four of Gaines texts: "The Sky is Gray," The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Gathering of Old Men, and A Lesson before Dying. Along with the discussion of the texts, the participants were able to view items from the archives and discussed various ways to teach Gaines in the classroom. The pedagogical discussions yielded the best results. Soon, you will be able to access some of the participants' lesson plans through the Ernest J. Gaines Center's website. In conjunction with the center's library guide, these lesson plans will provide teachers with materials to teach Gaines' work, and the works of other authors, in the classroom.

Here is a brief list of some of the pedagogical techniques we discussed:

• Have students construct a Google Map for the places in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
• Have students write and recite a eulogy for one of the characters who passes away 
• Have students edit, for grammar and content, part of Jefferson's diary in A Lesson before Dying
• Have students rewrite a section of a book in a different point of view
• Have students research references in the texts and present on them (i.e. Huey P. Long, Bienville, etc.) 

These are only a few of the items that we mentioned in the institute. Other ideas can be found on the Ernest J. Gaines Center's LibGuide. If you have any thing that you do in the classroom and would like to share it, please leave a comment below or email the center.

One idea that arose out of our prolonged discussions revolved around other texts to incorporate in relation to Gaines and African American literature. Throughout his writing, Gaines talks about the residual effects on slavery on both African Americans and whites. For example, in A Lesson before Dying, when Grant speaks with his former teacher Matthew Antoine, Matthew tells him, "You'll see that it'll take more than five and a half months to wipe away--peel--scrape away the blanket of ignorance that has been plastered and replastered over those [students'] brains in the past three hundred years" (64). Later, when Grant is speaking with Vivian about manhood in chapter twenty one, Grant tells her that all Miss Emma "wants is for him, Jefferson, and me to change everythng that has been going of for three hundred years" (167). These are only two example from one novel. During the institute, we talked about this aspect of Gaines writing and brought in Brother Ali's "The Travelers" from his 2009 album Us. The song tackles the Middle Passage and expounds upon the continuing psychological effects of the "peculiar institution." Brother Ali has mentioned that part of the inspiration for the song came from James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. These texts, in relation to Gaines' continued comments about the residual effects of slavery, would be a good way to begin a discussion in class.