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| Photo By Cameron Knight |
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Dean Blase's method of presenting Toni Morrison's
Song of Solomon is included in a book offering new
approaches to teaching teens.
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A 1947 Packard hood ornament, red velvet rose pedals and blue silk wings: Real compared to what? Dean Blase literally pulled these symbols from Toni Morrison's
Song of Solomon and laid them out like clues from a treasure map for her Clark Montessori School students.
"There are all these key symbols she introduces in the opening chapter or two that are all tangible, but they don't make any sense," says Blase, multi-tasking soft scrambled eggs and her squirrelly infant daughter.
"Before we even started reading the book, I put all these objects out, and the kids had to choose several of the objects and construct a story that used the objects in both a literal and figurative way. Then I'd send them home to read Toni Morrison's version."
An English teacher for 13 years, Blase, 35, has spent six years teaching Morrison's corkscrew tome of Milkman's long walk from adolescence. Blase's methodology is so unique, so hands-out, she was asked to contribute a chapter on Morrison's novel to Great Books for High School Kids: A Teacher's Guide to Books That Can Change Teens' Lives (Beacon Press).
In her chapter on the effects the novel has had on her and her students, "Can You Find Your Future In Your Past?," Blase writes that Song of Solomon "works to heal and to inspire. It teaches lessons that soft-focus posters in guidance offices try to get across with kittens and rainbows."
Blase says Morrison's is an antidote to volumes by dead white men, calling it a response to E. D. Hirsch's 1987 white-bread guide to general knowledge, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Blase calls Hirsch's study, "Great White Books by Dead White Men."
Great Books for High School Kids, which Blase will discuss and sign Saturday at Joseph-Beth, is a fresh discussion on an old topic.
"I'd like to talk about this book as a resource for what's good literature for high school kids. There's a weird disconnect between what's 'appropriate.' Usually, they're infantalized books that talk about war, which is OK."
DEAN BLASE discusses and signs Great Books for High School Kids on Saturday at 1 p.m. at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Norwood.
