A Lesson Before Teaching: Phenomenology, Literary Reading and Disenfranchised Adolescents

This book is based on the literary transactions of 77, 18-year-old adolescents as they read and responded to A Lesson Before Dying (1993) by Ernest J. Gaines. Three differing classes of students were attending an intense, four-course, “skills-based” program that was designed to prepare them for the rigors of university undergraduate work since their academic profiles were deemed as lacking given pre-admission screenings. One such course was that of the author of this book in which a novel was used to encourage reading facility. Classroom discourse among the students and professor were videotaped over two summers as students were guided to render their thematic impressions of the novel through arts and media-based projects. The book presents actual dialogue – it tells the story of engagement that evolved for them in a student-centered environment. As is disclosed in the opening chapter, some rules were broken in order for this educational story to be made manifest.

Jefferson was condemned to die for a murder he did not commit. Redeeming in him a sense of his dignity was a job that schoolteacher Grant Wiggins did not want. Adolescent students read the Gaines novel and their politicized human impulses are aroused. When teachers and literacy researchers read Sullivan’s A Lesson Before Teaching, they will be reminded that working with oppressed adolescents of diverse identities entails a mission toward redemption. They teach us that with guidance and love, they can be reached.