Teaching Mockingbird

Teaching Mockingbird presents educators with the materials they need to transform how they teach Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Interweaving the historical context of Depression-era rural Southern life, and informed by Facing History's pedagogical approach, this resource introduces layered perspectives and thoughtful strategies into the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird.

This teacher's guide provides English language arts teachers with student handouts, close reading exercises, and connection questions that will push students to build a complex understanding of the historical realities, social dynamics, and big moral questions at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird. Following Facing History's scope and sequence, students will consider the identities of the characters, and the social dynamics of the community of Maycomb, supplementing their understanding with deep historical exploration. They will consider challenging questions about the individual choices that determine the outcome of Tom Robinson's trial, and the importance of civic participation in the building a more just society.

Teaching Mockingbird uses Facing History's guiding lens to examine To Kill a Mockingbird, offering material that will enhance student's literary skills, moral growth, and social development.

Facing History and Ourselves is an international educational and professional development organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. By studying the historical development of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make connections between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives.