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Ninth Grade Non-Fiction and the Power of Will

June 15, 2021
By Ann Brennan
9th Grade Non-Fiction and the Power of Will

This year’s Grade 9 class went on a meaningful journey in their seven-week Non-Fiction block. Instructor Heather Lomason chose two very different texts for the students this year. One, Black Elk Speaks by John G Neihardt, (published in 1932) has been in the curriculum for several years. The second, My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor (published in 2013) is a new addition.

Non-fiction reading and analysis can help students continue learning about the power of will, a uniquely human trait. Steiner students’ education encourages further learning about and developing the individual’s will. In the early years, we teach students to work with their hands to develop their will in manipulating their physical world.

As they progress in school, we continue work with the hands through visual and practical arts projects, and also introduce more sophisticated demonstrations of will through literature, composition, and discussion.

Ms. Lomason was intentional in her choice of Black Elk Speaks and My Beloved World because she wanted students to hear different voices and writing styles, yet also present works that students could relate to. Another reason to introduce the class to My Beloved World was that longtime Spanish teacher, Señora Nazarro, was able to deliver a guest lecture and discussion with the class to give an additional perspective on growing up Puerto Rican and living in the United States.

In Señora Nazarro’s talk with the students, she explained the connections she feels with Sonia Sotomayor as a Puerto Rican, as a woman and as a resident in the continental U.S.

The students enjoyed hearing Señora Nazarro’s first-hand experiences of living in “two worlds” – Puerto Rican culture and life in the USA. Her talk inspired students to more fully realize the connections they felt with Sotomayor’s life experiences.

To further build on creating connections with the readings, Ms. Lomason asked students to conduct an oral history project with an older relative in their life, as Sonia Sotomayor had. Again, the students were tasked with confronting questions about the power of will as they learned things about their relatives’ hopes and dreams and choices – and how the sum of their relatives’ experiences led them to a richly-led life. Like Sotomayor, or indeed almost anyone who initiates an interview with an older relative, these students learned things about their families’ pasts that they would never know had they not asked.

One student noted that the more he spoke with his grandmother, the more she started to sound like Sonia Sotomayor in the way she relayed her past to him. She had lived through many difficult experiences, yet, like Sotomayor, spoke of them in a positive light. Some students asked their relatives about their education upon reading about Sotomayor’s attainment of some of the most rigorous and selective university degrees in the country. Students were surprised to learn that their relatives’ education was not as straightforward as they had assumed. Some relatives did not live in a time or place where university education was an option to be considered, despite yearning for it. Some students assumed their relative did four years high school followed by four years of college, then started adult life. How enlightening for them to learn more about their relatives’ actual pathways during this time when these students are beginning to see their futures start to open up.

These 9th graders learned about the power of will through personal stories from historical and modern day leaders and connected those stories to interviews with their own family members.

As these students continue in our high school curriculum, they will see how ancient societies viewed the power of will as they read, discuss, write about, and simulate, for example, the experiences of the Greeks in Grade 10.

Thank you to the students who shared their thoughts on their Twentieth Century Non-Fiction class: Will Rohwer, Charlotte Derrow, Liam Casey-McFall, Vivian Adkins, and Gabe Mitchel.

Grade 9 Students