Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird by Michael J. Meyer Page B

parallels in the story are evidence she does “get it.” As a result, by using this approach, the teacher is offering individualized instruction by relating students’ understanding of the text to the required objectives. In so doing, the instructor works to bridge a gap in what may have originally appeared to be ineptitude but actually turns out to be a difference in the students’ real-world concepts and their unfamiliarity/experience with educational jargon.
    As teachers, we have come to understand that we teach students by way of content, but if we work toward understanding how students learn, we can be more creative by individualizing our teaching and providing students a choice in their learning style. Having such a chance is what makes TSOTN a more meaningful, purposeful, and engaging task. Using soundtracks as a connection to the text promotes a student-centered engagement where students explore, reason, infer, and problem-solve as they wrestle out their own understandings and misunderstandings in an attempt to discover what the text has to say. Eventually, they learn to read and write critically—another necessary long-term skill. Clearly, as students take an active role in their learning, such a hands-on method allows them to make connections with prior learning and personal experiences, and they consequently develop into successful learners following an instructional philosophy that is supported by such well-known educational theorists as Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Specifically, this philosophy asserts that when students construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world through their unique experiences and reflections on those experiences, learning becomes both more relevant and more ongoing. By using a soundtrack learning activity, educators can facilitate a long-term purpose—preparing students for life beyond school—and, at the same time, give them an opportunity to apply what they have learned in the classroom to various situations and tasks they will face in the future.
    In addition, a central factor in creating relevance and maintaining an instructional purpose of the canonical text To Kill a Mockingbird is that educators ensure that their students have access to and learn from the content that has previously eluded them. TSOTN provides learning experiences and instruction that motivate students to learn in the ways that suit them best and simultaneously empowers them to take responsibility for their own learning. As students, with a cacophony of perspectives and musical backgrounds, connect ideas to the text, they learn not only to develop and defend their own points of view but also to subject their viewpoints to the analysis of others—a real-world consequence. Furthermore, instead of students being passive and powerless vessels, waiting to receive great shards of wisdom, the soundtrack activity teaches students to actively seek out answers about inevitable dilemmas, confusion, and contradictions found in the text. As they find answers and connect these issues to music, they “uncover” unique understandings as they attempt to make sense of their world. In such classrooms, students experience the stimulation of belonging to an intellectually challenging community—a group that formulates the necessary ingredient for transforming reading and writing connections into a lifelong skill.
    Implications for Practice
    Teachers planning to implement TSOTN in their classrooms should consider several characteristics of the assignment. We do not offer it as anything other than something that worked with our students. Certainly, adaptations and modifications can and should be made to fit a particular classroom or group of learners.
    While the NCLB Act, formative and summative assessments, and state mandates and testing dictate a departure from “traditional” teaching, teachers and students are nonetheless held to measurable standards, and, therefore,