What’s Behind the Hoodie?

Abstract

“What’s Behind the Hoodie?” is a unit plan for my tenth grade English class at San Carlos High School on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. I’ll be teaching this unit for the second quarter of the school year from October to December. In this unit, the students will read The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, which is a coming-of-age novel reminiscent of The Catcher in the Rye. The main character, Charlie, writes letters addressed, “Dear friend,” in which the reader gets to see him grow as a “wallflower” and become someone who pursues friendships, processes through trauma, and slowly discovers the sort of person he wants to be. As we read the novel, we will begin having discussions and writing about how Charlie develops some healthy habits in his life, such as reading books that make him more open-minded, “participating,” (as he calls it, which is when he pushes himself to be brave enough to engage with others), and gaining wisdom from a trusted teacher and sharing it with the people in his life who need it most (Chbosky, S., 1999).