“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view …. …. Until you climb inside his skin and walk around in it.” – Atticus Finch 

This week, Class 9 are finishing up with the novel study of, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. We have spent the past three weeks, taking a deep dive into the world of Harper Lee’s iconic novel set during the Great Depression and the tumultuous times of racial inequality, segregation, and burgeoning social change that was the Civil Rights Movement of 1930s America. 

It took a bit of time for students to become engaged in this classic novel, which is narrated by six-year-old Scout Finch, who recounts her childhood in Maycomb, a fictional town in Alabama, based on the authors own hometown, Monroeville. The trial of Tom Robinson, which is loosely based on the infamous ‘Scottsboro Boys’ trial, is where the students' interest was really piqued. The challenging topics and themes of the novel are interspersed with many moments of hilarity as Scout and her brother Jem, get into all sorts of trouble and do, well the things that young children do. The beauty and power of this story is in the way Scout sees the world as a six to almost eight-year-old, and how she tries to understand and come to terms with the rampant racism and intolerance of many of the people within the closeknit community of Maycomb. As her father, Atticus, takes on the defence in the case of Tom Robinson, Scout and Jem come face-to-face with the extent of the intolerance and injustice of their small southern town and are forced to quickly grow up.  

Throughout this Main Lesson, students were tasked with a range of creative responses in order to demonstrate their understanding of the novel’s characters, settings, symbols and the plot. While the novel is not always easy to read as Lee’s narrative style can be quite complex at times and of course due to the subject matter, I think students did take some key messages away from the story. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is thematically an important text for the Class 9 child as they begin to grapple with the injustices and inconsistencies of our world.  

Ethna Brave

English & Humanities Teacher