The Gradual Release of the Canonical Grasp: An Exercise in Excavation

Disrupting the canon of Eurocentric literature often used as a whole-class novel study in the secondary English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum is needed in order to push back against white hegemony in and out of ELA spaces. This disruption needs to occur at the teacher preparation level through discussion, examination, and curriculum development, including contested and nostalgia-laden texts such as Harper Lee's (1960) "To Kill a Mockingbird" (TKAM). In this paper, we draw on Sealey-Ruiz's (2019) concept of the archaeology of the self, Vygotskian perspectives on literacy instruction (Lee & Smagorinsky, 2000), and the gradual release of responsibility in teaching and learning to interrogate the metaphor of the "grasp" that the canon has on the ELA community. We examine the epistemological shifts and evolutions between a preservice ELA teacher and an ELA teacher educator in a two-year study that focused on developing Culturally Sustaining Literacy Pedagogy (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2017) aiming to disrupt the teaching of TKAM. We found that releasing ourselves from the canonical grasp of TKAM, placing it not as a centered novel, but as a literary artifact, was imperative in disrupting our own whiteness and developing culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining critical literacy instruction surrounding themes of present-day racism and (in)justice.