Studying Steinbeck, New Jersey Students Find Common Ground - NYTimes.com: ...In a state stratified to a large extent by race and wealth, the mostly white students in tony Westfield say that they live in a privileged “bubble,” while the Cedarbrook students in Plainfield are nearly all black and Hispanic, and two-thirds of them are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced lunches. On Tuesday, the day after Martin Luther King’s Birthday, 130 of the eighth graders who have been reading Steinbeck side by side, trading questions via Wikispaces, Skype and visits to each others’ schools, will gather for the final chapter in a project that sought to teach them as much about themselves as about Lennie and George.
“If you become experts in Steinbeck, beautiful, but that’s not my goal,” Matthew Kalafat, a Westfield teacher, told his class of 13 students — 11 white, 2 Asian — holding well-thumbed hardcover books in first period the other day. “This is just a tool to get us to understand our world.”
