As course selection for next year is right around the corner, students need to be thinking about what kind of classes they want to take. Ms. Chenayi Shava, English teacher at RAHS has provided a new course that students will be able to take.
Black Literature is a class for 11th and 12th graders and starts running in September of 2025.
Shava expressed that this class is for all students seeking to find Black voices in the world of literature. She said, “This is a course that is strictly based on Black authors and stories that center Black folks. The protagonists you’re going to read about… everything will be from a Black author standpoint.”
It is a course that will help you develop crucial skills that go beyond a basic understanding of literature. Shava said, “Reading and writing…but also critically analyzing text, inferencing, reading between the lines…because Black folk have often had to hide information in between things in order to communicate in a way that is non-threatening to other people, so learning to decipher things that may not be as obvious as other texts.”
In a study done on Children’s Literature by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, they found 20% of Black representation in books in 2021. Shava shares what she hopes students will take away from this course. She said, “I want students to walk away feeling empowered by seeing themselves in the text that they read…in the information that is being shared in class…to actually see a Black girl or see a Black boy in a book because a lot of kids have not had that in all their learning years. That has an empowering ability and it’s going to give them a voice…it will impact their future learning. A lot of kids are not aware that Black writers are very prolific and have written all kinds of texts, plays, poetry, novels…all kinds of genres, this is going to expose them to that.”
Shava expresses that this is a class that will be different from other English classes here at RAHS. She said, “…traditionally books have been written by white male authors and that’s the majority of the texts in the building. Other teachers have done a pretty good job of bringing other voices, but this is a very specific course that highlights Black literature.”
Cassie Brown, a social studies teacher at RAHS agrees with Shava, on why Black literature is important. She said, “…especially growing up and reading all of the books I read in High school, never did I get to read from an artist that looked like me. Especially reading To Kill A Mockingbird, when that really had to do with problems within the Black community coming from a white perspective just felt very uneasy to me, so having this class allows not only kids of color but everyone to see and hear from Black artists and hear their side…”.
