Curated teaching resource
Mantle of the Expert: students as Harlem community journalists investigating the purse-snatch
By Dorothy Heathcote / Gavin Bolton (1995, Drama for Learning, Heinemann)
- Collection
- Instructional Guides
- Subject
- English Language Arts
- Grades
- Grades 7-10
- Format
- lesson-page
- Curriculum
- Cross-curricular
- Publisher or host
- mantleoftheexpert.com
Why this resource is included
Heathcote’s approach: students are cast as a team of experts with a commission from a fictional client. For Thank You M’am: students are journalists for the Amsterdam News (Harlem’s Black newspaper, operating in 1958) assigned to investigate a series of purse-snatchings in the neighborhood. Their investigation leads them toward the Roger/Mrs. Jones encounter. They must decide what to report, what to protect, and how to write about poverty and crime in their own community. In bookwormburrows: this IS the campaign’s real-world Harlem layer. Bookworms exploring the neighborhood as characters with a professional purpose. Academic source: Heathcote & Bolton 1995; O’Neill 1995 Drama Worlds (Heinemann); Selderslaghs PhD in progress at Royal Conservatoire Antwerp.