Exploring Invisible Son to Help Students Build Empathy, Understanding,
and Enact Change by Cindi Koudelka
| Dr. Cindi Koudelka (@cmkoudelka) is a Curriculum Specialist with National Board Certification in Adolescent Young Adulthood/English Language Arts at Fieldcrest School District in Illinois and an Adjunct faculty member at Aurora University. She holds multiple certifications from PreK - 12 and is an active member of several literacy and research organizations. Her research interests reflect her passion for youth advocacy by focusing on critical adolescent literacies, young adult literature, positioning, and youth participatory action research. |  |
Exploring Invisible Son to Help Students Build Empathy, Understanding,
and Enact Change
Invisible Son by Kim Johnson tells the story of Andre, a 17-year-old navigating life after being wrongfully incarcerated. Returning home during the COVID-19 pandemic, he discovers his best friend is missing and sets out to uncover the truth. As Andre investigates the disappearance, he comes face to face with some hard truths. He confronts systemic racism, personal challenges, and shifting community dynamics in this powerful tale of resilience, identity, and justice.
| As the largest enculturating institution in the country, schools have the opportunity not only to teach adolescents how to read but also how to use that reading to navigate humanity and the social contexts beyond the school walls. Kim Johnson’s Invisible Son is a perfect book to engage in that stewardship. Exploring her multi-layered novel allows adolescents and teachers to collaboratively interrogate the text, which both mirrors their existing experiences and understandings of the world and provides a window to the realities of others. Such windows and mirrors (Sims-Bishop, 1990) available through the text may reflect how people are inequitably positioned and provide a lens to become more fully engaged in civic action. It opens possibilities for students to develop a new narrative, allowing them to examine their position in the world at large and discover ways to resist oppressive positioning, actions, and injustices. |  |
The most effective way to help students build empathy and understanding is through relevant and authentic activities and discussion techniques in which they analyze characters, plot, setting, and the author’s craft while building connections to the real world and how they can emulate Andre’s activism and courage.
Potential Activities:
- Character Empathy Maps - maps to help students reflect on how each character may be thinking or feeling. They can extend the maps to understand their intent and the impact each character has on other characters and the events in the book.
- Identity Quotes - Select specific quotes from the text that are Andre’s words, words that others speak about Andre or his actions that demonstrate who Andre is as a human and how his humanity shapes or is shaped by the actions around him.
- Found Poetry - take specific words from a page (either through blackout or by pulling out) to create a poem that describes the themes and or character’s feelings in the book.
- Literature Circles focused on Understanding Systemic Injustice - Jigsaw examples of injustices and talk about who was oppressed, who was the oppressor, and how the particular injustices relate to broader societal issues.
- Creative Writing - Letters to Andre or letters to those in power addressing issues that need to be changed (either from the book’s plot or in real life) Or create a fan fiction piece changing characters’ actions or outcomes (a What If…)
- Art Project - explore protest art and/or music; create examples of a protest art or song or as a group project; create a mural or collage that represents the types of systemic injustices depicted in the book.
- Comparative Analysis - Real-Life Connections: Research real wrongful incarceration cases or missing persons. Compare and contrast Andre’s experiences with real-life stories, focusing on empathy and advocacy.
- Nonfiction Pairing - Read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (either the whole book or excerpts) and visit his website to understand the work his organization, the Equal Justice Initiative, does to combat wrongful or excessive incarcerations. https://eji.org/
- Debating Change: Societal Responsibility - Hold a debate on topics (with evidence from text) like:
- “Who is most responsible for addressing systemic injustice: Individuals or institutions?”
- “How can youth like Andre lead change in their communities?”
- “Who is most responsible for addressing systemic injustice: Individuals or institutions?”
- Community Action Plan - Have students research issues in their communities (e.g., systemic inequality, housing instability). Ask them to create an action plan inspired by Andre’s resilience and determination to address one issue. Plans can include awareness campaigns, fundraising ideas, or community service projects.
RSS Feed