Wilfred M. McClay’s Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story is the recommended student text for the eleventh-grade American history course. The text tells the story of America through a compelling narrative that appears and reads more like a novel than a textbook. McClay, himself, in his “Introduction” acknowledges the objective of his writing is “to offer to American readers, young and old alike, an accurate, responsible, coherent, persuasive, and inspiring narrative account of their own country – an account that will inform and deepen their sense of the land they inhibit and equip them for the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship.”
Land of Hope is unique in that it separates itself from conventional high school history textbooks by its exclusion of vocabulary or key words in the margins, beginning of the chapter questions, and reviews at the end of chapters. Nonetheless, despite having no window dressing, the text can be tricky for the teacher to find a place for within the class. Here are three succinct ideas for implementing Land of Hope within your American history class.
Reference Text
One way to implement the text is to use it as a reference text for your students. The American history class covers a lot of ground in a short amount of time. It is nothing short of a sprint from start to finish covering over six hundred years of the American story in thirty-six weeks. The class is built for the Grants of the world and not the George McClellans.
The pace for the teacher becomes the unruly taskmaster, as the teacher labors to paint a full picture of the story for students. At times, it can be an insurmountable amount of material to keep on pace with or even get ahead of. In a case like this, Land of Hope is the cool wind on a hot summer day. American history teachers could use Land of Hope as a text to refer students to when elements of the story are missed in class due to time.
Support Text
A supportive text is different from a reference text in that students are reading the text as a reinforcement of material already taught through lecture and are expected to be held accountable for the material by means of an assessment. In this sense, Land of Hope becomes one more opportunity for a student to make a connection with the story. It is important that if the text is being used in this capacity that students are held accountable for the reading. Teachers will find that the inviting narrative told in Land of Hope further strengthens student learning by telling the story in a different way than the lecture. This idea is most easily manifested in the teacher assigning specific pages to read for homework that correspond to the lecture.
Primary Text
Unlike a reference or supportive text, using Land of Hope as a primary text means prioritizing it as the main teller of the story. Instead of a lecture or PowerPoint slides, Land of Hope becomes the text that funnels the material to the students. In this way, it is read aloud daily by the students and teacher. Students are instructed how to take notes on the story and are coached on telling back the story in a way that solidifies it in their long-term memory. Positioning Land of Hope as the main conduit of the story for the students allows the teacher to not only build on a strong foundation but also relieves the teacher from the burden of picking and choosing pieces of the story in so little of time.
It is the twofold job of the teacher to recognize a text that possesses living ideas told in a beautiful prose and to cultivate a relationship between their students and this text. Land of Hope is a text full of living ideas that are ready for the mind to feast upon. Because of this, the teacher must labor diligently to cultivate this relationship in a way that inspires and encourages love for the story.
The Classical Classroom 