Split by Race and Wealth, but Discovering Similarities as They Study Steinbeck

The next day at the same time, five miles away at the Cedarbrook K-8 Center in Plainfield, another eighth-grade class opened to the same chapter of the same book but paid scant attention to Curley’s wife, spending most of an hour on the sole black character, Crooks.

Similar discussions of the classic 75-year-old novel, about two migrant workers desperately seeking their own land, unfold in thousands of classrooms around the country. But these two sets of students are engaged in an unusual literary experiment, studying the book in a collaboration intended to provide lessons between the lines of Steinbeck’s prose.

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.”

In a previous lesson, the students had discussed Crooks, the first black character in their readings this year, and many were less sympathetic to Curley’s wife after she had threatened to lynch Crooks. Now, perched on a stool, Mr. Kalafat asked: Was Curley’s wife being unfairly judged by the migrant workers? By the students?

“That never happens in middle school, right?” said Mr. Kalafat, who has also taught in Plainfield and neighboring Scotch Plains. “Kids in Plainfield, Scotch Plains and Westfield are all guilty of being the men on the ranch. You get the metaphor?”

Westfield and Plainfield are linked by a railroad line, but little else connects their residents. Westfield teenagers say they have passed through Plainfield — and found it run-down and unappealing — on the way to the Dairy Queen or McDonald’s. Plainfield students say they cannot afford to go to the restaurants and boutiques in Westfield’s downtown.

During a Nov. 21 session that kicked off the project, Plainfield students were asked to describe Westfield. They came up with “snotty,” “rich,” “clean” and “fantasy.”

Westfield students countered with their own stereotypes about Plainfield: “fried chicken,” “hair salons,” “ghetto,” “gangs.”

Asaiah Edwards, a Plainfield student who had never stepped foot in Westfield, said he was struck by the differences between the schools: Roosevelt’s building was three floors to Cedarbrook’s one and offered more choices in the cafeteria. “I didn’t see any African-Americans there,” he added. “I actually haven’t been to a school like that before.”

But over Steinbeck and sandwiches at that first meeting, the students began to find connections. They love the same music (hip-hop), though not necessarily the same clothes (Banana Republic in Westfield, Aéropostale in Plainfield). They strive to have friends and go to good colleges.

“When I went to their school, I thought it was going to be really boring,” said Kennedy Adams, 14, of Plainfield. “But then they started to actually talk to me, and I understood they were going through the same things I’m going through.”