Teaching Transcendentalism in North Carolina

Welcome, everyone, to a Unit Plan for teaching Transcendentalism to students in North Carolina Public High Schools. The Unit is aligned with Common Core State and NC Essential Standards to provide as well-rounded view of a movement which changed the course of American intellectualism.

Using this plan, you can introduce your students to the concept of the individual and the self, and explore the lighter side by reading from Emerson and Thoreau, or the darker side with Edgar Allan Poe. Additionally, the lessons give the students interactive opportunities, where they can get in touch with their own inner-selves and potentially breach a world of thought that they have never seen before.

Feel free to model this Unit Plan and adjust it in ways that you see fit, and I hope that it enlightens many of your future students!






Supplementary items for this unit include:

• Copies of Ralph Waldo Emerson's speech "The Transcendentalist" and his essay Nature.
• Copies of (or selected passages from) Henry David Thoreau's Walden.
• Copies of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, a part of any collection of Poe's works.