Addressing of Essential Questions

Essential questions are issues in the content that compel the student to consider, to reflect, and to articulate responses. They require the student to analyze the content and make connections within a universal and personal scope. The following are suggested essential questions the students should be able to consider after reading Moving to Higher Ground. The classroom teacher may wish to add or eliminate questions based on student needs and interests or time allotment. Below are a few examples.

Writing and Language: What impact does a writer’s style have on the reader’s understanding of a text? How does the “language” of individual art forms (music, painting, literature, etc.) convey universal truths? How does the rhetorical skill of “listening” affect personal and social relationships?

Music and the Arts: What role does art play in world cultures? In your country’s culture? In your personal culture? How is jazz a metaphor for democracy?

Social and Philosophical: What is the value of trans-generation respect and understanding? How and why does today’s music differ from that of your parents and grandparents? Do you believe that mankind is both “grand” and “absurd”?

Moving To Higher Ground

“Wynton Marsalis is absolutely the one to write this book. Here he is as young as morning, as fresh as dew, and already called one of the jazz greats. He is not only a seer and an exemplary musician, but a poet as well. He informs us that jazz was created, among other things, to expose the hypocrisy and absurdity of racism and other ignorances in our country. Poetry was given to human beings for the same reason – [This book] is an absolute joy to read.”
– Maya Angelou

Contents (174 pages)

Introduction: Now, that's jazz
Chapter 1: Discovering the joy of swinging
Chapter 2: Speaking the language of jazz
Chapter 3: Everybody's music: the blues
Chapter 4: What it takes – and how it feels – to play
Chapter 5: The great coming together
Chapter 6: Lessons from the masters
Chapter 7: That thing with no name
Afterword: Conversation between Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Wynton Marsalis

ISBN: 978-0-8129-6908-5

Arts, Rhetoric, and Swing

“This beautifully written teachers' guide provides ready-to-use discussion points and essay questions along with clearly identified standards and terms. It makes me wish I were a student once again, learning the incredible connections between the arts, coming alive for the first time to the pulse of life in jazz and the written word.”
–Nancy Nestor-Baker PhD
The Ohio State University College of Education and Human Ecology

Contents of Teacher's Edition (80 pages)

Language Arts Standards Alignment
Essential Questions
Unit and Lesson Plans
Bloom's Taxonomy Objectives
Biographical Information
Synopsis of Text
Chapter by Chapter Summary and Analysis
Persuasion and Rhetoric
Aristotelian Triad
Aristotle's Three Appeals
Studying Moving to Higher Ground through Philosophy of Art
Assessments
Video and Audio Supplements
Glossary of Literary and Rhetorical Terms

ISBN (Student Edition):
978-0-9887358-1-1
ISBN (Teacher Edition):
978-0-9887358-0-4

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