Who are you?
Following that theme in her English 9 honors classes at Seymour High School, Laura Cottrill has aimed to help her freshmen figure that out as they have been shaped and influenced by various assignments.
Her four classes read the books “Romeo and Juliet” and “West Side Story” and studied famous trials, including Shanda Sharer, Casey Anthony, O.J. Simpson and Trayvon Martin.
Most recently, they read the first 16 chapters of the book “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and then Wednesday, they traveled to the Jackson Superior Court I courtroom in Brownstown to re-create the trial of Tom Robinson that takes place in the remaining chapters.
Harper Lee’s novel of a childhood in the sleepy southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s and the crisis of conscience and race that rocked it became a bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961.
The book takes readers to the roots of human behavior, to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos.
While the trial is fictional, Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story.
“America voted this its best loved novel. I feel it’s one that we have to keep teaching,” Cottrill said.
Why?
“I think it speaks to the truth of who we are as a society and the evils in our society that we often overlook and just how to treat people the right way,” she said. “The biggest lesson in this novel is standing in other people’s shoes and seeing someone from another perspective, changing the lens, and then you have more empathy. If the world had more empathy, what a better world we would live in.”
Cottrill said she started teaching the honors class in 2014. The year before, she partnered with then-county prosecutor AmyMarie Travis to bring sophomores to the courthouse for a re-creation of “12 Angry Men” and learning about jury duty.
“That sparked an idea: Why not bring Tom Robinson’s trial to life?” Cottrill said.
Several times since then, the trial has been re-enacted in a courtroom or Cottrill’s classroom.
She said it’s great for the students to go from reading the book to bringing it to life.
“You can read it on the page, but when you hear those jurors after you’ve listened to testimony say, ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty,’ Parker Thompson, who played Jem, said it was so obvious there was no evidence,” Cottrill said. “In 2022, I don’t know that we get the way society may have been (in the 1930s).”
Robinson knows he has nowhere to turn and no voice, she said.
“How lucky are we that we have trial by jury as a right?” she said. “You have your peers who get to hear only what’s brought in court.”
Whether it sparks the students’ interest in studying law or gives them an appreciation for being called to jury duty, Cottrill said the re-enactment has always been beneficial.
She said Travis, now the Jackson Superior Court I judge, is amazing at educating the students on the jury system.
Travis said the students reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” and re-enacting the trial is relatable because she wrote her law school thesis on race equity and the law.
She encouraged them to sit down with people who are different than them or grew up in a different way, ask about their life experience, listen to what they say and have an open mind.
“Respect someone if they say, ‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ but if you can have a respectful conversation with each other so that you can learn more about each other and more about how much, despite our differences, we are more the same than we think we are, I would just encourage you to have those hard conversations,” Travis said. “Don’t shy away from it. Be bold. Be brave. Be courageous. Do the right thing.”
Freshman Katie Cottrill said she was familiar with the book because her mom has been teaching it for a while, and she has seen the movie.
On Wednesday, she played the role of Mayella Violet Ewell, who falsely claims she was raped by Robinson when instead she had likely been abused by her father, Bob.
“Just seeing it come to life, that was the best part, and seeing it in the eyes of not myself but Mayella Ewell and seeing that she is not as bad as they say she is or as mean or as distraught,” she said. “She is just abused by her father, and she can’t really think for herself. Her father does it all for her.”
Harrison Wetzel had only seen the movie, so he thought it was a unique opportunity to read the book and then act part of it out.
“When you play it out, it’s forced perspective. Everyone sees it the same way,” he said. “While there should be variations in books, I like that everybody saw how it played out. It couldn’t really be opinion-based considering everyone saw the same thing.”
He was one of four freshmen who played the role of Atticus Finch, a lawyer appointed to represent Robinson.
He said the book’s message is “Everyone’s human.”
“It’s fiction, but seeing how time has changed, it’s just important to look back in history so you don’t repeat it in any way,” Wetzel said. “As we become adults, it obviously teaches you character in a sense.”
Others who portrayed Finch were Xavier DuBois, Alana Jacobi and Myles Chandler.
DuBois said he tried reading the book in elementary school, but it wasn’t an easy read, so he stopped. He didn’t read it again until recently.
He liked being able to read the first part of the book and act out the rest.
“It definitely offers new perspective because it’s one thing to read it, and then it’s one thing to live it and see just how it was and how wrong it was,” he said of the story. “I had the idea of being an outsider looking in or being Tom Robinson, but I hadn’t really ever thought of Atticus’ side, and he has to defend this man, which is very looked down upon in this community and he’s a respected man, so it would be difficult, I could see.”
For DuBois and Cottrill, the class assignment has sparked interest in studying law after high school.
Cottrill said watching the “Just Mercy” movie after Wednesday’s re-enactment opened her eyes to the view of justice, too.
“Ever since I’ve watched this movie, I’ve been interested in law, and so just hearing about it, seeing it all happen is very interesting, and it has just made me to want to get justice, like make justice happen really,” she said. “It’s definitely an option.”
DuBois said studying law has been on his mind over the years.
“It would be nice to be able to help people that don’t have a voice and keep the right people out of jail,” he said.
The English 9 honors students will continue the law theme when they starting reading “12 Angry Men” in Cottrill’s class next.