Shouldn’t we all aim to be a bit more like Dolly Parton? Talented, funny, smart, kind, and generous, Dolly Parton was a unifier during divisive times. The news of her death this week put me on my less-than-five-inch-high-heels and left me thinking about love, legacy, and (of course) lesson plans.
If I wanted to add Dolly Parton to high school English classes, I might…
• use Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors” as a supplement to any novel that deals with class, poverty, and cruelty, including To Kill a Mockingbird, Angela’s Ashes, and The House on Mango Street.
• read the lyrics of “Jolene” as a dramatic monologue and analyze how symbols (“eyes of emerald green” = jealousy/green-eyed monster) and similes (“Your smile is like a breath of spring / Your skin is soft like summer rain”) are used to emphasize the speaker’s point. Ambitious students could write Jolene’s response.
• present one of Parton’s songs as an example of the power of oral storytelling. You’ve heard the devastating teen pregnancy drama in “Down From Dover,” right?
• present one of her interviews as an example of how dialect can be a tool of characterization. This famous 10-min. segment with Barbara Walters would work.
• look to Parton’s rags-to-rhinestones life as an example of the American Dream when discussing the concept during The Great Gatsby.
• use Parton’s “9 to 5” labor anthem as a supplement when studying Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed or Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.
• create a compare/contrast lesson pairing Parton’s “Daddy’s Working Boots” with Robert Hayden’s poem, “Those Winter Sundays.”
• bring a non-fiction listening unit to students based on Dolly Parton’s America, a nine-episode podcast from 2019. My friend Ashley Bible built a unit on the podcast, which you can read more about here. Warning: The episodes include mature topics and content that blocked them from use in my classroom, so you’ll want to listen to everything ahead of time and use your judgment to determine if this content is a match for your students/school community.
• add on to any of these ideas with a Dolly Parton biography research activity, a free download here in my TpT shop.
How else might we fold the Iron Butterfly’s works into future lesson plans? Leave a reply below to share your ideas!
Dolly Parton portrait credit: RCA Records (1977), WikiMedia Commons, public domain
I rarely leave comments online, but I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… Laura Randazzo, YOU are a rock star. These are amazing ideas that have me scribbling all over my lesson plan book, trying to squeeze a few of them in! Thank you for being a mentor to English teachers young and old! I’m sure Dolly would be proud! 😌🩷
Aww…thanks, Lori. I was driving home last night and just knew I needed to do something. Dolly would want us to use our talents to make things that help other folks, so that’s what I’m doing. I can’t write songs, but I can write curriculum. ❤️ Hope something here finds a spot in your classroom.