Incredibly Human Henson Blayze

by Derrick Barnes

In Derrick Barnes’s Incredibly Human Henson Blayze, a gifted thirteen-year-old Black football player becomes the center of enormous expectations in the predominantly white town of Great Mountain, Mississippi. When racist violence exposes the difference between being celebrated as an athlete and being valued as a person, Henson must confront what he owes his community—and what it owes him.

Big Idea

Being admired for what you can do is not the same as being respected for who you are. Henson’s story invites students to examine racism, belonging, personal agency, and the pressure placed on young people to meet other people’s expectations.

Discussion Questions

1.What do people in Great Mountain think Henson represents? Where do their expectations leave room—or fail to leave room—for his own wishes?
2.How does the novel distinguish between celebrating a Black athlete and respecting a Black person? Which moments most clearly reveal that distinction?
3.When does attention feel like support, and when does it become pressure? How do Henson’s experiences complicate that difference?
4.How does Barnes move between football-centered excitement and moments that ask readers to confront injustice? What does that movement make readers notice or feel?
5.What would genuine support for Henson look like from teammates, adults, and the wider community? Support your response with evidence and consider possible disagreements.

Lesson Plan

⏱ 55 minutes📦 Copies of the novel, teacher-selected excerpts, paper, pencils, highlighters or colored pencils, and an optional document camera. Provide a teacher-created neutral scene for students who prefer not to write from Henson’s perspective.

Learning Goals

Analyze how Henson’s responses to community expectations develop themes of identity, racism, and agency.
Use textual evidence to distinguish a character’s personal goals from the roles other people assign him.
Explain how scene length, dialogue, sentence structure, and reflection influence narrative pacing.
Revise an original narrative passage to change its pace while maintaining a consistent point of view.

Activity Steps

1.Establish discussion agreements: discuss racist behavior directly, avoid repeating slurs, and do not ask students to represent an identity group or disclose personal experiences. Introduce the question, 'Who gets to decide what Henson is worth?'
2.Read a teacher-selected passage involving football expectations and another showing Henson’s response to the community’s treatment of Black people. Students identify what others want, what Henson communicates, and what the narration allows readers to understand.
3.Model a brief pace map: mark action, dialogue, description, and reflection in one passage. Discuss where reading feels faster or slower and which textual choices create that effect.
4.Have students sketch two panels for an imagined interaction consistent with the novel: an adult or peer places a football-related expectation on Henson, and Henson responds. Label the work 'imagined scene,' and list two relevant details from the book.
5.Students write a fast version of approximately 70 words and a slower version of approximately 120 words. The slower version should expand one consequential moment through observation, hesitation, reflection, or a meaningful pause—not merely add adjectives.
6.Partners read both versions aloud and identify where the pace changes. Students revise one passage and submit an exit ticket explaining how their pacing helps readers see Henson as a person rather than only an athlete.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS.RL.5.3 / RL.6.3 / RL.7.3 / RL.8.3 — Analyze characters, events, and interactions among story elements at the appropriate grade level.
ELA: CCSS.RL.5.5 / RL.6.5 / RL.7.5 — Examine how chapters, scenes, and structural choices contribute to meaning; use the grade-appropriate formulation.
ELA: CCSS.W.5.3–W.8.3 — Develop narratives using effective technique, relevant details, and well-structured event sequences.
ELA: CCSS.SL.5.1–SL.8.1 — Participate effectively in evidence-based collaborative discussions.
SEL: Social awareness and responsible decision-making — Examine dignity, bias, community responsibility, and the consequences of choices.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Henson’s story makes narrative pacing an ethical as well as a technical question: how much space does a story give a young person’s achievements, and how much space does it give his humanity? Great Mountain’s investment in Henson’s football ability creates a useful starting point for studying expectation, attention, and pressure. As students read, ask them to notice when they are drawn toward what Henson might do on the field and when the novel redirects their attention toward what he experiences as a Black child in this community. In a Pace-Write-Read study, students first notice a craft choice, then try a related choice in their own writing, and finally read their work aloud to evaluate its effect. Compare selected football-centered passages with passages involving community pressure, reflection, or injustice; do not assume that every action scene is fast or every reflective scene is slow. The guidance below offers text-dependent investigations rather than claims that every listed device appears in the novel. Verify wording, typography, narrative perspective, and specific devices in your classroom edition, and invite students to distinguish what Barnes actually does from techniques they might experiment with themselves.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Compare a passage focused on Henson’s athletic promise with one focused on his response to community pressure. Mark how much space Barnes gives action, conversation, and reflection, then explain the resulting reading speed.
Plot	Map how expectations surrounding Henson’s football ability become entangled with the novel’s conflict over racism and dignity. Distinguish events that merely happen next from events that change his available choices.
Prosody	Read a selected exchange aloud twice, changing stress and pauses while keeping the words intact. Discuss how delivery can make an expectation directed at Henson sound encouraging, possessive, or threatening.
Word	Collect words used to describe Henson’s athletic ability and words that reveal his personhood. Ask how particular nouns and verbs encourage readers to see him as a spectacle, a community asset, or a child.
Concept	Use 'celebrated is not necessarily respected' as a provisional concept, then test it against scenes from Great Mountain. Have students refine the statement when the evidence reveals greater complexity.
Voice & Worldview	Distinguish the narrative voice from the attitudes expressed by people who place expectations on Henson. Ask which beliefs about success, race, and community the novel exposes or challenges.
Point of View	Identify the actual narrative perspective in a selected passage and mark whose thoughts readers can access. Discuss what that access reveals about Henson that an observer watching only his football performance might miss.
Setting & Place	Examine how Great Mountain, Mississippi, functions as a social environment rather than merely a location. Track where Henson is welcomed, watched, pressured, or allowed to speak for himself.
Original Characters	Build Henson’s character profile from choices, relationships, desires, and contradictions—not just physical or athletic gifts. Ask which details prevent him from becoming only a familiar sports-hero figure.
Dialogue	Select an exchange in which someone wants something from Henson. Annotate requests, assumptions, interruptions, and responses to show how dialogue distributes power and controls pace.
Details	Find a small detail that changes how readers understand the community’s interest in Henson. Explain why that particular detail matters more than a general statement that the town loves football.
Descriptions	Compare descriptions emphasizing Henson’s athletic presence with descriptions that reveal vulnerability or individuality. Discuss how descriptive emphasis shapes what readers value.
Firsts	Track the first introduction of Henson, Great Mountain’s expectations, and evidence that admiration has limits. Ask how each introduction prepares readers to reinterpret earlier impressions.
Immediacy & Engagement	Locate a passage that makes Henson’s situation feel urgent. Identify whether that urgency comes from close observation, active verbs, dialogue, restricted information, or the consequences of a decision.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Mark a passage presented moment by moment and another that compresses time. Ask why Barnes gives some experiences involving Henson extended attention while moving more quickly across others.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Separate uncertainty about athletic success from uncertainty about Henson’s safety, dignity, or choices. Discuss how the second kind of uncertainty changes the stakes of the first.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check selected chapters for shifts into earlier events, anticipation of later events, or unresolved endings; label only devices actually present. If one is absent, students can test it in an original scene and discuss whether it clarifies or sensationalizes Henson’s situation.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Read several chapter endings alongside the following openings. Identify which breaks leave a question about Henson unresolved and which provide time to absorb a difficult development.
Pace & Creativity	Rewrite a neutral summary of an expectation placed on Henson as a brief scene. Experiment with where to expand time, keeping the conflict and characterization consistent with evidence from the novel.
Play	Use movable sentence strips to rearrange an original football-related scene and test different tempos. Keep the play focused on craft rather than turning racist harm into a game.
Performance	Discuss the difference between Henson performing athletically and being expected to perform an acceptable public identity. For oral reading, examine how emphasis reveals that pressure without dramatizing racist abuse.
Personality	Find moments when Henson’s individual preferences or reactions complicate what others expect of a football star. Ask how these moments affect readers’ connection to him and interrupt the town’s simplified image.
Humor	If students identify humor, examine its target and its placement relative to pressure or conflict. If a selected passage has none, discuss why adding a joke could undermine its emotional purpose.
Pause	Locate a hesitation, reflective passage, or break in conversation around a consequential moment for Henson. Ask what readers understand during that pause that rapid action alone could not convey.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Look for figurative language or sound patterns in passages about Henson and football, without assuming any particular device is present. Explain how an identified image either enlarges the athletic spectacle or brings readers closer to his experience.
Repetition	Track repeated expectations, labels, or ideas associated with Henson. Distinguish exact verbal repetition from a recurring social pattern, and explain how recurrence can build pressure.
Rhythm	Read a paragraph aloud and mark shifts in sentence length and syntax. Discuss how those shifts support movement, insistence, uncertainty, or reflection in Henson’s story.
Punctuation	Inspect the punctuation Barnes actually uses in a tense exchange. Test how changing a stop or break would alter the voice and timing, while preserving the original for comparison.
Questions	Collect questions characters ask Henson and questions the narrative raises for readers. Consider whose questions concern his performance and whose make room for his wishes or well-being.
Compare-Contrast	Compare public enthusiasm for Henson’s football potential with the community’s responses to racism. Ground the comparison in particular actions rather than treating every community member as identical.
Objects	Choose an object actually present in a relevant scene, such as a piece of athletic equipment if the text includes it. Track whether its meaning shifts from opportunity or belonging toward obligation or pressure.
Threes	Check a passage for a genuine three-part pattern in wording, actions, or expectations. If none appears, have students draft a three-part sequence about pressures on Henson and evaluate whether the pattern builds momentum.
Lists	Create an evidence-based list of what others expect from Henson and a separate list of what he expresses or chooses. Study whether accumulating items makes the imbalance more visible, then look for comparable accumulation in the prose.
White Space & Negative Space	Inspect paragraphing and any section breaks in your edition for pauses around significant moments. Distinguish visible page space from interpretive silence, such as a concern that another character leaves unaddressed.
Art & Graphics	Analyze the cover and any interior graphics actually present for how they frame Henson’s athletic identity and humanity. Treat these as visual or publishing choices, not automatically as evidence about the narrator’s language.
Interactives & Gamification	Create a craft-choice station where students match excerpts to pacing effects and justify their matches. Do not score Henson’s responses to racism or turn the novel’s harm into a competition.
Placement	Examine where a revealing detail or response appears within a paragraph, scene, or chapter. Ask how moving it earlier would change readers’ understanding of the expectations surrounding Henson.
Form	Study the novel’s actual chapter organization and balance of scene, dialogue, and narration. Discuss how sustained prose fiction can reveal a gap between Henson’s public image and his fuller experience.
Dummy	Adapt a book dummy into a six-box storyboard of a selected Henson scene, marking where action accelerates and reflection expands. Label it as a student model of pacing, not the novel’s original production plan.
Passion	Identify passages that suggest what matters to Henson beyond satisfying an audience. Students then choose a value they want their own writing to protect and revise the pace so readers have time to notice it.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: 'The Moment Before the Answer.' Minutes 0–4: Read a short, teacher-selected exchange in which someone places an expectation on Henson connected to football. Identify the request, its stakes, and the narrative perspective; distinguish what the text states from what students infer. Minutes 4–7: Students write a 40–60-word summary of that exchange in their own words, preserving its outcome and avoiding invented quotations. Minutes 7–13: Students create a clearly labeled imagined alternative version of 90–120 words that expands the moment before Henson answers. Keep the established point of view consistent, using observable details if his thoughts are not available, and include one meaningful pause and one precise detail grounded in the passage. Minutes 13–17: Partners read both versions aloud, marking where the reading slows and explaining whether the added space recognizes Henson’s agency rather than merely emphasizing his athletic value. Minutes 17–20: Students revise one sentence and complete this reflection: 'I slowed the moment at ___ so readers would notice ___. The evidence that guided my choice was ___.' Offer a neutral observer-perspective version as an alternative; students should not be required to simulate experiencing racist harm.

Classroom Activities

More Than the Scoreboard

Students create a two-panel scene map and write two versions of an original, clearly labeled imagined moment connected to Henson’s situation: a community member approaches him with an expectation about football. One version moves quickly through the public interaction; the other slows down to make space for Henson’s humanity, choices, and emotional stakes. Students use evidence from the novel to explain their craft decisions without presenting their invented scene as Barnes’s writing.

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