Curriculum Toolkit

Hannah McGovern Individual & Cultural Diversity Spring 2017

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These posters, like the ones advocating for precision of language over hurtful pejoratives, I had seen circulating prior to beginning this assignment (somewhere on Tumblr). Similarly to the discussion I would facilitate with the previous posters, when introducing these to the classroom, I would make connections to my discipline. While the posters advocate recognition of the harmfulness of reducing an individual’s identify or a facet of it to a costume on Halloween, I could incorporate this discussion into a writing or reading lesson through examination of characters, their identities, and their given vitality / agency or lackthereof. In a writer’s workshop, these visuals could serve as a reminder to create whole characters rather than relying on arche- or stereotypes. Specifically, I would combat this tendency with some sort of character map that includes both visual and emotional (interiority) aspects. Fixation on appearance can be harmful as a Halloween costume, and in writing does not adequately convey the full humanity of an embodied person.

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I’ve seen these posters online before and added them to this Toolkit because of the relevance to my future English classroom. In their writing, I will expect that students can work so that the language they use encapsulates what they wish to express, and these posters are an extension of that disciplinary goal, as well as a reminder of the harm committed when using identities or former pejorative classifications in everyday language. In addition to having these in the classroom, I would facilitate a discussion about how language mirrors a power structure with which students should be familiar: words like ‘gay’ and ‘retarded’ and dismissive phrases such as ‘that’s so ghetto’ explicitly equate the negative to the non dominant, further singling it out as non-normative. 

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Harper-Collins Activity Guide

This resource was found after this book, One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia was cited listed on the Zinn Project website. The novel’s protagonist is the oldest sister of three girls, and documents their summer living with their mother in Oakland with their mother, sent there by their grandmother, who is the girls’ primary caretaker in Brooklyn. During this time, the girls attend the Black Panther-run summer program, benefit from their free breakfast program, and learn about their ideology. The activities listed in this guide, produced by the publisher and found after learning the title of the novel, are twofold: a discussion component and written activities.

To use this resource, I would modify the discussion questions, which are geared towards middle school, to expand beyond literary elements such as tracking symbols throughout the text and interpreting metaphors to discussing the different characters’ experiences with the programs the Panthers are running: how does their position and that level of power affect their perception of the Panthers and the goals? Are children capable of understanding political nuances, and what political influences are children exposed to in general?

A modification of the journalism assignment could be writing an op-ed about the benefit of the Panthers’ programs to a local newspaper, or a more in-depth reporting style article detailing the programs the political group ran and the benefit to the communities they served. In addition to teaching a historical lesson about community-focused political groups promoting black power, by examining the positionality of characters and groups in the novel in terms of how they were perceived due to race, class, and gender, students will be lead to understand the marginalization of radical racially-focused political groups.

See also: https://www.teachingbooks.net/tb.cgi?a=1&tid=17070 for more resources related to this text.

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This lesson plan, posted on Teaching Tolerance (SPLC) comprehensively lists resources and standards that are met by teaching this lesson as listed. Throughout the activity-based lesson, students will utilize resources such as government data and dictionary definitions to define poverty and will investigate its causes, to the effect of disproving a individual failure mentality as responsible for poverty. Activities include (post-research) brainstorming solutions to poverty — to which I would supplement with “Why We Should Give Everyone A Basic Income” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIL_Y9g7Tg0), selections from the Occupy Wall Street Handbook, and information about the fight for 15 going on around the country. Another listed activity involved creating a basic needs list for a family, finding out the cost of these items and services, and calculating monthly cost projections. I completed this activity in a Race, Class, and Gender Class in high school, and within the upper-middle class bubble in which my classmates and I lived, it was mind-blowing.  If executing this activity in a less financially stable area in which my students have experiences with poverty, I would not assign this latter activity and instead focus more completely on an understanding of structural issues.

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This activity entails student-created assertions that will be placed in a jar in the classroom at the beginning of the year. Throughout the year, students will draw from these assertions and will complete various writing assignments refuting or reinforcing the statement. I appreciate the use of student-create prompts here, and anticipate creating “themes” whenever the jar needs to be restocked with prompts, including those that allude to gender, sexuality, class, ability. Rather than accepting prompt statements such as “women are bad drivers,” students will be asked to think more deeply about their statements so as not to re-inscribe stereotypes; instead, a statement like “gender influences performance in everyday life” would be more appropriate. This exercise in contributing to the year’s schoolwork activities would make a wonderful beginning of the year activity, to be revisited throughout the year.

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In this article, there are several activities which promote visual literacy and recognition of embedded racist, sexist, heterosexist, cissexist, and ablest ideology, one such includes "showing students old cartoons because the stereotypes are so blatant. We look at the roles played by women, men, people of color, and poor people. I ask students to watch for who plays the lead. Who plays the buffoon? Who plays the servant? Who are the villains? I encourage them to look at the race, station in life, and body type of each character.” from this opening activity. This activity would be particularly useful in discussion of ethos, logos, and pathos as part of a lesson or set of lessons used to teach effective argumentative strategies for students’ own writing. By examining the different appeals (emotional, logical, etc.) to harmful / violent attitudes students will be able to recognize the pervasiveness of this subliminal oppressive messaging. As many political cartoons are published in newspapers otherwise considered to be reputable, students will be asked to examine what effect these cartoons have on the publication holistically. Are the in contrast to the written material therein, or are they simply more disguised echoes of the ideology promoted in the publication.

See also: https://books.google.com/books?id=e568DgAAQBAJ&pg=PT360&lpg=PT360&dq=ableist+cartoons&source=bl&ots=6Z5dEr8_c8&sig=lqCIek56zPKRDUVcd8SpzlUEYQ8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2quuWiNTTAhWj6YMKHdYwCRsQ6AEIRDAJ#v=onepage&q=ableist%20cartoons&f=false for political cartoons & ablism; and http://americainclass.org/sources/becomingmodern/divisions/text2/politicalcartoonsblackwhite.pdf for activities relating to U.S. political (policy based) cartoons as they vary by white- or black- owned publication. 

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Haiku and Hiroshima: Teaching About the Atomic Bomb

Teaching Activity. By Wayne Au. 3 pages. Lesson for high school students on the bombing of Hiroshima using the film Barefoot Gen and haiku.

Found on the Zinn Project, this lesson plan evolving from a film called “Barefoot Gen”. I was extremely intrigued by the combination of film as a text, this one detailing the experiences of a boy and his mother who are survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and their their attempts to rebuild their lives, and for the incorporation of culturally-relevant poetry. In the lesson, students watch the film and have a discussion that is mostly reaction-based, before reading haiku poetry written by survivors of the bomb drop. This leads into a lesson on imagery and structure within the poems, and of the genre itself. As these poems have a set structure, I personally find them easier to work with than free verse or sonnets or any other form, really, so I would feel confident teaching this. Another major component of the lesson is the content of the film as it shows the U.S.’s destructive capacity and individuals in Japan resisting their government’s reaction after the bombing. I would love to teach this lesson particularly because the United States in my experience is rarely examined critically in public schools and the supreme injustice I feel that does to students from many races and ethnicities who have been generationally impacted by the trauma imposed by U.S. domestic or foreign policy decisions. To accompany this lesson, I would add poetry from poets of other backgrounds that have been victimized by the U.S. government: maybe from Iraqi or Afghan poets in the modern era. Or, to take take the lesson in another direction, the poetry could be paired with Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” to examine the various creative mediums which women who have not had access to literacy and by extension, formal poetry, have used to express themselves. 

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This activity from Teaching Tolerance (SPLC) entails students responding to three question prompts, “Who in our class supported you in an important way?Who in our class pushed you to think differently or more deeply? Who in our class inspired you by setting an example?” This activity intrigued me because of what I consider the similarities between the decompression activity here and the practices implemented by teachers of detracked classes to encourage students to see the value of contributions from their peers from all identities and tracking backgrounds. Rather than confine students to answering these three questions, I would have each student assign one or more of these values (support, think deeply, set an example) to each of their classmates anonymously - probably through an online forum or maybe in person in a valentines day letter box-type setup. This activity, while not explicitly an examination of race, class, gender, ability, etc. will allow students to reflect on their relationship with their classmate with different identities and the value they add to one’s learning experience.

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Facilitation Guide

I’ve participated in the Step into the Circle activity at various leadership retreats, and find it more effective than privilege walk, or some others meant to allow others to silently share experiences or identities and see who else shares them. The activity involves statements being read aloud, participants arranged in a circle, and ‘stepping into the circle’ to demonstrate their agreement with the statement (i.e. your family owned their own home; you’ve never had to ‘come out’). Each statement is meant to address an issue of privilege or power.

This activity would work most effectively with adults or high schoolers, who would be able to participate more fully in the discussion connecting statements to systems of power than younger students. In this facilitation guide, I specifically appreciate the questions related to ability (”I was able to access this room without difficulty”) and citizenship — although I would NOT ask openly about citizenship as an introductory activity without a network of trust or even at all for the safety of my students. With more tailoring, I would focus this activity on ability primarily, and could add questions related to invisible disabilities too. This activity including discussion or decompression via writing (to more closely align with my discipline) will facilitate engagement of issues of IPE as I will modify it through the lens of ability to demonstrate the literal structural barriers to full inclusion that prohibit people with disabilities from full inclusion in public life.

 I can also foresee myself using this activity as an anticipation guide of sorts for texts or assignments that connect to issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, or religion - adding statement’s like, “I’ve [never] been told my name is ‘ghetto’ or hard to pronounce,” “I’ve found that people hold assumptions about where I am ‘from,’” etc.

This activity is based on the work of Peggy McIntosh, “Invisible Knapsack” and was compiled by ConnectAbility.ca and found this guide when researching a facilitation guide for this activity.

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Unit Description: This unit will be based off the Teachers College Writing Unit for Realistic Fiction and Reading Unit for Character Study. ...

I found this lesson plan on Teachersforjustice.org, a Chicago-based social justice teachers’ organization, and it was compiled by Alissa L. and Liav S. The lesson described is geared towards elementary school levels, yet the concepts are transferable as evidenced by the title: Realistic Fiction: Characters Just Like Me. As written, the plan entails students constructing definitions of identities and realistic fiction, and writing assignments for students to explore their own identities and what “realistic fiction” is. With an awareness of stereotypes, and discussion throughout the unit, students will be able to recognize common stereotypes in written works and will be taught strategies to avoid replicating them in their own writing. In my upper-level classroom, the lesson could be modified with longer writing assignments, discussion of converging identities (race and gender, for example), and higher-level texts. However, the structure of building upon existing concepts about identities and their representation would remain the same. 

The major change I would make would be an additional summative project to explore power more fully within the school and outside of the school. Students could be provided with a list of their schools’ suggested literary curriculum for all four years of high school, and catalogue the race, gender, sexuality, and ability of the protagonists and authors from these texts. In addition to the examination of the presence or exclusion of various identities present within texts, dietetically, the class (through a research project) would engage in a more structural examination of the publishing industry: the identities and diversity of leadership in various publishing companies, money spent on promotion of books by and featuring individuals with identities that have been marginalized, etc.