Objectives and Rationale
I teach at Oceana High School, a public college prep high school in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco, California, where major collaborative and solo student projects are key parts of the curriculum grades nine through twelve. Among the five school-wide outcomes are that students will demonstrate that they are reflective and critical thinkers. A central piece of the existing ninth grade humanities and science curriculum, the Natural Disaster Project (NDP), provides both a laboratory and showcase through which students can demonstrate these emerging skills. This unit "New Orleans: Human Gifts, Human Lessons" will enhance the existing NDP by allowing students to use New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina as a case study to ground their future research and analysis of other natural disasters. This unit will also allow them to explore the Cultural Division of UNESCO's concept of "Intangible Heritage", which seeks to name and preserve among others, oral, artistic, linguistic and/or cultural traditions that are valuable not only to the practitioners but to all of humanity. 2 I hope that in taking a look at examples of New Orleans' rich intangible heritage, we will explore what examples of intangible heritage exist and thrive in the places my students call home, and indeed, within the students themselves. (A quick note: given the time restrictions of the ninth grade curriculum, I will not be able to focus on the students' uncovering their intangible heritages until the start of their sophomore year, when I meet them again). This unit will serve as the starting point for the humanities component of the NDP, and will last from between three and four weeks, meeting daily. It could also serve an eleventh grade humanities or social studies course equally well and could be adapted for an English or science class.
My objectives are to help my students engage critically with real world problems, using New Orleans as a starting point and from New Orleans, to begin to apply their new knowledge to other "natural" disasters closer to home; to grasp the legacy of African- and African-American cultural heritage which permeates U.S. culture today; to learn about the existence of "Intangible Heritage"; to provide them the space for imagination of some real-world solutions, taking into account the presence of culture and human relationships; and to gain some skill in deciphering maps. The central question guiding this unit is: How "natural" are natural disasters? Other questions which will shape our study: What is the responsibility of humans towards themselves, one another and the natural world? We will narrow our focus by asking: What is the responsibility of the government in caring for its people pre- during and post-disaster? What is the role of the public in demanding accountability from major power holders in the face of natural and human-made disaster? What inspiration can we take away from a city that refuses to die? What does intangible heritage mean? Where are examples of intangible heritage closer to home?
The NDP is an interdisciplinary unit in the Humanities and Science Departments in the Freshmen/Sophomore House or 9/10 in which I teach. The 9/10 House groups incoming freshmen into pods in which students share the same humanities and earth science classes; they continue with their same humanities teacher and often, the same science teacher their sophomore year and experience some mixing of the pods. The House was created to better support underclassmen as they adjust to high school and in their sophomore years, as they try not to get lost in the fray. Students and teachers gain much from the chance to grow more as a continuous learning community. A central component of the House is interdisciplinary collaboration; the NDP is the product of this intention. Among the goals of the NDP are that students learn about and analyze various types of natural disasters not solely through a scientific but also a humanities lens; they are to draw conclusions about the severity and impact of a natural disaster based on a series of scientific and demographic factors. What is currently less prominent in the project is a clear vehicle by which students can make informed judgments. In short, they need more tools: to be able to make sense out of demographic figures molded by socio-political and economic structures and by human decisions which shape the impacts of any natural disaster. My colleagues and I agreed this year that some focused study of a U.S.-based natural disaster, before our ninth graders are asked to research and draw conclusions about their group's assigned disaster, would strengthen this project and lead to stronger outcomes. New Orleans, still recovering and rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, provides ample ground on which to build our students' emerging consciousness about the intersections between natural and human-made disasters. Further, New Orleans is simply a fascinating and inspiring city that warrants getting to know.
As stated in the jacket of the paperback edition of Andrei Codrescu's New Orleans, Mon Amour, "New Orleans has always been a little more fabulous than anywhere else." 3 Indeed, New Orleans has figured as a unique place in the United States and in fact, the world, in terms of culture, economy and geography for more than three centuries. The "Gifts" part of this unit will focus on students becoming familiar with New Orleans as a still viable place of unique and resilient African American, Creole, Cajun and new immigrant southern culture and life. They will deepen their knowledge and understanding of U.S. history, of colonization, resistance and reemergence by getting to know New Orleans: some of the past inspiration it has provided poets and other writers and the current sources of resilience and questions which this incredible city pushes people to wrestle with today. On "Lessons": students will gain a more nuanced and realistic picture of the choices that policymakers, business leaders, and defenders of the state have made on behalf of certain residents of this country. They will complexify the meaning of "natural disasters" as they learn just how much the suffering of a significant population of New Orleans was rooted in the decisions of federal, state and local power holders before and after Hurricane Katrina.
I believe a good portion of my work as an educator is to help my students develop more concrete understandings of the systems in place in their lives. The specific and targeted ways in which the city and people of New Orleans were neglected tells us quite a bit about how a socio-political-economy informs human choice and action or inaction. The majority of my students are first-, second- or third-generation U.S. Americans. Most of them can trace their ancestry to the Pacific Islands, China, or Latin America, and many of those students maintain family ties to those ancestral homelands. A minority of my students is of mixed African-American descent, and I believe they will relish the opportunity to learn about the rich legacy of New Orleans in terms of their own cultural heritages. Almost all of my students fall somewhere between the working poor, lower-middle and middle class brackets and so are situated in particular places with which to make sense out of the economic realities of their families. All of my students live within a socio-political-economy directly connected to that of New Orleans and are to varying degrees cognizant of its effects on their lives; they deserve to further develop their understandings of this system that has such bearing in their world.
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