Classroom Activities
In the the tradition of the educator and philosopher Paolo Freire, classroom activities will have goals to break the educational structures that create inequities in classrooms. Implemented teaching methods will promote dialogue, critical thinking, problem-solving, and agency.
A lesson incorporated in this unit will be on indigenous peoples struggle for equal rights in the Americas. Students lesson objective is to collaboratively create a dramatic presentation that shows the causes and effects of indigenous people’s struggle for equality in the specific regions of Northwest Canada, Southwest United States, Southern Mexico, Guatemala, the Andes, and the Amazon. Students at this point would have had some background on the long-term causes of the oppression of indigenous people of the Americas. As an orientation to the lesson students will watch a 20-minute segment of Sliver of a Full Moon, then students discuss what was the message, purpose, and overall impact of the play. Then they will also discuss how dramatic presentations or plays can be more impactful to a general audience than other mediums. During the orientation students will be introduced to their student groups and their task to create a dramatic presentation on the causes and effects of the civil rights movement of a specific indigenous group of the Americas from the regions aforementioned. Their dramatic presentation will require a script, purpose, and message in manuscript written form and an acted presentation with props and student actors/actresses. Creating the presentation should take about two hours of class time and two homework assignments. I will provide printed copies of the manuscripts for the students so they can use them for future content reference.
Another lesson discussed comes from a modified version of a lesson created by former history teacher at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles California, Brian Gibbs. This lesson culminates with students analyzing African American civil rights leaders through preparing and participating in a simulation rally. The sequence of this lesson would come after students had deconstructed the unit level question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” Students would have already analyzed some of the short-term and long-term causes of the African American civil rights movement and some of the current events in the United States that relate to race relations and equality in the United States.
This four day (83 minutes each day) lesson focuses on methods to gain equality that were promoted by African American leaders. Students will collaborate with a partner to research a civil rights leader, create a life-size poster character profile, individually prepare a speech that introduces their historical character and articulates their historical figure’s promoted methods and tactics to achieve African American equality in the United States. Students will participate in an experiential seminar discussion on what tactics should and should not be used to achieve equality. To incite more discussion on the topic during the seminar students will state their speech and respond to historical events such as Emmett Till case, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Little Rock Nine, Children’s Crusade, and Freedom Summer 1964 and the Watts Riots.
The orientation of the lesson will review research guidelines, like specific use of academic databases, tracking evidence, and analyzing sources considering the value and limitations based from its origin and purpose. The orientation will also display various examples of character profile posters that they will create with their partner. Pairs will create a life size body character profile where near the eyes, mouth, heart, hands, and feet there will be a caption that will represent aspects of their historical profile based on student research. The eyes will display their vision of African American equality, near the mouth two quotes that show their ideas, the heart will display how did they feel as an African American in the United States, the hands would show their achievements in the struggle to gain civil rights, and the feet displays the direction and methods they believed was best to achieve equality. The suggested materials are poster paper, paints, and markers for the posters; computers will be needed for the research component of the project. Through the research needed to complete their poster, students will be more equipped to write their speech and prepare for in seminar/rally discussion. After experiential discussion, discussion notes, and hearing speeches -students finally write their own opinion on what they think are the most productive and nonproductive tactics to achieve equality based on their research and lesson experience.
Another lesson from this unit will analyze the ethical dimensions of history and presentism. This lesson will be a one day lesson that evaluates some the roles and connections of ethical dimensions in history and civil rights. The goal of the lesson is to evaluate to what extent should presentist moral judgments be applied to analyze historical actors actions. The lesson will begin with a quick write exercise-- “can you judge a person’s past fashion sense based on today’s fashion rules?” with visual examples of past fashion trends from throughout history. I will then discuss their responses and exemplify some of the controversies of presentism and moral judgment of historical actors. With multiple short biography readings that have different point of views, student will ethically evaluate slave-owning white men in the United States like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Robert E. Lee. The final segment of this lesson, students discuss in groups of four the pros and cons of avoiding presentism, then independently write on: how much weight should presentist moral judgments be used to analyze historical actors?
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