Unit
The overall objective for my unit is for my students to develop an understanding of the US prison system and how it affects and targets minority students. The students will begin to understand the history of the current American legal system and the Prison Industrial Complex. The students will understand and examine modern police tactics as a part of public policy and be able to put them in a historical context based on race and poverty.
The unit will be taught over 3 weeks. The major text will be Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling. Students will use cloze reading strategies along with review and discussion questions for each chapter. Each day will also include an activity to further their understanding of the prison system.
The unit will follow one basic research question: How can students develop an understanding of the prison system? There are several guiding questions for the lessons as we move through the unit: What is the purpose of prison? What is the history of the prison system in America and VA DJJ? How do modern police policies contribute to the prison industrial complex?
Students will examine the historical roots of America’s prison system. The students will also learn and analyze public economic and social policies that lead to the creation of the system and how these policies were born through a system of economic and racial segregation. They will understand the role of the federal government in promoting policies that contribute to the growth of the prison system.
The students will read and analyze selected excerpts from books such as Slavery by Another Name, Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling, Locking Up Our Own and Race to Incarcerate. The students will also examine and study trends in juvenile justice in Virginia by reading the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice Data Resource guides from 2006-2016. The students will also watch and analyze the movie 13th by Ava Duvernay and Slavery by Another Name. The students will also analyze various poems and hip-hop songs used to describe the prison system in America. Songs will include “America” by Nas, “Reagan” by Killer Mike, “Letter to the Free” by Common, and various other songs that describe the conditions in which they live as young black men in America.
The students will create a visual timeline of the juvenile prison system in Virginia, including major events that contributed to the growth of the prison system in Virginia and America. The student will also complete statistical breakdown of Virginia’s current prison population by race and gender by analyzing and studying trends in the prison population and create charts and graphs that predict future trends based on their statistical analysis. The students will also create a journal of diary entries full of advice to distribute to other students to help them avoid the pitfalls that led to incarceration. The journals will be submitted to local newspapers in a special editorial about the school to prison pipeline.
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