Teaching Strategies
Accountable Talk
Courageous Conversations About Race™ provides tools for white teachers to find success in building and maintaining authentic relationships with students of color. These conversations jumpstart students who won’t engage, keep the dialogue moving despite discomfort, and push those involved beyond the superficial. Part of that requires the teacher to remain engaged, speak truthfully, sit out discomfort, accept and expect tension and lack of simplistic resolution. This tool assists in facilitating conversations about race by challenging and upending assumptions.22
David Pilgrim believes in what he calls the “triumph of dialogue”. Teachers must internalize the belief that through our teaching, another reality is possible. Without this hope and determination, our work is in vain. Acknowledge your feelings, good and bad, throughout the process. Anguish, fatigue, and disillusionment will all be effects of having meaningful conversations about race. So too will feelings of hope, humanity, and accomplishment. Consistent examination of how white fear and fragility manifest themselves in your life will yield better outcomes in all realms, but particularly in your relationships with your students of color.
White students who are struggling with the idea of how white privilege and white supremacy manifest themselves in our society can be directed to specific resources like Peggy McIntosh’s “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. As a white teacher, I know it is important for white students to hear me acknowledging my privilege publicly, citing specific examples, and providing resources to change attitudes and behaviors.
Close Reading and Literary Analysis
Students will read poems written by African Americans and will participate in class discussions regarding the poems. Students will read “Riddle” by Jericho Brown, “It’s a Miracle” by Yesenia Montilla, “beverly, huh.” By Jamila Woods, “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, “In Time of Crisis” by Raymond R. Patterson, “New Rules of the Road” by Reginald Harris, “Affirmation” by Eve Ewing, “Gravity” by Angel Nafis, and “No Country for Black Boys” by Joy Priest. In this component of the unit, I’ll model how to annotate and analyze poetry. I will introduce various aspects of interpretive vocabulary and concepts using a toolkit.
For the purpose of this unit, I will focus on the analysis of two of these poems. Poetry will be read slowly and with purpose to implement the various processes of poetic interpretation starting with free association, moving into analytic responses in prose, and even the writing of more poetry – a kind of cousin of ekphrasis. Students will draw conclusions after exploring context, style, mood, and theme. A key component will be explorations of the moral and ethical dimensions of poems. Connections to prior knowledge will be of particular significance here.
Dr. Eve Ewing is a writer and visual artist. Studying the sociology of education at the University of Chicago, Ewing’s research focuses on the impact of racism on public schools.23 Her book Electric Arches is a compilation of poetry, prose, and visual art. Eve Ewing’s work was a natural fit for this unit. Her poem “Affirmation”, which she dedicates to youth living in prison, is relevant for other marginalized youth as well. In the poem, Ewing encourages youth to “fake it ‘til they make it” - to speak positivity unto themselves until they are convinced their words are true, even if in the moment they are not. For the purposes of this unit, we will use this poem to focus on resilience.
We can all relate to the need to bolster ourselves in the face of chronic adversity, or even a single particularly challenging moment. Before a job interview, for example, soliloquies on positive themes embolden and encourage us. Through our own words, we convince ourselves we have the ability to persevere, to make it through, to get the job, to nail the audition. Ewing suggests that the courage youth needs is intrinsic. They already possess power - it’s just a matter of recognizing and harnessing it. In this regard, teachers can serve as mirrors for their students. We can use our teaching to reflect back to them who they are.
In her poem, she describes being alive as “messy” and “lovely.” The true story of our lives is not complete without acknowledging this duality. “The sun shines” while “somewhere it rains”. Life is complicated. Good and bad things occur unevenly, and there’s no stopping this ebb and flow as much as we might like to. Ewing suggests to youth that the best they can do is know that “somewhere inside [them], it rains, and things will grow green and wonderful.” In moments that are “bad”, “ugly”, and “scary”, we can’t do much except acknowledge our feelings. We can, however, help others who also might be struggling. We can honor the magic within us.
Langston Hughes was a poet and social activist during the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. He is one of the most famous African American poets in history, well known for his poem “Harlem” in which he poses the question “what happens to a dream deferred?” In his poem “Mother to Son”, a mother is telling her child about the challenges she has faced in life that he, too, will need to conquer. The mother refers to a variety of experiences in her life. She talks about “turnin’ corners”, changing directions, but continuously moving onward. She speaks of “reachin’ landin’s” that provide respite during her journey. She addresses “goin’ in the dark”- the inevitability of encountering moments in life when direction is unclear and progress is not quantifiable.
Using metaphor, the mother compares adversities to “tacks” and “splinters” and “places with no carpet”. I will ask students to identify some of the “tacks” and “splinters” they or members of their community have encountered or come up against. The overarching theme of this poem is my message to students every day: life is far from easy, less so for certain groups of people. The world out there is indifferent to what we hoped life might be. How will you adapt? How will you persevere? This poem serves as a bridge to discussions about privilege, resilience, and possible courses of action.
Daily Snapshots
Beginning of class activities called “snapshots” will serve as warm-ups. Each day, a new activity will be assigned. The content of the activities will vary, but each will relate to the themes being discussed in the unit, either directly or tangentially. Among other things, snapshots could be based on debatable, factual, and conceptual key questions or current events. They will include a spectrum of simple to complex activities. A simple activity could be for students to define what they think propaganda is and to give an example. Students might use a Visual Thesaurus tool to “collect” words that describe how they are seen in society and how they see themselves. Students can draw small sketches to accompany each word. A more involved activity could include watching Childish Gambino’s “This is America” video, having students create a visual response, and then participating in a facilitated class discussion. The purpose of these activities will be to get students thinking about topics that might not be on their radar, to provide structured opportunities for students to develop personal opinions and defend them, and to practice empathy building.
Visual Thinking Strategies
Before looking at historically racist and anti-black images, it is important to build a foundation for looking at images critically. In theory, this is a skill that an art educator will focus on exercising regularly with their class. Practice of this skill will have been started prior to the beginning of this unit.
Guided by the teacher, students will use Visual Thinking Strategies. Art educators use this method to facilitate high quality conversations with students about art. Students exercise skills in observation and critical thinking, and work to develop evidence-based arguments. VTS works through asking students a prescribed set of questions: What is going on in this image? What evidence do you see that supports that? What else do you see? As students answer, the teacher will paraphrase what the student has said to validate their comment and encourage confidence. David Pilgrim cites this method as an approach that creates “nonthreatening space where honest, facilitated discussions are possible.”23
The Feldman Method of Criticism
Edmund Feldman was a professor of Art at the University of Georgia who developed a simple four-step process of looking at art. Using this exploratory method of art criticism, students describe, analyze, interpret and judge selected works of art. The description step starts by simply stating what can be seen. I often tell students to pretend they are describing the artwork to someone who isn’t able to see it. Next, students focus on the principles and elements of design in the piece. Here, we are looking for observations about the work’s color, texture, rhythm, etc. Interpretation requires students to synthesize what they learned about the piece in steps one and two, paired with evidence, to come up with possible meanings or purposes for the work of art. What did the artist want viewers to consider or understand? Finally, students judge the merit of the work. If examples from the three previous steps can be cited, the level of criticism becomes more sophisticated. This process ensures that students think all the way through works of visual art rather than making snap judgments. A key takeaway from both VTS and Feldman’s method will be that what we say about art is, by definition, ekphrasis.
Students will use The Feldman Method for the artworks taught in the unit as well as for the historically racist objects I share, although the objects will require a slightly modified method. Judgment of the racist objects will look different, as we will not be discussing whether we like or dislike these objects but instead focus on what we see and how they make us feel. This will help students begin to make connections between Jim Crow-era racist memorabilia and the purpose of their own original visual artwork.
Non-linguistic Representations
Students will use mirrors, ultra-fine permanent markers, and Yupo® paper to create self-portraits from observation. On Yupo®, students will create a self-portrait that represents how they think society perceives them and a separate self-portrait that represents how they see themselves. Students will select words or phrases from the poems we read in class or from the original poems they’ve written to create a text “layer” on its own piece of vellum. The portraits will be overlaid and sandwiched together to create visual texture and depth. To begin, students will learn contour and continuous contour drawing techniques with a variety of subjects including still-life and their classmates. I’ve selected Yupo® as our working surface for a number of reasons. Yupo® is translucent, allowing the other layers of the “sandwich” to show through. It is a synthetic, waterproof surface that allows for exploration of interesting processes. In particular, for a period of time, Yupo® allows permanent markers to be erased, smudged and blended. This will allow students to achieve value in their self-portraits.
Students will also use non-linguistic representation to respond to snapshots. Tasks will include creating sketches in response to a news article and re-imagining a historical event, among other possibilities.
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