I serve as an English Language Arts/Special Education teacher at an opportunity academy with students grades eight through twelve. My school, located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, DC, which is currently experiencing gentrification. Rents are high now and steadily increasing: average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Shaw neighborhood is $3,363 per month. One hundred percent of our students, on the other hand, are living in poverty, mostly in the SE quadrant, where rents are somewhat less expensive (but also rising). Because of this long (sometimes more than an hour and multiple modes of public transportation) commute, among other reasons, attendance is our biggest problem. Our students were often truant in their neighborhood schools, and now the journey is longer, more tedious, conflicts with the times their siblings may need care, and goes through unfamiliar/dangerous areas. The next major roadblock for our kids is that they are overaged, under- credited, and (mostly) performing significantly behind their same age peers in both math and reading. Students who do not attend class do not learn the material from class. They have failed so often that success seems impossible or they see no reason why they should expend energy on learning concepts and skills that have little bearing on their daily lives. They look around at the mostly wealthy, mostly white folks in NW DC but see no connection to a possible future for themselves.
In order to get our students to attend school, we must make what they are learning relevant to their lives in a way that allows them to view school as worthwhile. Our school must meet at least some of our students’ social and emotional needs in order to help students learn. The learning must be personal and individualized. Our students need to feel we see each of them as an individual with different strengths, weaknesses, and desires. For that reason, this unit material encompasses several varied pathways to get to a similar place of understanding and improved abilities to effect positive change for both their communities and themselves.
The Unit
This unit will take place over eight-nine weeks. The unit should be the first of the school year. It begins with a bang: students will download the violent crime reports from a specific neighborhood (where they live now or a past residence). We will make page charts of different neighborhoods and analyze the reported crimes there over a specific time period. Using the median income, age, education level, crime levels/types of crime, and other data points, we will attempt to draw correlations between areas and then move on to how it might look and feel in each area. Is the tone of the place because of the level of crime or vice versa? How are the residents affected? Is there a difference between violent and nonviolent crime effects? Students are asked to bring in a few photos of the area in question. Alternately, we explore the area on Google Streetview.
Hopefully, this activity will lead us to a genuine curiosity about: The effects of crime on people and communities (moving from the macro to micro view).
Once students have a foundation in the general state of their neighborhoods with regard to violent crime and its effects on individuals, families, and communities, we will move on to what we can do on a personal and community level to improve conditions. My biggest goal with this unit is to allow students to realize that they can affect positive change in their own lives and in the lives of their families, school, and neighborhoods. In order to achieve this goal, students must understand that the current state of violence/violent crime in their communities has negative effects beyond the immediately obvious one of physical harm so that they have a rationale for expending the time, energy, and focus to learn of ways to lower their chances of becoming both victims and perpetrators of violence. This is where we tackle the concepts of risk and protective factors. Students will investigate studies that show the correlation between the prevalence of risk factors and higher incidence of violence. Then, they will research protective factors that can help students avoid or overcome the effects of violent victimization as well as the chance to lower the risk of acting violently. Students will construct plans to help weaken changeable risk factors and strengthen changeable protective factors. Though therapeutic means are obviously worthwhile, this unit focuses on what can be done by students in classrooms.
Because knowing something is possible can change the way people think of their abilities, students will be offered a choice of literature (short stories, essays, novel excerpts, poems, biography, autobiography) featuring people who have overcome major obstacles to gain success. Students will read closely then identify at least one strategy/resource for decreasing a risk factor/increasing a protective factor that applies to that person’s ability to be successful. We will keep a running list of our findings about these strategies and why we think they helped, practicing Accountable Talk Discussion and Rules of Respect while we do so.
Each student will choose to research in greater depth one of the above strategies/resources that seems compelling to him/her, ultimately synthesizing the collected information into an informative essay investigating a focus question. During this time, mini lessons on organization, punctuation, transitions, accountable talk, subject/verb agreement, tone, formal language, (etc.) will assist those who need them.
Along with the essay, each student will create a visual illustration of important concepts and relevant points of preventing risk factors and improving protective factors in order to create a sort of mini-guide to their topic. Finally, these visual products will be laminated and displayed during a Gallery Walk and Talk, where other classes are introduced to the concepts deemed important by each student. Student authors stand by to discuss issues and field questions.
Students then move on to a two part project:
Part 1: Students create an actionable project to improve protective factors or decrease risk factors for their neighborhood, including: proposal, justification, needed resources to complete improvement, action plan, letter to allies and power connectors to assist in completion.
Part 2: Students create an actionable project to improve protective factors or decrease risk factors for them personally, including: plan, justification, needed resources to complete improvement, smaller action steps, identification of supporters and allies, identification of anticipated roadblocks and possible workarounds, and personalized tracker to record progress.
Both of these projects will be done individually but with collaboration and peer/teacher input, suggestions, questions, and revision assistance. I hope to create a classroom culture of hope, empowerment, and resilience.
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