Teaching about Race and Racism Across the Disciplines

Introduction:

This unit emphasizes the importance of community in the education of African American lives using the novel Johnathon by Jo Ann Burroughs. For many students in inner-city/urban environments, there are more obstacles that inhibit the progress and success of a life.  Utilizing Johnathon, an emancipatory literature selection, the students can establish a keen understanding for the importance of education, community and unity, through utilizing annotations, critical thinking skills and the arts. 

During quarantine, zooming with my students, we read Johnathon. Johnathon is a story of a 2^nd grade overcomer named Johnathon who, despite innumerable obstacles, became a living example of what it means to be refined by what was meant to consume him. Johnathon and his teacher, Mrs. Harris, go on a rollercoaster of emotions and events; from anger, happiness, to tears, worry and victory. Together, alongside of Johnathon’s entire community, journey through life to create a better life and legacy for him. With the help of his inner determination and alongside his community, Johnathon comes out as pure gold, as he later becomes a story of tribulation made triumph. I surveyed my students to ask their favorite parts of the story. My students said they loved how Johnathon developed into a doctor, is based on a true story, Miss Harris finally knew that she couldn’t follow Johnathon everywhere or protect him physically, and that his childhood was a series of unfortunate events and he became successful. This feedback helped to further the basis of this unit. The core of this unit is to identify dominant narratives and utilize new, race conscious, reading approaches to counter those narratives. Scholar and activist Dr. Felice Blake stated that race conscious reading practices point us toward a reorientation and transformation of the humanities.¹ In this curriculum unit, the students use annotations, inferring, character development, and visual thinking theory to analyze text from a critical, race conscious lens. We incorporate visual thinking questionings to establish critical thinking and thinking aloud, showing connections, opinions and realizations amongst their peers. This unit will take on the approach of Freedom Schools set up in the South during the Black Freedom Movement, as Freedom Schools following the U.S. civil rights tradition of providing a culturally and politically relevant education to disenfranchised youth that is often missing in schools, with the goal of transforming societal injustice.”²

An old saying says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” That saying is a foundational principle for the growth, development and the promised future of every person, specifically for an African American life.  An example of a child who had a village is Johnathon. Johnathon is a young, 2nd grade Black boy with a determination to survive, have joy and succeed at all cost. He is met with some of the most heart wrenching odds, from neglect, death in his family and abuse from his later imprisoned father and desperate mother. Despite his home life, Johnathon shows up physically, mentally, and emotionally every day. The 2nd grade teachers did not want Johnathon in their class, but Mrs. Harris was blessed with Johnathon. She grew from disdain and a stony heart, to a heart of clay, compassion, and love as she started to see him as if he were her own son, capable and worthy of love. She became Johnathon’s “success coach.”³ This rollercoaster of events and emotions leads to an everlasting relationship and breaking all odds set against him. After reading this novel, your mind can lead to perpetuation of biases, color blindness, and pity, or it can lead to the theory of an ecological system.  Johnathon did not end up as a successful person at the end of the story because he was the exception. Also, Johnathon’s teacher was not his savior. These are a part of Johnathon’s ”ecological system.” An ecological system, created by Urie Bronfenbrenner, is a model that offers important assumptions about the ways background and social psychological traits (e.g., self-perspective [microsystem]), family-level deviations (e.g., parent involvement [mesosystem]), and school level influences (e.g., perceptions of teachers [exosystem]) interrelate and impact individual level outcomes such as personal and academic achievement.⁴ To formulate this ecological system, we will be discuss Freedom Schools during the Civil Rights era and how they impacted students of all ages.