Teaching with and through Maps

Classroom Context & Rationale

I teach at a phenomenal predominantly Black school on the South Side of Chicago. It is a small school with one classroom per grade level; admissions are lottery based as opposed to neighborhood boundary, meaning anyone who applies is someone who wants to be there, so I value each and every person walks into my classroom. The student population is 92% African American, roughly 6% Latino, and 2% Multi-Racial¹. Students who are diverse learners make up 13% of the school population and 58% of students are considered economically disadvantaged². As the Music Teacher, I have the opportunity to teach every student from preschool until they graduate from 8^th grade. In addition to music, I provide targeted small group support in math, ELA, and social studies while also serving as the Culture and Climate lead for the building. Due to the nature of my roles, I get to see students in a variety of contexts, gaining deep insight on their strengths and areas of opportunity.

There is no mandated curriculum for music in my district, so I have the privilege to customize and tailor instructional content for my students -who bring a wide range of experiences, abilities, and individual goals. This allows me to approach teaching music through an interdisciplinary lens and to connect music with social studies, ELA, and STEM, and in this case cartographic thinking. Additionally, this autonomy makes it possible for me to develop curriculum units such as this one through the Yale National Initiative.

Throughout this curriculum unit, there will be instances where I weave in youth culture and pop culture references. My teaching approach is heavily influenced by Youth Culture Power (YCP) and Compassionate Music Teaching (CMT)³, which are pedagogies that call educators to demonstrate care by positioning student “ways of being” or culture as academic content⁴. Linguistical playfulness allows me to meet my students where they are while also creating a bridge between “standard” articulations of the English Language and dialects of the youth, specifically in my teaching space African American English (AAE). Teachers are invited to adapt and adjust this curriculum unit as needed.

This curriculum unit is designed with my middle school (6^th – 8^th grade) students in mind, but can be adapted for high school students. This curriculum will be implemented in my music class, however, it is relevant and applicable to any subject and will best serve ELA and Social Studies teachers. The case studies are deeply connected to Chicago history and music history and represents radical acts of resistance through mapping. Collaboratively exploring these maps will help students to see how cartography reflects and responds to society, asserting and resisting dominant powers. These maps also serve as models for students who will be prompted to create maps that reflect their diverse perspectives. On the surface, it may appear that my goals for this unit are to challenge learners to study social movements through maps; while that is true, this too is true: the heart of this curriculum unit is fueled by a desire to empower students to be truthful, discerning, and responsible communicators. Becoming mapmakers themselves, they are more than students and they get the opportunity to experiment with using cartography as a tool for wielding power.