Content
This unit centers on a simple truth that came up throughout the seminar: young people have never been content to sit on the sidelines of history. They have organized, written, protested, taught, and created new ways of understanding the world around them. Still, their contributions are often minimized or left out altogether.
My students often assume there is only one correct version of history because textbooks and teachers usually present it that way. This unit asks them to look beyond a single account, examine different perspectives, question assumptions, study evidence, and pay attention to who had the power to record history. I want them to think about how quickly people pull out their phones to record events today and compare police footage with a bystander’s video. One account may leave out details or twist what happened to protect people in power. Toni Morrison’s idea of “researching the bit” encourages students to study what is missing as carefully as what is present. A missing story does not mean a person or community had nothing worth saying. It may mean that no one in power thought the story was worth saving. This process will help students develop critical thinking skills and guide their engagement with history and activism.
I am drawing directly from Rod’s pedagogical approach by using Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats throughout the unit. This strategy will help students slow down, examine an issue from multiple angles, and listen before deciding what they believe. They will use the hats while reading speeches and documents, watching film clips and documentaries, discussing ideas, analyzing music, and making connections across texts. Incorporating the Six Thinking Hats will strengthen students' critical analysis and deepen their understanding of complex issues in social justice and history.
Students will examine the relationship between education and power. Freedom Schools gave Black children opportunities to study their history, question inequality, and see themselves as full participants in democracy. Later demands for Black Studies programs raised the same issue in colleges and universities. The question remains: Who decides what knowledge belongs in schools, colleges, universities, and prisons? Who decides which histories are worth studying? Recognizing how institutions determine the curriculum will help students understand the role of power in shaping education and knowledge.
Rod’s work will help students understand that schools and universities are not neutral spaces. Institutions decide what is taught, who is welcomed, and which differences are supported, ignored, or violated. Rod says, “As a text that sees issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and indigeneity as signs of our intellectual advancement, this book opposes those that argue that attention to these modes of difference has compromised academic excellence or radical politics.”[1]
White Hat: Information and Facts
The White Hat asks students to begin with what they know. They will identify facts, examine evidence, determine what information is missing, separate fact from opinion, and question the reliability of sources.
Students will use the White Hat to examine youth activism during the Civil Rights Movement, including student sit-ins, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Freedom Schools, and the Birmingham Children’s March. These examples show that young people were not waiting for adults to do all the work. They organized, marched, and took serious risks because they believed change was possible.
Ella Baker’s work will challenge the idea that leadership belongs to one famous person standing in front of a crowd. Her approach focused on developing ordinary people and helping communities recognize the strength they already had. Using the White Hat, students will study what the historical record tells us about these movements while asking whose contributions have been ignored or minimized. The Six Thinking Hats article contends that, “Someone who does not like an idea will not make any effort to find points in favor of the idea–and the other way around. The hat method separates ego from performance. The thinker is challenged to use the different hats and actually experiences a sense of freedom because the thinker is no longer limited to one position.”[2]
Red Hat: Feelings and Lived Experience
The Red Hat gives students room to acknowledge emotion. Facts matter, but people do not organize, protest, or challenge injustice without emotion. Anger, fear, hope, grief, and frustration often move people to act. Recognizing these feelings can inspire students to connect deeply with social issues and feel empowered to participate.
Students will consider what it may have felt like to attend a school where their history was ignored, join a march knowing they might be arrested, or speak up while being treated as if they were too young to understand. They will also connect these ideas to their own experiences with language, identity, belonging, and acceptance.
Angela Davis helps students see that struggles for justice are connected. Racism, sexism, poverty, war, and economic inequality do not stay in separate boxes. They overlap and shape people’s daily lives. Davis says, “In recent years, some Black people have indicated that they are tired of demonstrating and that mass street marches are passe’.”[3] Students will also examine Greta Thunberg’s frustration in her climate speeches and discuss how emotion can strengthen an argument when it is connected to evidence and action.
Black Hat: Caution and Critical Thinking
The Black Hat asks students to look for concerns, weaknesses, bias, and possible harm. This is not about being negative. It is about learning not to accept a claim simply because it sounds confident or comes from someone in authority.
Students will use the Black Hat to examine Strom Thurmond’s proposed Academic Freedom Act, The Diversity Myth, debates about AP African American Studies, and current arguments about banned books. They will ask who is labeled dangerous, disruptive, or militant; who supposedly needs protection; and who has the power to apply those labels. Strom argues, “Creative thinking cannot take place in an atmosphere of dissent and negativism, or in situations where violence is threatened or occurring.”[4]
Questions may include:
Who benefits from this argument?
Who is left out?
What evidence supports the claim?
What assumptions are being made?
Whose safety is being prioritized?
The Black Hat will also help students see how schools and universities are places of power. Rod Ferguson’s work helped me understand that educational institutions decide which subjects are valued, which histories belong in the curriculum, and which kinds of difference are accepted. This approach can help students realize their ability to critically analyze and influence these decisions, fostering a sense of agency and leadership.
Yellow Hat: Possibilities and Hope
The Yellow Hat asks students to recognize what is working and what could be possible. Many people in this unit faced serious obstacles but still believed change could happen. Freedom Schools allowed Black students to study their history, question inequality, and imagine themselves as full participants in democracy. Black Studies programs showed what could happen when students refused to accept a curriculum that left them out. Ella Baker believed leadership could be developed in ordinary people, while Greta Thunberg showed how one student’s decision to speak could grow into a worldwide movement.[5]
Jamie Margolin’s Youth to Power gives young people practical ways to think about advocacy and organizing. Cathy J. Cohen also challenges the idea that Black youth are politically disconnected by recognizing how they participate through protest, art, digital spaces, and community work. Cohen states, “While I strongly believe that the nation’s commitment to the progress of black youth is a moral obligation, others may be convinced of our responsibility by understanding that by ignoring the basic needs of far too many black youth, we have created a crisis not only for these young people but also for our nation.”[6]
Students will use the Yellow Hat to consider how literacy, education, and community organizing create opportunities for people who are often told they have little power.
Green Hat: Creativity and New Ideas
The Green Hat asks students to imagine new possibilities. Activism does not happen only through marches and speeches. It can also happen through writing, storytelling, music, art, journalism, and new learning spaces.
Inspired by Toni Morrison, students will conduct their own “researching the bit” investigations. They may uncover an overlooked story from local history, interview a family member, or research someone whose contribution was left out of a textbook. They will also consider how oral histories preserve voices that official records may miss.
Music and poetry will be treated as important archives. Students will study how Sweet Honey in the Rock and other artists use music to preserve memory, affirm identity, and strengthen community. They may create a “Lean on Me Playlist” or design a soundscape around belonging, difference, joy, struggle, or resilience. Each student will explain how the songs connect to the unit’s larger themes.
Students may also create podcasts, public service announcements, spoken-word pieces, Freedom School lessons, or advocacy campaigns. The Green Hat gives them a chance to use what they have learned and imagine what they might do with it.
Blue Hat: Reflection and Next Steps
The Blue Hat helps students organize their thinking and decide what comes next. After using the other hats, they will step back and consider how their thinking has changed. They will identify the most convincing evidence, the questions that remain, and any action that may be needed.
Students will return regularly to the Social Contract created through our Capturing Kids’ Hearts process. Because it is a living document, the class can revisit and revise it as students learn more about empathy, accountability, belonging, and shared responsibility. They may decide to add a new nonnegotiable or clarify an existing one.
The Blue Hat also connects to the unit’s focus on information and access. Kim Snyder’s The Librarians, the American Library Association’s “Freedom to Read Statement,” and materials on investigative journalism will help students consider who controls information. They will examine what happens when books are removed, difficult stories are avoided, or journalists and libraries are pressured not to share certain ideas. What resonates most is, “The freedom to read is of little consequence when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for that reader’s purpose. What is needed is not only the absence of restraint, but the positive provision of opportunity for the people to read the best that has been thought and said.”[7]
Disability justice will broaden the conversation about access. Students will examine how buildings, policies, and expectations often create barriers rather than an individual’s body or mind. They will consider neurodiversity and discuss what it means to build a classroom where different ways of learning, communicating, and participating are taken seriously.
The Six Thinking Hats are not meant to tell students what to believe. They give students a structure for thinking before reacting. That matters when topics feel personal, uncomfortable, or unfamiliar. The hats also give my Emergent Bilingual students clear language for entering a difficult conversation without feeling as if they must know everything before they speak.
By the end of the unit, students should understand that literacy is not only about reading words correctly. It also means asking questions, checking sources, noticing who has been left out, listening to people whose experiences differ from their own, and deciding what to do with what they have learned. Meaningful change is rarely the work of one famous leader. It grows from ordinary people who build relationships, share their stories, organize their communities, and create opportunities for others to lead. That is the kind of leadership I hope my students begin to recognize in themselves.
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