Unit Content
Journal Prompt: What does resistance mean to you? In what ways do you find yourself “resisting” every day.”
My goal is to make this unit stretch about ten days. My reasoning simply stems from the fact that my district requires us, as the English department, to have a certain number of matching grades per six weeks. So, it’s easiest for me personally to hit this unit during our first few weeks of school beginning on our 3rd week since we have BOY testing during the second week. I plan on orchestrating a different theme for each week. But primarily focusing on The Freedom Writers Diary the first week and the Diary of Anne Frank the second week. I teach high school freshmen, and they would have already read the Diary of Anne Frank in 8th grade, so this will be a great opportunity for you to add that into your curriculum as a review and to help activate background knowledge to see what all they remember from when they read it the previous year.
Writing as resistance
The Freedom Writers Diaries is a collection of diary entries from ELAR Teacher Erin Gruwell’s students, where she gave students an empty composition notebook to just write. Write their emotions at that moment. Write how they are feeling about class. Maybe write about their life outside of the classroom. What kind of struggles do they face? What trauma do they experience? How can they relate to other students around them?6
I want to draw attention to this same approach but of course dig deeper. I am a big fan of journal entries as bell-ringers. I want to encourage you to allow your students to be writing as much as possible regardless of the class you are teaching, because it’s such a valuable tool that the students need. Our literacy rates in America are extremely low. The more students are implementing reading and writing into their daily lives, the better off they will be. There should be a healthy mix of scripted journal prompts and free writing.
One big issue that I notice with my students is that they tend to “write like they talk”. Which is a big “No No” in our classroom. Sure, if they are working on creative writing then that’s absolutely fine; however, for what we are working on, and trying to enhance their skills as writers especially for state testing situations, they absolutely need to work on academic language. What I did over summer school was I allowed students to write a journal entry, and then I encouraged them to translate their exact words into academic language. “Sound smart,” is what I told them. And it clicked. I will be repeating this exact same practice this year with this journal entry. Ideally, by the time we get to the end of this unit, our students will be writing more academically without even thinking about it. It will already be instilled into their mind as an expectation that they should be writing more academic, and less “street”.
This book is obviously way too big to read as a class during the six weeks, and to be honest like I said it’s really just a bunch of diary entries from these students. So we will be taking excerpts out of it and using them as reference points, but still sticking with the theme for each week and using it as a tool to segue into the next conversation and topic.
What I like about it, is that it gives students a good way to examine the relationships between power and resistance. In the book itself, students won’t read it as something that comes specifically from the government, but more about the power within schools, their own families, race, poverty is a really big one, and several other things that we will have included.
In order for this unit to make sense, I need their experiences to become part of the unit itself. I want to know their history, their failures, their culture, and whatever perspective they can use to create their voice. While they are developing this part of their resistance movement, I want them to build connections and relationships with each other. Compare each other’s stories. In what world can one live in if they can’t respect the fact that everyone comes from a different walk of life and they all look different for everyone.7
Ultimately, The Freedom Writers Diary shows that writing in itself is absolutely a form of resistance. What I mean is that around the world, there are cultures that are not allowed to be educated. They are punished for doing so. There are several ways you can go about this. Through stories like The Handmaid’s Tale, I am Malala, articles based in sub-Saharan Africa where women’s rights to be educated are removed. There are so many avenues you can take to help our kids see that it truly is a privilege to be educated. A privilege that so many people here in America take for granted. Resistance can be looked at in a multitude of ways. Proving that you are better than what society says you are. Sometimes it doesn’t come from society, maybe it comes from your own family. Maybe it does come from the classroom. I fully intend to inform my children that resistance really does begin in the classroom. Loving yourself enough to want to be educated. Striving to be better than what your community says you will be. Telling yourself that your limits are not defined by your surroundings.8
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