Race and Literacy Teaching Activity

 

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmIfdJRsSGQ

This is a picture book for children ages 4-8 years old that is about a young black girl, Grace, who is faced with common realities in school due to her skin color and gender. She wants to be Peter Pan in the school play, but her classmates tell her she cannot because she is a black girl. This book helps bring attention to anti-racism because it shows the story of Grace feeling unwelcome and outcasted due to the color of her skin. Her grandma helps teach her that she can be anything she sets her mind to, despite how others make her feel. The comments of her classmates are very common for children to say because they are naive and lack understanding of what racism really is. Grace ends up getting the part of Peter Pan in the play because of her amazing acting skills, which was what the role was about. The children who made those hurtful comments in the beginning end up realizing how amazing Grace really was at playing Peter Pan compared to everyone else. 

If you were an educator, it is important to be aware of the stereotypes this book addresses. You would not want your students hearing racist statements in a classroom setting because they might get the idea to use them with their peers. It is very crucial to address the negativity behind those statements along with the hurtful effects they can cause. 

After reading the book, I was able to evaluate different aspects of the story. The illustrations were clear of stereotypes, tokenism, and the main character is black and plays a leading role. The story line does contain a gender stereotype, but it is challenged. Grace’s self-image is limited when she is faced with a racist statement, but it is also challenged in the end. Overall, this picture book provides students with the opportunity to reflect on racism because it gives real examples of racist comments made by children and then it challenges them. Grace’s mother and grandmother help Grace understand that her gender and skin color are not reasons to limit her success, which she ultimately understands in the end. 

To elaborate on the themes in this book, you can do an All About Me Collage activity with your students. Give students a bunch of old magazines and tell them to flip through each page and cut out objects or words that describe them. To introduce the lesson after you read the book, show an example of Grace’s collage that you made for her so students have an idea of what to do.They can then create their own collage that will be hung up on one of your classroom walls! This is a great activity for students to reflect on what they just learned and develop an appreciation for everyone’s differences. 

According to Howard’s, Why Race and Culture Matter, “critical self-reflection on race and culture within a diverse cultural context requires education practitioners and researchers to engage in one of the more difficult processes for all individuals: honest self-assessment, critique, and evaluation of one’s own thoughts, behaviors, cultural patterns, methods of expression, and cultural knowledge and ways of being,” (Howard 84).

Posted on July 27, 2023 at 10:39 p.m.

References

Howard, T.C. (2010) Ch. 6 Why Race and Culture Matter.

The Role of Culture in Education

    

    When it comes time to introduce culture into the classroom, it can be very challenging. Students may be in a state of vulnerability that they are not quite used to, or they may feel uncomfortable discussing such a sensitive topic with peers. There are many different strategies to adapt to your classroom that can help with these feelings. Some include offering consistent and open discussions as a class, acknowledging and respecting every student, practicing cultural sensitivity, incorporating diversity into lesson plans, and much more. For this particular post, I am going to choose a lesson I found online and evaluate its criteria to see if it is suitable for use in my future classroom!

    The name of this activity is titled, “Native Americans Today,” and this is a 3rd-5th grade lesson that should take about two 50-minute sessions to complete. If you would like to read through the complete lesson in detail, I will include a link below to check it out! The objectives of this lesson state, “Students will:

• participate in critical discussions about their knowledge of Native Americans, understanding that Native people are part of contemporary America. 
• work cooperatively in small groups. 
• access and gather information about Native Americans from Websites. 
• share information with others through discussion.”

    Overall, I think the lesson does address the objectives because the students are required to use their background knowledge to participate in a class discussion revolving around the terms, “Native American,” “American Indian,” and “Indian.” They are then supposed to research each term and compare/contrast them collaboratively. This is a great technique that requires students to make connections with their peers while also having to create a product that reflects these connections. I also believe this lesson helps students reflect on stereotypes, although, I am not sure if it helps challenge stereotypes. The beginning of the lesson instructs students to make generalizations or assumptions about three different cultures, even though it doesn’t say that specifically. If I were to adapt this lesson in my classroom, I would not include this part of the lesson and would instead provide a brief description of each term that students could then compare/contrast with one another. I would also include a section that evaluates their learning in addition to the Venn Diagram they will need to fill out. Besides that, I think this is a great lesson to incorporate into an upper elementary classroom, and I believe students would develop a better understanding of these specific terms after completing this activity. There is also a lot of variety with this lesson because you can switch out the terms for other similar groups of individuals that tend to be generalized into one group.

    According to Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools: Closing the Achievement Gap in America's Classrooms, Howard states that a strategy for teachers to use in their classrooms in order to use students' cultural knowledge in a meaningful and personal way is called cultural modeling. This is a framework used to "address the demands of complex problem solving in the various subject matters," (Howard 52). This lesson also incorporates cultural modeling which is something I completely side with!

Posted on July 20, 2023 at 9:46 p.m.

References

Lesson: https://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/native-americans-today 

Howard, T.C. (2010) Ch. 3 Culture Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools: Closing the Achievement Gap in America's Classrooms.

Identity in the Classroom

    When it comes to introducing identity to students, it can be an awkward and sensitive topic to discuss if the appropriate steps aren't taken beforehand. There needs to be a safe and welcoming space to discuss and collaborate. There also needs to be a conversation about respecting other cultures, backgrounds, languages, etc. that are different from yours. I want all of my students to be able to express their unique identities with confidence and certainty, and I do not want anyone to feel embarrassed, nervous, or unsure of sharing who they are and where they came from. I also want my students to know that everyone is included in my classroom even though we are all different. 

A picture book that can help introduce these ideas is titled, The Town of Turtle, by Michelle Cuevas. This book is about a turtle who feels lonely and decides to decorate his shell to feel more at home. This leads to him building an entire town with a pond, a school, houses, and parks. After all his hard work, he falls asleep. Turtle awakes to all kinds of different individuals moving to the town he created, and eventually, he has made lots of new friends in his new home. This book is a great introduction to identity because it begins by describing the feeling of being lonely and in a place that may not feel like home. This is a feeling a lot of students may have, especially if they are transferring from a different school, do not speak English fluently, are having trouble making friends, or are just feeling shy. One thing I like about this book is that it introduces multiple different identities of the individuals who move to the turtle's town. It emphasizes the diverse community of individuals that love the turtle's town and want to be friends with him, which is something a lot of students may enjoy reading about. This helps bring a feeling of warmth and comfort to those who may be exhibiting the same emotions as the turtle at the beginning of the book, and they can realize that they can make friends with people who may look or act differently than them. 

To elaborate on the ideas in this book, there are a couple of instructional activities students can complete to feel more connected with themselves and their peers. For example, you can have students complete a Where I Am From Poem which is a template of sentence stems and/or questions that ask students about their identities. These can include, special foods you like to eat with your family, ways you like to spend your time, important events in your life, smells or sounds in the places you grew up, street names you remember, and many more. This is a great way to have students think about their own identities in detail because it helps them develop an appreciation for where they came from. It also helps nurture positive social identities while inviting students to express their pride in a safe space. 

Another activity students can complete is a Social Identity Wheel which is a worksheet that students can fill out and then use to share with others in a class discussion. This worksheet allows students to number off categories of identity based on a rubric that includes, identities you think about the most often, least often, identities you want to learn more about, identities that have the strongest effect on how you perceive yourself, and how you perceive others. Once they have filled out their wheel, they can group up with other students who had similar rankings as they did which helps direct discussions based on different perspectives of identity. This activity is great because it helps describe students’ membership in multiple identity groups when they may have not even realized how similar they were to their peers. 

The basis of a safe, inclusive, and respectful classroom comes from these principles, and without them, there is a higher risk of stereotype threats and deficit thinking. According to Howard in Why race and culture matter in Schools, “the ramifications of the racial stigma continue to influence students today, not only regarding opportunities provided, but also in terms of psychological well-being,” (Howard 32). Race and culture are important concepts to discuss in classrooms for this very reason. I do not want my students to be negatively affected by the stigma of race and the false generalizations of themselves and their peers. Being able to generate thoughtful and personal class discussions can help prevent these issues from arising in the classroom. Many thoughts and assumptions can be made about a child’s culture, race, or even language, although they are simply “stereotypes of epic proportions,” (Valencia 92). Educators have a specific duty of ensuring every single student feels welcome and valued in their classroom, and that is why stereotypes and assumptions must be discussed at the beginning of the school year, so students do not have to feel like the lonely turtle all year long. 

 

Posted on July 13, 2023 at 11:10 p.m.

References

https://assets2.hrc.org/welcoming-schools/documents/WS_Lesson_Where_Im_From_Poetry.pdf

https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/social-identity-wheel/

Howard, T.C. (2010) Why race and culture matter in schools 

Valencia, R.R. & Black, M. (2002). “Mexican Americans don’t value education! On the basis of the myth, mythmaking, and debunking.

Links to an external site.” Journal of Latinos and Education, 1(2), 81-103.

Who I Am

The things that make me, me, change every day. I used to hate change when I was a child, but now, I almost get anxious thinking about everything staying the same. Maybe it’s a part of growing up that makes me want to try new things, gain new experiences, meet new people, and even live in new places. I have learned how to play the piano, how to properly cut open a pomegranate, and how to teach English language learners in the classroom. I have gained this new love for adventure and trying new things. I love the person I have grown to become, especially when it comes to my passion for teaching. This was the one thing in my life that has never changed. 

I think everyone has multiple different identities. As for myself, I am a daughter, a student, a friend, a sister, a camp guide, and a soon-to-be educator. All of these identities come from my family and the people/places I surround myself with. I grew up in a split home ever since I was 3, I loved going back home to Colorado to see family, I participated in a lot of extracurricular activities, and I spent a lot of time with my friends. I became who I am now because of the situations I lived through. These are all of the things everyone could easily notice about me if they knew me. Although, as for the things they couldn’t see about me, there were a lot! I suffered with anxiety when I was younger after my parents divorce, I was extremely hard on myself in school, I did not have a close relationship with my dad or sister, and I lost a lot of close friends in my childhood. These were struggles I had to face alone because I was too stubborn to reach out to anyone in my family or friend group. Because of that stubbornness, I had to force myself to get out of that hole and open up to the people who loved me. That is also why I am who I am to this day. 

In a societal perspective, I am also a young, white female. This comes with a lot of privilege that I can sometimes forget to think about in certain situations. It’s difficult to live in someone else’s shoes and experience what life is like for them when you are not aware of this privilege. That is why identity is so important to me because I never want people to assume I am unaware of the privilege I currently have. I often think about this when I picture my future as an elementary school teacher. It scares me that I will take advantage of this unknowingly, and make my students feel uncomfortable in the classroom for any reason. I want to create a safe space for everyone of all identities, and to do this, I think Dorinda Carter gave a good piece of advice for future teachers like me. She stated, “Flexibility is central to antiracist instruction; as long as the educator consciously considers whether her moves are harmful or helpful to the student in the learning process, she will do better by her students,” (Carter 234). 

I have attached a picture of my identity down below. This activity made me realize a lot about myself and I was able to reflect on who I am as a person and how far I’ve come. Thank you for enjoying my first blog post! Stay tuned for more to come!

References

Carter, D. J. (2008). On spotlighting and ignoring racial group members in the classroom. In M. Pollock (Ed.), Everyday antiracism: Getting real about race in school (pp.230-234). New York, NY: The New Press. 

July 6, 2023 at 9:45 p.m.