Thinking about Baltimore
I taught sixth grade for one year. History and Science. (Integrated Science Exploration, or ISE, as you will.) The guiding question for the year in all the classes in that grade is, "how do living things adapt to changes in their environment?" From a science perspective, that's a lot of cool stuff on adaptations and such. In history, it was a really interesting lens to think about New England colonization (how the colonists adapted to the physical environment, and how the Wampanoag and the colonists adapted to each other) and US American slavery--specifically, what were the physical, emotional, social, and psychological challenges and changes faced by black slaves and how did they adapt, cope, and persevere in response to them.
I have a much richer vocabulary and knowledge around oppression now than I did then. I think there are a million other things I would want to do with the unit now, but I'm still really proud of the work that we did together. From a teaching perspective, kids worked in groups to make these giant "posters", but really, they were visual representations of their work and thinking. They had to identify challenges and the ways people "adapted", make connections, put into categoris, use a large variety of research texts, etc. etc. They're still 6th graders, still grappling with an incredibly complex topic, but the seeds that were planted were powerful and important. (I hope.)
Right now though, I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about being a teacher and introducing 6th graders--11 and 12 year-olds--to the existent of slavery in general. Of the hate, pain, and inhumanity that is the institution and reality of slavery. And the question always is, "Why didn't they fight back?"
(And then we had conversations about when people did fight back, the different ways they fought back, the consequences, the ways power and control were institutionalized . . . )
In the wake of what is happening in Baltimore, the "why didn't they fight back" is what plays in my head over and over again and the deep connections between history and the present and how they inform each other. How I want everyone to view the events in our country from the perspective of a 6th grader: thie killing of black people by police is a blatant act of injustice, that injustice should not be tolerated because human beings should never be treated like that, and it is logical, just, and right to fight to stop it. (And then the teacher in me also thinks about it from the other perspective: how the current events can create real empathy for black slaves and demonstrate how powerful instituional and internalized oppression can be at silencing the individual and the masses.)
The other teaching moment that keeps popping up again and again is when we took all the 11th and 12th graders to see 12 Years a Slave. We had the whole theatre to ourselves (I mean, there were almost 150 of us) at, like, 10:30 in the morning. When Solomon finally goes after John Tibeats, the whole theater CHEERED. And really, that is simply the illustration of how we (society, the white narrative) like the neatness of blatant interpersonal racism in history, the moments when there is a clear villian that the good guy can fight. And I think the Red Summer in Chicago, the refusal of the police to arrest the white men that stoned and killed a black boy who had been swimming in Lake Michigan. And how we still refer to it as the Chicago Rce Riot. How history is still so flawed.
I guess what I want to say is: my hope is that people view this moment (and the last few years) like sixth graders learning about slavery, like a theater full of high schoolers: this moment is necessary, human, and long overdue. That there is so much complexity and thought needed as we navigate our world, but there are some things that are simple: what is happening is wrong, and we must fight back.
I have a much richer vocabulary and knowledge around oppression now than I did then. I think there are a million other things I would want to do with the unit now, but I'm still really proud of the work that we did together. From a teaching perspective, kids worked in groups to make these giant "posters", but really, they were visual representations of their work and thinking. They had to identify challenges and the ways people "adapted", make connections, put into categoris, use a large variety of research texts, etc. etc. They're still 6th graders, still grappling with an incredibly complex topic, but the seeds that were planted were powerful and important. (I hope.)
Right now though, I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about being a teacher and introducing 6th graders--11 and 12 year-olds--to the existent of slavery in general. Of the hate, pain, and inhumanity that is the institution and reality of slavery. And the question always is, "Why didn't they fight back?"
(And then we had conversations about when people did fight back, the different ways they fought back, the consequences, the ways power and control were institutionalized . . . )
In the wake of what is happening in Baltimore, the "why didn't they fight back" is what plays in my head over and over again and the deep connections between history and the present and how they inform each other. How I want everyone to view the events in our country from the perspective of a 6th grader: thie killing of black people by police is a blatant act of injustice, that injustice should not be tolerated because human beings should never be treated like that, and it is logical, just, and right to fight to stop it. (And then the teacher in me also thinks about it from the other perspective: how the current events can create real empathy for black slaves and demonstrate how powerful instituional and internalized oppression can be at silencing the individual and the masses.)
The other teaching moment that keeps popping up again and again is when we took all the 11th and 12th graders to see 12 Years a Slave. We had the whole theatre to ourselves (I mean, there were almost 150 of us) at, like, 10:30 in the morning. When Solomon finally goes after John Tibeats, the whole theater CHEERED. And really, that is simply the illustration of how we (society, the white narrative) like the neatness of blatant interpersonal racism in history, the moments when there is a clear villian that the good guy can fight. And I think the Red Summer in Chicago, the refusal of the police to arrest the white men that stoned and killed a black boy who had been swimming in Lake Michigan. And how we still refer to it as the Chicago Rce Riot. How history is still so flawed.
I guess what I want to say is: my hope is that people view this moment (and the last few years) like sixth graders learning about slavery, like a theater full of high schoolers: this moment is necessary, human, and long overdue. That there is so much complexity and thought needed as we navigate our world, but there are some things that are simple: what is happening is wrong, and we must fight back.