Building Curriculum for Racial Justice

Session 5

Paul Allison, Christopher Rogers, Sam Reed — New Directions Secondary School, Bronx (Paul), Greene Street Friends School, Philadelphia (Chris), Beeber Middle School, Philadelphia (Sam)

Civil Rights leader, Rep. John Lewis inspires our thinking for this conversation.

In a Washington Post interview (25 Dec. 2014), he compares the 1965 Selma-Montgomery March with the recent Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter protests:

“What is happening is not like a firecracker where you just come and pop off and make a lot of noise, and you’re gone,” Lewis said. “It’s more like a pilot light that continues to burn.”

In this conversation we will ask: What's the pilot light in our curriculum that helps students to connect around important issues of race and justice in our time?

Another way to ask this question: How do we build curriculum, rituals, tools, and skills in modular, open, inspiring ways that will give students the permission to follow their passions, yet also invites them to go deep into important issues as committed and informed citizens?

We hope to learn from each others stories of building curriculum for racial justice in our classrooms.

Conversational Practice

We will invite open conversation, similar those we have had on Teachers Teaching Teachers in reference to Black Lives Matter: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY9e9zEmLwtPnN74JE8Z4RH_XtkbO67mG In addition, we will invite participants break out into stations and rotate. These stations will
-Participants share a word and create a word bank from station to station then share this at the end -Come back together and share the word bank. Word whip around? Synthesize through a poem.
-Close with writing, sharing, commitments and sharing tools.