Teaching in this New Age of Resistance

Trump Syllabus K12: Lesson Plans for Teaching During this New Age of Resistance (#TrumpSyllabusK12)

DECEMBER 12, 2016

tags: #TrumpSyllabusK12, donald trump, electoral college, Elementary school, High school, hillary clinton, history, sanctuary spaces, teaching, White privilege, white supremacy

created & compiled by Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Ph.D.

with Alicia Moore, Ph.D. & Regina Lewis, Ph.D.

Lesson Plans for Teaching During this New Age of Resistance (#TrumpSyllabusK12)

#TrumpSyllabusK12 is a compilation of lesson plans written by and for K-12th grade teachers (and college educators) for teaching about the 2016 presidential campaign; about resistance and revolution; about white privilege and white supremacy; about state-sanctioned violence and sanctuary classrooms; about fake news and Facebook; and, about freedom and justice. It is designed to transform our classrooms into liberated nonsexist nonmisogynistic anti-racist anti-classist spaces without any boundaries or borders. It is meant to liberate and free our students by providing them with lesson plans to challenge them to become global critical thinkers. We invite you to join with us as we actively work to push back against the establishment of this New World Order and we draw our line in the sand and work to liberate and change the world, one student at a time.

Each lesson plan is presented in its entirety and includes Warm Up and Group Activities, Essential Questions and Objectives, Resources, an Essay or an Overview, and they connect directly to the Common Core Standards for Math, History, or Language Arts; and, to the National Council of Social Studies Standards.

Please note that lesson plans are still being accepted at griotonthego@gmail.com and are being added daily. 

(ES=Elementary School; MS=Middle School; HS=High School)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Opinion Editorial: America is a Divided Nation

-Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Ph.D.

2. Tips for Facilitating Classroom Discussions on Sensitive Topics

-Alicia Moore, Ph.D., and Molly Deshaies

SECTION ONE: EXAMINING CAMPAIGN 2016

3. The Electoral College vs The Popular Vote: Who Should Choose OUR President? (HS)

-Jocelyn Thomas

4. Exploring the (New) Political Climate (MS)

-Nadiera Young

5. Exploring the Reasons Why Trump Won (MS/HS)

-Gloria Ladson-Billings, Ph.D.

6. Exploring the Fake News Cycle (MS)

-Baba Ayinde Olumiji

7. Using Photographs to Explore Differing Political Perspectives (ES)

-Alicia Moore, Ph.D., and Angela Davis Johnson

8. Trump and Gender Bias, By the Numbers (HS)

-Kelly Cross Ph.D.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (POETRY):

9. Oya for President (to be read OutLoud)

-Alexis Pauline Gumbs

10. Mourning in America: A Black Woman’s Blues Song

-Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Ph.D.

SECTION TWO: POLITICS IN THE “POST-TRUMP” NARRATIVE

11. Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Trump Election: What Do We Do Now? (MS/HS)

-Sarah Militz-Frielink and Isabel Nunez, Ph.D.

12. From “I Have A Dream” to “I Dream of a World”: Steps to Creating a Sanctuary Classroom (All Grades)

-Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Ph.D.

13. Hope, Action, & Freedom in the Times of Uncertainty (HS)

-Conra D. Gist,Ph.D., Angela Davis Johnson, & Tyson E.J. Marsh, Ph.D.

14. Writing White Privilege, Race, and Citizenship: Reading Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, and Walt Whitman (HS)

-Ileana Jiménez

15. A Pedagogy of Resistance in the Struggle Against White Supremacist State-Sanctioned Violence* (MS/HS)

-Tyson E.J. Marsh, Ph.D.

16. Lessons in Black Feminist Criminology: Disrupting State and Sexualized Violence Against Women and Girls #GrabtheEmpowerment (HS)

-Nishaun T. Battle, Ph.D.

17. Giving Voice & Making Space: Dismantling the Education Industrial Complex in an Effort to Free Our Black Girls* (MS/HS)

-Aja Reynolds & Stephanie Hicks

18. Exploring the “Crisis” in Black Education from a Post-White Orientation* (MS/HS)

-Marcus Croom

19. The African American Saga: From Enslavement to Life in a Color-Blind Society (Or Racism Without Race)*(HS)

-Yolanda Abel, Ed.D., and LeRoy Johnson

20. #Evolution or Revolution: Exploring Social Media through Revelations of Familiarity* (HS)

-Kimberly Edwards-Underwood, Ph.D.

21. Replace Fear with Curiosity: Using Photographs and Poetry to Process Election 2016 (ES)

-Tracy Kent-Gload

22. #WeGotNext: Black Youth Activism and the Rise of #BlackLivesMatter* (HS/MS) **NEW**

-Sekou Franklin

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

23. Steps to Combating Anti-Muslim Bullying in Schools

-Mariam Durani, Ph.D.

24. #ClintonSyllabus 1.0

-Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Ph.D., Alicia Moore, Ph.D., Regina Lewis, Ph.D.

25. Book: Black Lives Matter (Special Reports)

–Sue Bradford Edwards and Duchess Harris

*The following lesson plans were originally published in the Association for the Study of African American Life & History’s Black History Bulletin and are reprinted here by permission of the authors.

Pedagogy Matters: Administrator's reflection of culturally relevant approaches for a Middle School in Deep East Oakland

Pedagogy Matters

By Sunny Dawn

1/27/17

EDA 611A

“Organizations that only employ "people of their kind" in leadership and high visibility positions will not be tolerated by people of other cultures,”  (Short, 2002). This statement made in 2002 seems dated and obvious but I start my paper with it because of the current political climate we are all witnessing at the moment.   I  agree that not tolerating the ignorance of high visibility  positions is actually an understatement in regards to our students and educators reactions to our current  racist Trump leadership.  This paper will highlight who I work with daily in “Deep East Oakland” including the educators who advocate for them.  Issues around race and class will be a major focus for how I discuss our pedagogy and approach with major highlights of why when our current president was elected, the very next day we had over 80% of our students walk out and leave campus in a protest with other students from nearby campuses.

Our school is 63% Latino (or what we term “Raza”), 31% African American and 6% other or Pacific Islander/Asian.  98% of our students are low income and suffer from extreme poverty and violence.  We pride ourselves, at Elmhurst Community Prep, in our ability  to engage in hard issues  and conversations around race; data and teaching  with an equitable lens; and what it means to be a student of color in today’s America.  As educators, we  also dive in deep on discussions related to race and discipline. We just had a professional development this past week, where we had profound discussions around referrals and race (see slide 1 below).  We noted that we need to engage why our referral rate for African Americans, although dropped, is still disproportionate to our overall ECP population.

Proportionality in Referrals By Ethnicity,  2016-2017 (Betlach Presentation 1/25/17)

Professional Developments of the day that followed looking at this data included workshops (delivered by our Coaches/Admin.)

Social Emotional Learning

Teaching and the Brain

Trauma Informed Practice

Book Dive- For White Folks Who Teach in The Hood

We have many strategies in place to teach to this distinct population of Oakland whose graduation rate statistics show 50.6% for African American boys (SFGate 4/12/13).  We attempt to have teachers who represent the racial makeup of our school and take on mentoring roles.  As a staff,  we are engaging in work and year long inquiry with Zaretta Hammond’s text, Culturally Relevant Teaching Practices. Besides the mindset shift in approach to teaching, staff are also engaged in (including myself) “taking on” a focal student to dive in deep with and get to know beyond the day to day. This looks like not only being an advocate but  having a personal connection as to the inner workings of that student’s struggle and how it can inform our school’s  practice and that educator’s pedagogy or approach to learning.

Furthermore, our academic schedule attempts to have 2 levels of safety nets built into the daily schedule and curriculum. This is in the form of a targeted Study Skills class which meets students at their level at a given subject they are struggling in with a specialized instructor to meet their academic needs.

For example, even I have been inspired to be a part of this schedule. ( “All hands are on deck” at 5th period, no teachers have a prep period at this school wide intervention hour).  Since early literacy is in my wheelhouse as a past elementary teacher, I take a small group of 8th graders reading at 3rd grade level and work with them in a reading intervention group 4 times a week for 40 minutes.

Additionally, ECP  has a big focus on our advisory program and find that we use a lot of academic outreach strategies there. Including grouping advisories by gender, race, and grade level.  For example we have 2 Advisory groups for African American boys, 2 for Latina Girls, 1 for Latino boys, and even our Principal is invested in teaching an advisory course.

To meet the needs of our English Language learners we just recently added a new class that has an alternate schedule for 6th and 7th grade students who are not proficient in English, as determined by CELDT scores.  They are pulled from their history class and do the period in ELD instead.  We are hoping this changes the course we see of students with low SRI scores for ELL students as well as the overall harder time these students have  in all courses due to language acquisition issues.  

There are multiple ways we engage our families with ECP.  We are completely transparent in our mission and core values with  social justice as a main tenant we believe in.  When students are at risk for failure or are in hard times we are reaching out to families consistently to engage with interventions, updates and next steps.  Some families need counseling themselves for the trauma they experience in the neighborhood of 98th Ave. and so we have multiple counseling agencies as well student advocacy groups that work with us. There are so many organizations and programs trying to assist it takes entire full time position to manage all these people, our Community Programs Manager, who herself is Latina (and also teaches an advisory).  This week she also recently created a family event, called “Data Night”. This night was to educate parents on what it means for students to have a low SRI score, what SBAC means, what are cognitive rubric tasks.  This initial education will then be followed up by 1 on 1 appointments with myself on how we can target students where they are struggling and supports parents can do at home.

We all have heard the term it takes a village however when the village is assaulted by daily physical violence, environmental racism, and federal threats of deportation creating trust with students and families is the hardest thing to do at our school in our village.  

As I reflect in this paper on our school and the question of race and culture I most note It is hard to be the place that is a government institution and yet is also so supposed to be the safest place in the neighborhood.  Currently, I would say our students are in a state of fear especially our immigrant population who hear the rhetoric of our new President and can’t make sense of what it means for the families.  Now, is the most important time for us at our school site to be aware of who are students are (racially and culturally) and what we can do for them as the students too will  “not tolerate” this current racist regime.

It is this investment in the future of these students that drives me daily. It is this investment in educators who also do not tolerate the current trend of war on low income people that I come to work for daily. It is in this small story I share of a school not giving up on an educational system not set up to care for students who have daily trauma that I know Pedagogy matters.