My co-librarian and I have been approached by our administration to collaborate with our humanities, English, and history departments to develop and execute an anti-racism curriculum. For example, at Seattle’s Garfield High School, some 1,000 students, led by the Black Student Union (BSU), walked out the day after the non-indictment of Wilson was announced. It is also important to provide a multiperspective view of historical events. PW KidsCast: A Conversation with Jimmy Dunne. . Looking at the themes of American history, our course starts at Reconstruction and comes up to the modern day. BrainPop has some new resources appropriate for elementary students, as well. The officer who called in the shooting described Tamir to the dispatcher as a “Black male, maybe 20.”, Overestimating the age, size, and culpability of Black children is a widespread phenomenon, according to The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children, based on research led by Phillip Atiba Goff and Matthew Christian Jackson of UCLA. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was originally created by queer Black women activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi as a call to action after George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin in July 2013. This is a subtler form of violence.”, The murder of Tamir Rice exposes a connection between individual racism and structural racism with important implications for teachers. All students need to feel safe in order to address these historic issues. Any time teachers or administrators see Black children as older than they are, “just being teenagers” (or pre-teens, or little kids) becomes something threatening that has to be controlled or disciplined. I am the CEO of Command Education, a premier education and college admissions consulting firm in NYC. There was only one student in the school who was African American and two who were African. According to reporting by the Nation‘s George Joseph and others, student activists of the Baltimore Algebra Project held a die-in when their local school board voted to shut down the first of five schools. I think an effective way to teach this as a curriculum is an immersion in the topic. I highlighted a variety of books from different authors of color as well as nonfiction books that highlight important events in history. “We contacted some of their clubs and organizations, for instance the National Council of Negro Women, the Collegiate 100, to see if there were any opportunities for collaboration.”, RMU faculty and staff were enthusiastic about teaming up, and things were off to a good start, according to Hathaway. Those are all really important questions that I hope our students unravel. “But what we realized is that most of this was coming from the student perspective and didn’t have enough support from the adults. However, through this conversation I came to the realization that, although these issues are uncomfortable, they are essential conversations that we need to have to move forward as a country. This proved to be successful, as the president resigned shortly after. And our students know that. It’s time to put aside the test prep and build a school-to-justice pipeline. Students share links to petitions, offer advice for safe protesting practices, create templates for emailing authorities, list bail funds and black-owned restaurants and businesses in need of support, and share videos documenting instances of police brutality at protests. And there is no doubt that many individual police officers need anti-bias training and to be held responsible for their actions. When Michelle Alexander says mass incarceration is “the new Jim Crow,” she insists that the racist structures that have existed since slavery have mutated and changed, but they have not been eradicated. The waking up that America has done in the past couple of months—something that us as youth get to witness and get to be a part of—has been extremely powerful.”. When his 14-year-old sister ran over, she was tackled to the ground and handcuffed. Stop closing schools in Black neighborhoods. Erin RuggieroEnglish TeacherMoon Area High SchoolMoon Township, Pa. In a phone interview with Teen Vogue, Kiazolu said, “At the end of the day, whether I sit at home or I’m on the front lines, I could be killed just for the color of my skin. Team-building activities and class time spent getting to know one another will build empathy skills that students will need as the school year progresses. University of Missouri at Columbia in 2015, students walked out of their high schools, In 2018, students across the nation staged “walkouts” in honor of the victims of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Beth RaffLibrary Media SpecialistMt. It’s been a really powerful tool that we hope to incorporate into our curriculum. Today, many are at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement. Instead, I used the [Black Lives Matter] movement to tie back to a previous unit on slam poetry. I am the CEO of Command Education, a premier education and college admissions consulting firm in NYC. The purpose of the program is to increase project-based learning and personalization in a school setting. Check out resources to help facilitate conversations about race, including classroom appropriate lesson plans, guides on how to have tough conversations with peers and students, and more. . Black Lives Matter At School advocates for a week of actions in schools, in which educators and members of the school community can engage in conversations to work towards a more socially just education system, especially for students of color. Given the disproportionate impact state violence has on Black lives, we understand that when Black people in this country get free, the benefits will be wide-reaching and transformative for society as a whole. One key question is: how do we empathize and understand other people’s stories? Black Lives Matter NL has seen immense support in St. John's, according to organizers, but a pandemic is a difficult time to forge ahead with fundraisers and demonstrations. They also reviewed age-appropriate articles on Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice. My approach has always been to integrate important topics into what I’m teaching. (Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images). A civil disobedience demonstration that closed down the federal building in Oakland during Martin Luther King Jr. weekend highlighted the connections. Many young people have participated in such protests or marches in recent months, and many others have seen them on TV or social media. by Beverly Daniel Tatum, and So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo can help you start. History is being made today by teachers planning Black Student Lives Matter forums and die-ins, advocating for hiring more Black teachers, and participating in many other actions around the country. The board fled, and the students took over their chairs to lead a community forum on the closures. WWD Beauty Inc asked four students their thoughts on quarantine beauty, the Black Lives Matter movement, and how brand values parlay into their spending habits. We determined that it is just as important that we encourage dialogue among our students; we encourage openness, we encourage knowledge. Harvard’s Project Implicit is a great way for teachers and students to become aware of their biases. Tamir was only 12 years old when police showed up at the Cleveland park where he was playing with a toy gun and shot him down within two seconds of their arrival. Today, these activists have turned to the streets and to social media to amplify their voices and to call attention to structural racism and police brutality across the country. And I hope I can bring just enough context to let them see the struggle, that the world you experience today did not come free, and that we’re going to need to apply this in the future. . A protest from Katy ISD high school students in Houston planned for Thursday has “grown into a Black Lives Matter: Houston-sanctioned event with a projected attendance of more than 1,000 people.” The growth of the protest has been attributed to social media, where news of the event spread quickly and led organizers to realize they would need to move the event to a larger venue to accommodate a larger crowd. I am in talks with my teaching partner about how we can best address these prevailing issues in our English classes. As anti-racist teachers and students, we need to expand the slogan to include: When activists staged a Black Lives Matter die-in in Detroit last December, Will Daniels, from United Students Against Sweatshops, told the Nation: “As a Black student, my rationale for doing the die-in was that structural racism causes not only police brutality, but also the starving of majority Black schools. The workshops usually ran for an hour, leaving options toward the end for students to comment or ask questions. Over the summer, I participated in a professional development session led by an administrator to discuss The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore. Social rights activist Desmond Tutu once stated, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Students and young activists throughout history and across the country have been anything but neutral or quiet. And Booksource offers an inclusive library checklist. Take, for instance, the case that unraveled at the University of Missouri at Columbia in 2015. Babson Students for Black Lives Matter. Definitely Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. Voting is one way, protest is another way—what are the different ways in which you can amplify your voice? It was met with a lot of enthusiasm from our administration. Sometimes, it has to be a cycle and not just a one-off lesson. Especially in this age of misinformation and disinformation, it’s been very important. We’ve been creating it throughout the summer and into the beginning of the school year so that we can launch it with our incoming freshmen. Raise the Black Lives Matter movement with other teachers at our schools and in our unions. A recent ProPublica report found that “Blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.”. When pro football players ran onto the field with their hands up in a demonstration of solidarity with the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protests that followed Michael Brown’s murder, some people in the audience supported them; others were opposed. The first thing I know I will do is to have students write about their thoughts and experiences with these matters. Karen Compton 7th Grade English TeacherGEMS Dubai American AcademyAl Barsha, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. They were a part of the process—identifying the problem, self-reflecting, and then creating an actionable plan. Students and educators for the BLM movement have also gathered to found Black Lives Matter at School, an organization dedicated to addressing and transforming the racial injustices present in the education system. Four months later, 450,000 students protested segregation in the streets of New York. Students and educators for the BLM movement have also gathered to found Black Lives Matter at School, an organization dedicated to addressing and … I think that many teachers have begun the work on a personal level. Some of my students, especially students of color, have no choice but to learn from an early age what these things [racism, Black Lives Matter, civil rights struggles] are. . College, high school, and even middle school students have staged protests and school walkouts in cities around the country. . As Alicia Garza, one of the movement’s originators, explains: When we say Black Lives Matter, we are talking about the ways in which Black people are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity.