Coaching and
Co-Planning with Social Justice in Mind (cont.)
During our pre-observation meeting, we discussed Gen’s plans
to launch an upcoming unit with her Upper II students (5th/6th
grade) investigating U.S. History from Columbus’ voyage through the American
Revolution. She expressed a need to
depart from the traditional approach to learning about Colonial America that is
common not only at our school, but at the other schools we have taught at as
well. Typically, the class will read a novel such as My Brother Sam is Dead, learn some important dates and facts as
they investigate some aspects of the people and events surrounding the American
Revolution, and culminate with projects displayed or with oral reports where
the students dress up as their favorite Revolutionary figure. While students
and teachers alike look forward to those kinds of activities, Gen felt that
there are often some missed opportunities that could be explored if this period
of U.S. History were viewed through a social justice lens.
Already my perceptions of being the coach expanded from
being a consultant and observer to being a collaborator and a co-planner. From
the start, we recognized the potential to construct a unit around the four big
ideas that our team chose to emphasize throughout our teaching, or what our
team began to recognize as Social Justice Pillars—Equity, Power, Authority, and
Access. In the unit planning process used
at the Lab School, the over-arching questions come after identifying the big
ideas. Looking at U.S. History through a social justice lens, it is important
for students to realize that history is not just a series of dates and
events. It is a series of stories
told. So Gen anchored her unit with
these questions:
“Whose story is being told?”
“From what perspective is the story
being told?”
“Who decides which events are
important?”
“Why is this so?”
“Whose story is not being told and
why is this so?
We then brainstormed a list of resources like Rethinking Columbus, primary source
materials from the National Archives, and interviews with experts like a parent
who was a historian. Talking it
through in this way lead Gen to develop a unit that which emphasized taking a
historical perspectives approach that included creating a time-line of U.S.
history and introducing the idea of multiple perspective taking.
What Do We Think We
Know about U.S. History?
I was able to observe the launch lesson and a follow-up
lesson a week or two later. For the launch lesson, Gen began with an elegantly
designed KWL when she posed the question, “What do we think we know about how
the United States came to be a country?” She then invited the students to take
2 or 3 post-it notes and write a significant event in U.S. History (from as far
back as they could think of to the present) on each one. As the students
completed the task, she directed them to place the post-it notes along a
horizontal line drawn on a long piece of butcher paper, overlapping post-its if
they named the same event as another student.
When they all got to the rug around the butcher paper, Gen asked the
students to arrange the events in sequential order. This initiated some
interesting conversations among the students, like the order of certain wars—a
student wanted to place World War I before the Revolutionary War—and a question
as to when slavery started. They really had difficulty placing the Civil Rights
Movement so far away from the end of the Civil War. Throughout all of the
discussion, Gen was in the background, not providing information or settling
debates, but asking provocative questions like, “Why is it that so many of us
know of the same events?” and “Who are the key players or famous people we know
associated with these events?” With that last question, she listed the names of
the people the children volunteered on the board and then asked the students if
they noticed anything that the people had in common. “They are powerful,” “Some
are good and some are bad,” “They are famous,” were some of the students’
comments. Then it was time for recess and to close the lesson, Gen commented on
the lively discussion and that they were going to continue to question,
discuss, and debate as they fill in the gaps in knowledge on their timeline.
In the debrief, what was evident was that, for a group of
10-12 year olds, they could name quite a few historical events that they
considered significant, beginning mostly from the American Revolution to the
introduction of the iPhone and Barack Obama’s presidency. She had probed their
background knowledge and created a timeline as an artifact to organize their
study of U.S. History. However, when looking at the timeline and their list of
historical figures, although Betsy Ross and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made it
onto the list, it was overwhelmingly white and male. It was clear that the
students lacked information about pre-colonial America as well as the roles of
women and people of color in establishing the U.S. as a country. Gen’s next
steps were to invite the students to revisit the list and discover who was missing
and therefore whose stories might not be getting told. Then ask the students to generate new
questions based on what they would like to learn about U.S. History, now that
they have started the timeline.
Power and Equity in
the Americas—Who Gets to Tell the History?
The next lesson I was able to observe took
place a few lessons after the launch, so the students had already gathered
information about pre-Columbian peoples in the Americas. Gen had planned to
introduce the idea of multiple perspectives with the arrival of Columbus in the
Americas, so she opened the lesson with the question, “What do you know about
Christopher Columbus?” It was a fairly straightforward question but when the
first student to respond said, “He didn’t discover it first…it makes me think
of the people who were already here,” the debate was on. The next student said,
“I disagree. They [the Native Americans] weren’t in charge,” and another
student piggy-backed by saying, “They were just here.” Gen asked a clarifying
question here, “How did the Native Americans get here and who remembers why
[they came]?” Several students were able to recall that the first peoples on
the continent were in search of food and following the animals they hunted.
Then Gen probed, “Is it legitimate to say discover? Who
decides who has discovered what?” In response a student said, “It was already
inhabited when Columbus came,” which generated agreement from a few other
students. That was until another student commented, “In my opinion, without
Christopher Columbus, we wouldn’t be here. The Indians didn’t claim the land.
They didn’t think it was special.” Another student concurred, “The Native
Americans weren’t connected like the Europeans all over the world. The Native
Americans were not connected, not in communication with anyone.” The
conversation continued a little more and then Gen recapped the discussion thus
far, restated the various positions the students had taken, and recorded their
statements on the board.
Once she was done writing their statements, Gen showed the
students the book, Encounter, by Jane Yolen. Encounter is a strikingly illustrated book told from the point of
view of a older Taino man who is recalling how he perceived Christopher
Columbus’ arrival to his island home as a young boy. Gen asked the students to,
“Think about all the things you’ve said so far as I read.” During the reading,
Gen provided opportunities for students to process new information by turning
and talking to one another briefly. After reading, Gen prompted the students to
connect what they had just heard with their discussions so far. Some of the students volunteered, “There were
good guys and bad guys in the story. The Taino had a way of life.” “There were
miscommunications, they had a different language.” “They [the Taino] were giving gifts, but
Christopher Columbus wanted more.” Once again, it was time to wrap up the
lesson.
In our debrief, I told Gen it was clear that they had spent
some time as a class addressing some of the over-arching questions we posed at
the our initial pre-observation meeting. The students were obviously more
comfortable taking a stance and providing a rationale for their position. Gen
saw her next steps to be to return some of the themes in Encounter and challenge the students to question why the more
popular version of this story is so different than the one Jane Yolen tells and
the impact that has on the way we learn history.
In reflecting on what I was able to observe in Gen’s
classroom, I hope what is most evident here is that students can learn to look
at history with a critical eye. They can question the dominant narratives by
considering multiple perspectives and uncovering history through the voices of
those whose stories have been missing in those popular stories. History is more engaging when students are
able to discuss, debate, and question.
The students in Gen’s class demonstrated skill as social scientists as
they thoughtfully agreed and disagreed with each other during their discussions.
History is more meaningful when students can grapple with difficult concepts
and draw conclusions on their own. Gen’s skill in facilitating discussion and
letting the students’ comments guide the direction of the conversation—probing
with follow-up questions, clarifying or redirecting, or just listening when
needed—gave the students the opportunity to construct meaning for
themselves.