Teach students about the history of the N-word, its harm and impact and engage them in exploring school-based scenarios.
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GRADE LEVEL: Middle School, High School In December of 2019, cases of pneumonia from an unknown cause were treated by Chinese authorities in Wuhan, China. Those cases, which are now known to have been caused by the coronavirus, or COVID-19, were the first documented cases of a pandemic. The coronavirus has spread to at least 147 countries since then. The first case in the United States was found in Washington State, on January 21st, 2020. Since then,…
GRADE LEVEL: Middle School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Speaking and Listening, Language Seeing a Positive Reflection of Yourself in Media
O’Plérou Grebet, a 22-year-old digital artist from the Ivory Coast, was recently in the news because he created his own emojis, reflecting life in contemporary West Africa. In an interview with CNN, he stated, "I noticed that media and most articles about Africa were talking about the bad sides of the continent only. They reduced the…
GRADE LEVEL: Elementary School, Middle School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, Language Does Entertainment Represent Our Increasingly Diverse Society?
In September 2019, Kodi Lee won America's Got Talent, which was a groundbreaking and emotional victory. Lee is a person who is Asian-American, blind and has autism. While he is one example of on-screen diversity, there is still more work to be done to ensure that the stories told reflect all people…
GRADE LEVEL: High School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Speaking and Listening, Language How Often Do You See or Experience Bias?
It seems like we are seeing more and more news and social media stories about people experiencing bias as they go about their daily lives—riding the subway, shopping in a store, dining in a restaurant and hanging out with friends. Indeed, the surge of such stories makes it seem like racism, sexism and other forms of bias and discrimination are becoming…
#WeNeedDiverseBooks: Shining a Light on the Lack of Diversity
In recent years, there has been a lot of attention given to the diversity of children’s books, shining a light on the lack of diversity and amplifying the need for more children’s and young adult literature that reflect our multicultural society. In 2014, an organization named We Need Diverse Books formed, following a regularly trending hashtag with the same name (#WeNeedDiverseBooks) that helped bring attention to…
GRADE LEVEL: Elementary School, Middle School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, Language Race and racism are topics that regularly come up in the news and populate our social media feeds. Whether we are discussing the lack of representation of people of color in media, immigration policies, the racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system or the events in Charlottesville, race is part of our public conversation. Race is an integral part of our…
GRADE LEVEL: High School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Speaking and Listening, Language The noose, also known as the “hangman’s noose,” has been in the news lately because there have been several noose-related incidents. Recent examples include nooses being found in K-12 public schools and colleges, the U.S. Mint, a construction site and ironically, an exhibit on segregation at the National Museum for African American History. The hangman's noose has come to…
GRADE LEVEL: Middle School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening In May 2017, it was reported that a charter school in Massachusetts was disciplining several Black girls, including sisters Deanna and Mya Cook, for wearing their hair in braids with extensions. The students had been given detentions and were prohibited from participating in after-school activities, including sports, for violating the school’s Hair/Make-Up policy, a policy that many, including…
GRADE LEVEL: High School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening Two studies published by the American Psychological Association (APA) about perceptions and race led to these headlines: “We Think Black Men are Bigger than White Men (Even When they're Not)” and “Black Boys Are Perceived as Older and Less Innocent than Their White Peers.” These studies, one in 2014 and the other in 2017, found that people’s perceptions of African-American…
Online hate speech, or cyberhate, is often in the news. There have been two recent news stories which highlight two very different responses to cyberhate. Old Navy aired a commercial that featured an interracial family (African-American and White) that instantly received a great deal of hate speech through emails, tweets and comments. Almost as quickly as this backlash ensued, supporters of the ad responded by posting comments and pictures of their interracial families using the hashtag …
In 2015, a video of a rough takedown and arrest, in which a police officer (referred to in schools as “School Resource Officer”) in a South Carolina school flips over a high school student and her desk, has brought the “School-to-Prison Pipeline” topic into the headlines. The School-to-Prison Pipeline refers to the school policies and procedures that drive many of our nation’s schoolchildren into a pathway that begins in school and ends in the criminal…
GRADE LEVEL: Middle School, High School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Writing, Speaking and Listening, Language Teaching Opportunity: Exploring the Electoral Process
Political debates can provide important learning opportunities. When election time comes around—whether it be a presidential election or a local contest for mayor, city council member, governor or member of Congress—these debates give teachers an opening to explore candidates, issues and the electoral process with…
On April 12, 2015, Freddie Gray, a 25 year-old African American resident of Baltimore, MD, was arrested and injured while in police custody; he died a week later due to a severed spine. The city of Baltimore engaged in protests almost immediately and on the day of Freddie Gray’s funeral, a part of the protest erupted into some violent incidents, including fires, looting and police officers being injured. Gray’s death was ruled a homicide and on May 1, Baltimore State Attorney…
GRADE LEVEL: High School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, Language, Mathematics “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
These celebrated words from the Brown v. Board of Education Majority Opinion ushered in an unprecedented era of civil rights and school restructuring in the United States. In 1954, when this…
Michael Brown and Ferguson
On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black teenager, was allegedly shot multiple times and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Following the shooting, hundreds of people gathered at the scene of the shooting to organize vigils to remember Michael Brown as well as protest to demand answers as to why he was shot. Over the course of the next several days, these protests, the majority of which were peaceful, were…
GRADE LEVEL: Elementary School, Middle School, High School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, History/Social Studies In commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, this curriculum for grades 3–12 provides grade-specific lessons, resources and extension activities to provide your students opportunities to examine civil rights in the United States past and present.
The lessons provide an opportunity for students to delve deeper into Martin Luther…
GRADE LEVEL: Middle School, High School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Speaking and Listening “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” These are the words of the landmark Supreme Court decision on May 17, 1954 that declared segregated schools unconstitutional. Sixty years later, even though much progress has been made, there are still great…
Donald Sterling is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, a National Basketball Association (N.B.A.) team in Los Angeles, California. Recently, TMZ Sports obtained an audio recording of Sterling’s comments (viewed as racist) about black people that were made during an argument with a woman named V. Stiviano. There has been a great deal of response and reaction about these comments from fans, players and other people connected to the NBA and the news media.
In this lesson, students…
What is Microaggression?
“Microaggression” is a term that was coined in the 1970s and more recently used by Derald Wing Sue, a Columbia University professor, to describe the “brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral or environmental indignities—whether intentional or unintentional—which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults to people from marginalized groups.”
About the Lesson Plan
This lesson provides an opportunity for…