Teaching Civil Rights

Building a Dream in Trying Times

Based on readings for the Teaching American History Workshops “Building a Dream in Trying Times: Civil Rights Movement in the United States”, write a short paragraph describing how Civil Rights connects to your curriculum and your initial ideas for developing lesson plans.  Remember to show evidence of engagement with the course texts and presentations.  Please feel free to comment on each others posts as well as this format is intended to keep the dialogue going and provide a format to continue to learn from one another.

Perhaps to spark some thought:

World Class

As part of our thinking through International Educational, the next book we read was World Class: Teaching and Learning in Global Times by Bill Gaudelli.  I wonder if people have questions and comments that might be hashed out here.  I particularly liked how Gaudelli took the different examples, pulled deep descriptions from them, and pulled out themes for the reader's consideration.  What can we learn from these stories?  What might be application to our own teaching contexts?  What do we need to hear more about?

Also, here's a review from Education Review: http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/rev263.htm

The White Tiger

Friends,

   I'm hoping to use this spot for folks in our International Academy Reading Group to post comments on their read of the The White Tiger.  I'm curious to see what you thought.  Below are some of the reviews posted to Amazon.com.   Have at it!

The White Tiger: A Novel by Aravind Adiga (Author)

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A brutal view of India's class struggles is cunningly presented in Adiga's debut about a racist, homicidal chauffer. Balram Halwai is from the Darkness, born where India's downtrodden and unlucky are destined to rot. Balram manages to escape his village and move to Delhi after being hired as a driver for a rich landlord. Telling his story in retrospect, the novel is a piecemeal correspondence from Balram to the premier of China, who is expected to visit India and whom Balram believes could learn a lesson or two about India's entrepreneurial underbelly. Adiga's existential and crude prose animates the battle between India's wealthy and poor as Balram suffers degrading treatment at the hands of his employers (or, more appropriately, masters). His personal fortunes and luck improve dramatically after he kills his boss and decamps for Bangalore. Balram is a clever and resourceful narrator with a witty and sarcastic edge that endears him to readers, even as he rails about corruption, allows himself to be defiled by his bosses, spews coarse invective and eventually profits from moral ambiguity and outright criminality. It's the perfect antidote to lyrical India. (Apr.) 
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 

From The New Yorker
In this darkly comic début novel set in India, Balram, a chauffeur, murders his employer, justifying his crime as the act of a "social entrepreneur." In a series of letters to the Premier of China, in anticipation of the leader’s upcoming visit to Balram’s homeland, the chauffeur recounts his transformation from an honest, hardworking boy growing up in "the Darkness"—those areas of rural India where education and electricity are equally scarce, and where villagers banter about local elections "like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra"—to a determined killer. He places the blame for his rage squarely on the avarice of the Indian élite, among whom bribes are commonplace, and who perpetuate a system in which many are sacrificed to the whims of a few. Adiga’s message isn’t subtle or novel, but Balram’s appealingly sardonic voice and acute observations of the social order are both winning and unsettling. 
Copyright ©2008

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Waltz with Bashir: Continuing the Conversation

All,

  The powerful film & discussion Waltz with Bashir sponsored by the International Interfaith Initiative provoked some important lines of discussion around themes of religion & civil society, history & education, and ethics in complicated, contempory contexts. Our hope here is to provide a space for continued conversation--both questions and critiques--of how we might spend time with a film like this and 'put it to work' in our own lives and communities.  Let the dialogue begin.....thoughts?

 

Waltz with Bashir (Hebrew: ואלס עם באשיר‎ - Vals Im Bashir) is a 2008 Israeli animated documentary film that documents the attempts of Folman, a 1982 Lebanon War-veteran, to recover his lost memories of the events revolving around the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Plus the Keystone will display the photos of local journalist Bill Foley, whose images of Lebanon won a Pulitzer Prize. Plus after the showing of the film Provocate’s John Clark and other experts will lead a discussion of what the film means.

When: Wednesday March 4, The film starts at 7:15, try to come by 7:00 pm to see Bill Foley’s photos

Where: Landmark’s Keystone Art Cinema 8702 Keystone Crossing

Discussion:
Pierre Atlas-Assistant Professor and Director of Richard G. Lugar Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian College
John Clark- Creator of Provocate
Bill Foley-Adjunct Professor at Marian College and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for a series of photographs he captured during the Israeli-Lebanese War (Pulitzer Prize winning photos will be on display before and after the film/discussion)
Siobhan McEvoy-Levy-Associate Professor and Director of Peace Studies at Butler University

A Long Way Gone

As many know, Ishmael Beah is coming to the IUPUI campus to speak on his experiences as a child soldier in Sierra Leone.   Students and teachers from area high schools are coming to hear his story and many students & faculty here on IUPUI's campus are reading his book together.  This space can be one where we share our thoughts, questions, and concerns as we read, think, and listen together.  Feel free....all are welcome.

"A gripping story of a child’s journey through hell and back...there may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words.

In A LONG WAY GONE, Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a riveting story. At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. Eventually released by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled to regain his humanity and to reenter the world of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion. This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope." From  http://www.alongwaygone.com/

TKMB- Courageous Conversations

Eric Holder, the new attorney general for the Obama administration, spoke yesterday to his Dept. of Justice about our “lack of courage” when speaking about race relations in the United States [LINK]. Since “courage” is one of several significant themes in the novel, I’m curious how our group responds to Holder’s comments. In what ways could you use this novel as a vehicle for courageous conversations in social studies and English language arts classrooms?

TKMB Essential Questions

Alright, now we're cookin'....you have all seen the 3 Essential Questions that you have to work with for our Humanities unit on TKMB.  We're hoping that you might use this blog space to play with some ideas around these questions--whether you chose it or not.  For example, issues of space & place are quite interesting in the book but, also, it seemed to me that some very particular things about the play dealt with issues of place.  I wonder what folks think about those as themes and how they might be explored with students.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Friends,
  As we--Langauge Arts & Social Studies Methods classes--attended the Indiana Repertory Theater production of To Kill a Mockingbird on February 10th, our task now is to think how we utilize this book/play in our secondary classrooms. We'll be designing some lesson plans around the play in class but I wanted to post this so folks can begin with some comments on the play itself.  While not usually an acceptable academic source, here's the Wikipedia entry for the text : LINK  for those who aren't as familiar with the book (and no, you can't use this in a paper!).  Our task will be to think about how TKMB (common schoolteacher abbreviation) might be used in a hypothetical humanities team that joins social studies and language arts. 

So....for now, what did  you think?

Blood Done Sign My Name

Everyone's back at school by now I assume and our workshop seems far in the past.  If you'll remember, one of the themes of our workshop was pointing out the complexities and contradiction of that important time.  Well, I think most folks have finished Blood Done Sign  My Name by now.  I found it to be a wonderfully written and well-presented history that shows so much of the complexity of the times.  I wonder what other people's experience with the text was.  Do you think this might be something you could use in your classes?

I also found an interview with the author Timothy Tyson on NPR.  Check it out!

Greetings!

Well, friends.  This is an attempt to keep the valuable conversation we started on the Civil Rights Movement going.  I'll use this site to get you some of the materials I promised in terms of qoutes and even the PowerPoint ![Download civil_rights.ppt ]   It was also suggested that as folks read "Blood done sign my name" something of an online discussion group could be carried on here.  I'll post a thread to do just that.

If you're not familiar with this blog stuff take a look at another attempt I've made to keep up with some of my education students called NewTeacher.  It's been a little hard to keep going--fits and spurts--as they say but some good discussions have happened.

OK....let's see if this takes.  Best to you all,

Rob