Contents Lesson Plans Anti-Bias Books Resources Weblinks Evaluation Student Work A resource-based community empowerment project.
The First Grant Proposal, 1998
Project Overview
Discussions about racism have occurred throughout our school community during this past year. Our proposal centers around the development of resources to help children learn ways of opposing racist actions and attitudes. These resources will include sets of mini-lessons using appropriate children's literature and related media, as well as adult books and community resources. In addition to identifying and developing resources, we will train teachers and parents to use them effectively.
Children's books, the focus of the anti-racism kits, will be selected for each grade level. Appropriate media will be selected to support each book. Team members will then write lesson plans and activities to integrate each title with the existing curriculum. A staff development workshop will be held in the fall to present these resources and to give teachers a hands-on opportunity to work with them. Tools for evaluating minority treatment in children's literature, including a multimedia presentation The History of Minorities in Literature, will be presented to staff and parents as well.
Team members and interested staff or parents will design and maintain an Internet webpage on the school's website that will make resources and lesson plans broadly available, provide an opportunity for teacher collaboration, and publish classroom and student work relating to anti-racism.
Rationale
At Franklin Elementary School a number of active ant-racist initiatives are underway, including a bimonthly parent-teacher dialogue on respect; the formation of an active-anti-racism task force; building a diverse multicultural and bilingual library collection; and a large attendance at both the METCO Friends and Family monthly discussion group and the annual METCO Director's conference. However, active anti-racism has not been consistently integrated into our current curriculum.
Much is being written and discussed in the nation and in Newton addressing active anti-racism for adults and teenagers, but few curriculum projects exist for elementary age children. We feel that it is essential to reach children at a young age. Some researchers believe that after age nine social attitudes tend to stay constant unless the child experiences a life-changing event. Children of the 21st century will need to function in many cultural contexts. Research literature points to the great damage that racism has on all young children's development. "Racism attacks young children's growing sense of group as well as individual identity." (1)
Only very recently&emdash;as our society has become ready to accept them&emdash; have quality children's books become available that address these issues directly. According to Henry Steele Commager, "We have in literature not only a continuous record of society as a whole, and&emdash;what is more important&emdash;of ideas and standards that society wishes to inculcate into each new generation." (2) Stories are "an extraordinary vehicle for communion and communication and expression, and for the knowledge that we all need in order to know where we're coming from and to help us to define where we're going."(3)
Focus
Our project addresses the issues of racism with young children at a time when their social attitudes are being formed. Teachers and students will learn the tools to evaluate literature and other media for racial stereotypes. "Children need to be able to recognize distorted representations, they also need to know what can be done about them. Learning to recognize cultural and institutional racism and other forms of inequity without also learning strategies to respond to them is a prescription for despair." (4) At each grade level, K-5, we will create 2-3 literature-based anti-racism book kits containing an appropriate book and activities, accompanying lesson plans, and supporting media. The resources created (and compiled) by team members, teachers and students will also be made available via the Internet, and may easily be duplicated by other elementary schools in Newton or elsewhere.
A team of 10 staff members and parents have created this proposal and will work together to implement its many facets. All members of the team will assist in evaluating literature and writing the activities. (Members of the school staff, parents and students will also be encouraged to add to the book kits and lesson activity plans over the course of the year.) Everyone on the team will assist in a hands-on staff development workshop and ongoing dialogue at staff meetings. We expect this project to involve the entire school community over the course of the year.
If successful, we will develop among young children an understanding of oppression and give them the lifelong skills to confront racism. We will publish useful tools and make them available to a broad audience.
Goals & Objectives
Our goal is to develop and use a set of resources to integrate active anti-racism into the Franklin School curriculum and community, through a multi-pronged approach that includes resource development, staff training and student activities.
Resource Development
Objectives:
1. The team will identify and purchase children's books that show ways in which people are personally empowered to make a difference in the face of racism. We will create a lending collection of book kits that stimulate discussion of racism and how it can be combated, with accompanying lesson plans, activities, or media that may be used by staff, students or parents.
Activities:
• Review existing bibliographies and select appropriate books.
• Locate supporting media, new articles, videos, Internet sites, etc.
• Assemble 2 or 3 active anti-racism book kits for each grade level.• Write lesson plans and activities.
2. Establish a teacher-parent resource library of relevant adult books on active anti-racism and the evaluation of children's literature on minorities. Plan ways to promote them.
Activities:• Identify and purchase books to be housed in an accessible area.
• Create an annotated bibliography to accompany the resource library.
• Introduce resources to faculty and parents with book talks and discussions.
• Publish information on the school's website.
3. Compile and disseminate information about community resources (e.g., human resources, places to visit, available media, etc.).
Activities:
• Identify community resources and methods of integrating them.• Publish detailed information on the school's web site.
Staff Development
4. Staff members will be able to productively and efficiently use a variety of resources for teaching active anti-racism in the classroom, including: children's literature, community resources, audio and visual media, electronic media, and the Internet.
Activities:• Design and offer a hands-on workshop to the entire staff .
• Offer a multi-media presentation, The History of Minorities in Children's Literature,5 and allow for discussion of the intellectual tools and understanding needed to evaluate resources for different minority groups.
• Ensure follow-up opportunities (at staff meetings) to discuss successful practices.
5. Team members and interested teachers will learn the use of homepage software to create webpages where we will post the resources and information collected during the course of this project.
Activities:
• Hold a one-day training workshop to teach the use of homepage software.• Begin a webpage design that may be expanded throughout the year.
• Discuss appropriate and relevant classroom projects using the Internet.
• Present the website to the faculty and encourage classroom use.
Working with Students
6. Students will begin to understand that they, too, can be empowered to stand up when injustices occur. They will be introduced to the cycle of oppression, and associated vocabulary.
Activities:
• Discuss each book, and integrate ideas with active anti-racism vocabulary.• Use writing, art and other forms of creative expression when applicable to help students express themselves and share what they believe
Dissemination
A workshop will be held in January to train team members and interested staff in the use of Claris homepage and to create a basic design for the webpage using resource information, lesson plans and student projects developed during the first half of the year. This ActiveAnti-Racism Homepage will be published on the Internet at the school's website, and maintained by staff and parents.
Qualifications of the Team
Our team is extremely diverse contributing a variety of experience and knowledge to this project. The combined roles of the members of the group include an extensive amount of experience teaching various grade levels, social work, understanding different learning styles, use of technology, knowledge of literature, curriculum design and publishing as well as the application of multicultural education. We have been actively working with children's literature as a vehicle for anti-racism over the past year. Three members have attended the EMI Active Anti-Racism course and several plan to complete it next year. Most will serve on the newly-formed school task force which is a group of parents and teachers working to integrate anti-racism as an integral part of our school climate. Several team members have served on the African American Achievement Task Force, a city-wide initiative.
Evaluation
The success of this project can be measured by how actively teachers use the book kits and share classroom projects. If successful, our webpages should generate e-mail comments from users on the Internet, especially other Newton schools. The reactions of the entire Franklin community will be assessed with a survey at the end of the year.
References
(1) Derman-Sparks, Louise. "Empowering Children to Create a Caring Culture in a World of Differences" in Childhood Education, Winter 1993-94.
(2) Commager, Henry Steele. Introduction to the First Edition in C. Meigs, A Critical History of Children's Literature, (pp. xvi-xvii), 1969
(3) Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara. "The Power of Storytelling" in The Boston Parent's Paper, November 1997.
(4) Tatum, Beverly. Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, 1997.