Teaching and Learning About Slavery: The Royall House and Slave Quarters

I recently visited the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, MA, an important site on enslavement in the north during the Revolutionary War period. In addition to the well-done tour, I was impress with the evolution of the site from one focused on the family and house to one emphasizing the role and significance of the enslaved who made it all possible. You can read about that in this article.  As is true for so many families and institutions in the north and overseas, wealth was gained through Caribbean sugar plantations. Slowly this complicity is becoming more known — institutions are grappling with how to deal with the fact that they exist because of enslavement. I highly recommend exploring their website as it is rich with resources such as documentation of those enslaved by the Royalls,  the important story of Belinda Sutton and her petitions,  and  Parallel Lives, Common Landscape: Artifacts from the Royall House & Slave Quarters. I plan to use this alongside the Whitney Plantation in my teaching of enslavement this coming year.

 

 

 

 

In the Classroom: Teaching About Slavery Redux

I’ve written about the teaching of slavery before and will again. It is a topic I feel is urgently important for us to grapple with in the classroom.  A couple of years ago I wrote the blog post, “In the Classroom: Teaching About Slavery” in which I described my unit with my fourth graders on this challenging yet critical topic. Since then I’ve learned more and adjusted my teaching accordingly, especially after spending a week this past summer at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Here are links to a couple of posts about that experience:

• Talking Race at the National Museum of African American History and Culture
• Learning and Sharing: The National Museum of African American History and Culture

Now I’m preparing to teach my unit on forced migration from Africa and using what I learned at the museum and more to set it up anew. In particular, I’m doing a large presentation on the Atlantic World, giving a greater sense of the African Kingdoms and agency prior to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. And then giving a greater context for it, reaching beyond the United States.

And so how amazing to find the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance new project, Teaching the Hard History of American Slavery  working off a thorough study on what is done now as well as what we can do in the future. Here are some excellent links related to this:

• The report
• The Atlantic’s article, “What Kids Are Really Learning About Slavery.“
• A quiz on how much you know about American slavery
• A Framework for Teaching American Slavery with a wealth of material for teachers.

I highly recommend taking the time to read all of these, especially if you are teaching.

 

 

 

Revisiting Philip Pullman’s I Was a Rat!

Regular readers of this blog will know of my appreciation for the work of Philip Pullman. Most recently I raved about his latest, the first volume of The Book of Dust, La Belle Sauvage. After reading and listening to this I went back to the full-cast audio production of His Dark Materials and was happy to find that it was as good as ever. But there are others he is written outside Lyra’s world, among them the charming middle grade fairy tale, I Was a Rat!.  Here’s the publisher’s description:

“I Was a Rat!” So insists a scruffy boy named Roger. Maybe it’s true. But what is he now? A terrifying monster running wild in the sewers? The Daily Scourge is sure of it. A victim of “Rodent Delusion”? The hospital nurse says yes. A lucrative fairground freak? He is to Mr. Tapscrew. A champion wriggler and a budding thief? That’s what Billy thinks. Or just an ordinary small boy, though a little ratty in his habits? Only three people believe this version of the story. And it may take a royal intervention—and a bit of magic—to convince the rest of the world.

Set against the backdrop of a Royal Wedding—and a playful parody of the press, I Was a Rat! is a magical weaving of humor, fairy tale, and adventure.

Over the years, as part of my 4th graders’ study of Cinderella, I’ve read the book aloud and, most recently, showed the movie. This year, after another teacher told me that her students had been captivated by the book I decided to read it aloud after not having done so in years. I quickly discovered that our current obsession with “fake news” made the book’s thread about sensationalism in the media highly relevant. My students took quickly to sweet little Roger, his love for patients (need to read the book to understand this), and the fairy tale connections as well. The story is lively, adventurous, suspenseful, and great fun to read. I highly recommend checking it out.

In the Classroom: Teaching Hacks

I frequently see tweets, links, and more to articles or videos celebrating methods to make something easier. In the “100 Life Hacks That Make Life Easier” you can learn how to waterproof your shoes, use newspaper to absorb fruit juices and more. So I figured I’d offer three that I’ve found helpful in my 4th grade classroom. Love to learn of more in the comments!

1. Lamps. I find low lighting in my classroom soothing, calming, and a great help to keep my students focused during work periods. Unfortunately, I have no way to dim the glaring overhead lights. And so, a few years back, I found these little portable lamps for kids to use (turning off the overhead ones). The price has gone down and so I’ve now managed to get enough to have for every child. They need batteries, but over three years I’ve not needed to replace them yet. I wish I could show them in my classroom, but can’t (due to privacy requirements). 
2. Tiny notebooks for our BoB (Book of Books) periods. This is a weekly time when my students read (using those lamps), fill out their BoBs with what they’ve read in the past week, and confer with me. I started this a few years ago when I decided to drop kids having to log their nightly reading. (See this post for more information.) I found some blank ones here so kids could decorate covers as they wished. 
3. “Offices.” I am not a fan of cardboard cubbies like the one below as I like to see my students at work. So instead I give them “offices,” These are spots they move their desks to so they are all away from each other, not facing one another (usually their desks are in groups of six), and able to focus on their writing. My room is small and in order to have a rug I have to put those groups of desks fairly close together around it. It isn’t practical to have them permanently in offices — messy, hard to get around, and I want them to work in groups too! — but it is great to use when needed. I’ve a post about this here. 

In the Classroom: Good White Teaching

Many of us good white teachers have been in the profession for a long, long time. We’ve stayed in it because we love teaching and feel we are good at it. Our identities are wrapped tightly up in this. And now we are having to rethink who we are professionally as we navigate difficult and necessary conversations and situations in our classrooms involving race. While we veteran white teachers may have successfully resolved conflicts, dealt with festering situations of non-race-based social aggression, and led sound social emotional learning activities with our classes, these experiences may very well not be models for us as we engage in work with our classes on race.

While I have been teaching about Sierra Leone, about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, about Civil Rights, and more for a very long time I have not done nearly enough of direct and frank work with my 4th graders and race. But I have to and I will even though it feels challenging and –hardest of all — one that I’m not going to do well. Something I will probably fail at and have to try to do better the next time. And that last is probably the toughest of all for me, a teacher in her fourth decade as a classroom teacher. To fail in this sort of thing is difficult and disturbing. And I say this because I suspect that is the case for many of my older white teacher colleagues. We are so proud of our work as teachers, our reputations as smart and caring, and we are doing the work to be better when considering race. But in our own classrooms? Changing what we do there is probably way harder.

We tell our students that taking risks is good. That they need to be ready to fail and try again. But are we veteran good white teachers doing that when it comes to race conversations? We need to be prepared for that. We are not experienced in this at all, at all. We are no better and probably worse than those just entering the profession. We need to do all the learning we can, we need to take advantage of POCs around us who are interested in helping us, do a whole lot of listening, read, go to workshops and the like, and we need to try, understand where things went poorly, and try again.

We veteran white teachers still dominate our country’s classrooms even though the children in them are more and more POCs. Considering how to acknowledge this and have necessary conversations from kindergarten to twelfth grade is something we must do. But we also have to be aware of ourselves and that we need to not assume we know how to do this as well as we do so much else.

Avoidance is not an option. Failing and picking yourself up, thinking about what went wrong, doing more listening and learning, and trying again is.

In the Classroom: First Day of School Reading

Whew — coming back to school after being away on sabbatical is exhausting! I did expect it to be given the more leisurely lifestyle I had so it wasn’t a surprise, but still….  I hope I can keep my resolution to continue my writing even as the school takes over more and more every bit of my thinking.

The good news is that getting my room in order (and I am so so grateful to our building staff who helped me unpack and shelve my many books), reconnecting with colleagues, and learning about my new students has me excited for tomorrow, our first day.

As always, I’ve put a lot of thought into the first books I will read. There are the ice-breaker picture books I read right away to get the kids to relax and chuckle. They will be the same as last year: Adam Rex and Christian Robinson’s School’s First Day of School, Jared Chapman’s Steve, Raised by Wolves, and  Edda: A Little Valkyrie’s First Day of School.  

And then there is the first read-aloud for the year. I’ve decided it will be Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Sputnik’s Guide to Life on Earth. I’m a huge fan of this author (who needs to be more embraced in the US) and have been reading his Cosmic aloud yearly for a long time. This new one is a total charmer (here’s a Q & A I did with Frank about it) and I can’t wait to begin.

In the Classroom: Let’s Talk: Teaching Race in the Classroom

Last week I visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. It was incredible and overwhelming and I have been yearning ever since for a way to return as I feel I barely skimmed the surface of what was there. Then,  perusing the website, I came across a page featuring Professional Learning Events, one a week-long workshop titled “Let’s Talk: Teaching Race in the Classroom.” It is being held July 10-14 and I registered immediately. While I have done other workshops on equity and race I feel my learning and work on it is never enough so this can only help me to do this work with my colleagues and students. And since, at my school, we are continually grappling with the best way to teach the Transatlantic Slave Trade with our 4th graders I’m also hoping to learn how to do that better.

Here’s the description:

Race is an aspect of our American culture that is often ignored, glossed over or mishandled.  Additionally, to succeed in promoting equity, tolerance, and justice, childhood is the time to address these issues by understanding children’s development and encouraging positive feelings about their racial and cultural identity, as well as others’.  Working with youth makes it incumbent that educators are prepared to address issues of race whenever they surface such as in history or social studies lessons or when current events brings them forward such as events in our recent history.

Through presentations from researchers in the field, small group discussions, and reflective exercises participants will engage in conversations about race/racism, explore ways to address issues and topics that will meet students where they are in their racial development, and practice techniques for creating safe space for difficult discussions.

Educators will

• learn and practice strategies for building a personal connections within their classroom
• be introduced to and deepen their knowledge of racial identity development
• reflect on their personal racial views, experiences, and implicit bias
• practice facilitating interactions/discussions around racial issues by performing role-play situations
• identify implicit bias and recognize how it affects teaching in the classroom
• learn strategies for resilience and self-care

Due to the nature of the workshop material, the layering of activities and the sensitive nature of conversations that may develop, we require participants to commit to attending the whole week. 

 

In the Classroom: Ralph Fletcher’s Joy Write

Some may have read or heard this story before, but for those who haven’t here it is again. It is what made me passionate that no young writer I taught ever had the same experience.

So my story. I loved writing as a child — until something happened. This was my high school A.P. English teacher telling my parents I shouldn’t take a role in the school play (my passion at the time) so I could “work on my writing.” He never told me what was the matter, never met with me to show me what I needed to do, and I never asked (as I was shy and he was a strong personality we admired very much). So I messed around and messed around with my school essays, clueless as to what was wrong. My mother remembered me up late at night and feeling so sorry she couldn’t help. I went to college worried and this impact my writing to the point where I was sent to a tutorial for help. I figured out that my problem lay in revision so handed in first drafts full of typos (this was the day of the typewriter) as they were still better than if I tried to revise them. The professor overseeing the tutorial told me it was all in my head and there was nothing she could do. So what I did was avoid all English classes for my undergraduate and graduate studies. (And, boy, did I yearn to attend them. Some sounded right up my alley, but I wasn’t going to risk it. Instead I read voraciously on my own — classics, everything.)

In the early 1980s I became deeply involved with the burgeoning personal computer movement in schools, finally matriculating as one of the first classes for a program in computers and education at Teachers College Columbia University. I was surprised to find out that I was good at programming — doing it and teaching it (having been a miserable math student). And then, as one of my final courses, I took Lucy Calkins’ summer institute in writing. It was the second one and it was a revelation for me in many ways. The idea of the workshop — of a process — has informed my work as a teacher ever since.

A few years later I broke through my own writing phobia by writing an essay that got me a competitive fellowship to study children’s literature at Princeton. At the same time I was becoming more and more active online in children’s literature and educational communities. All of this made me finally believe I could write. And I did — books for teachers, articles, blog posts, etc. And a book for children that was lauded for its writing. I’m currently working on a new project and was elated when recently the editor I’m working with celebrated my ability to write fiction.

All of this informs my beliefs when it comes to teaching writing to 4th graders. These include:

• Creating situations where students feel invested in their writing
• That they have audiences
• That they find joy in the work
• That they understand that there are many different ways and reasons to write — some being completely private, some to figure out a problem, and more.

Of late my impression is that writing instruction in schools is highly driven by testing, common core curriculum, packaged programs, and consultants. Often these are highly scripted and allow little opportunity for children to write for themselves. As I work in a private school, I have far more freedom than many of my public school colleagues, but this overall approach affects us too as it is now presented in language arts communities and organizations as best practices.

What has struck me is that the focus in now on kids learning structures, on expository writing above all, and no consideration of audience or, worse, joy. And so I was eager to read Ralph Fletcher’s Writing Joy: Cultivating High-Impact, Low-Stakes Writing. It happens Ralph was my writing instructor when I took the TC institute those many years ago and we have run into each other over the years. (His wife, it happens, was my instructor then too.)

Ralph is blunt about the reduction of joy in today’s writing programs. In the book he does a clear presentation of the history, of the current situation, and then makes some very smart suggestions. That is, find places for kids to write for fun, in ways that they truly care about, that aren’t graded, that can be full of spelling errors, etc He suggests “Greenbelt Writing” a sliver of a place in children’s daily school lives where they can play textually, away from the regular writing curriculum. This would be on the side, a sort of recess time (as I understand it), an enjoyable and relaxing place with the goal of kids having fun writing, of finding joy in it.

Last year I started a weekly BoB session to replace reading logs (see this post for details). The kids love, love, love this. They read, they update their BoBs (Book of Books), and chat with me. Sometimes we talk as a group about what we are reading. Mostly it is a quiet and serene time. (I bought a bunch of soft lights that we put on their desks so we can avoid the bright overhead.)

Reading Ralph’s book made me decide I want to do something similar with writing. It will be tricky taking over another period for it, but I’m determined to do so. I’d love a cool acronym for it that goes well with BoB. Any thoughts? I see it as a greenbelt time where kids will write whatever they want, to share or not.

This isn’t a regular review, but a personal response to Ralph’s book. It is a short book, to the point, clear, and may be uncomfortable for some, but also it is kind and offers some fabulous suggestions I hope others consider. As I already wrote, I sure am.

Thanks, Ralph, for writing what really really needs to be said today.

In the Classroom: The Critical Importance of Teaching and Learning History

The people in the country now who are spouting hate-filled words don’t seem to know their own American history. There is enough blame to go around as to why. But when it comes to fixing what’s wrong with America, one of our priorities should be making more of an effort to put our history into our classrooms in the earliest years, and to educate our teachers, too. I want all of our people—even the haters—to know why we have needed that armor and how we can, while wearing it, remain open to one another.

That is from Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s TALKING TO YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT TRUMP, WITH LESSONS FROM GWEN IFILL, an article that resonated with me because I’ve always thought teaching and learning history is so important*. Young people need time in school to engage with the past, grapple with it in all its complexities, and develop their own tools to think historically. While I use fiction and nonfiction children’s books in my teaching of history, I also use primary sources, and structure experiences for my 4th grade students to be  historians themselves. For example, right now they are completing a study of the Europeans who came through Ellis Island in 1900. Next they will be considering those who came from China through Angel Island before and during the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act. After reading books, studying photographs and other primary sources, they will take a position on the statement often bandied about at the time that, “Angel Island is the Ellis Island of the West” and defend it with reasons and evidence. (Spoiler: they always say it wasn’t.)

*I’ve written two books (Seeking History and Far Away and Long Ago) on the teaching of history, articles (some listed here) and done presentations on the topic.

 

In the Classroom: The Alice in Wonderland Radio Play

One of my favorite books is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Every year I read aloud the book with my 4th graders reading along from my large collection of illustrated editions. Along the way the children join the chorus of the songs, participate in a caucus race, and play a spot of croquet. Most years we end with a project and this year it was a radio play. My initial thought was to do a sort of audio book, but when I mentioned it to a colleague she said, “a radio play, of course” and I was immediately hooked.

First I found a 1937 script using language directly from the book and adapted it for my class. (I cut it way, way, WAY down and adjusted it so we had different scenes, each with its own narrator. Each scene was 2-3 minutes with the whole play under 20 minutes in total.) Then I introduced the concept to them. One of the most important element that would make this different from an all-cast audio book was sound effects and so I found a couple of fun videos that gave a sense of this. The children worked enthusiastically in groups to prepare and did a fabulous job. Not only are their sound effects inventive and clever, but they went beyond what I expected with their voices and accents. Indeed the whole thing is a delight. One of the thing I like so much about it is how well the children’s performances show their deep understanding and appreciation of the book itself. I like to think Lewis Carroll would approve.

To learn more about the project and listen to the radio play itself please go here.