Curriculum & Instruction
From the VT Student Anti-Racism Network:
As members from the Vermont Student Anti-Racism Network, a group of students working for anti-racism in our schools, we believe that students across VT are not being taught enough about racism or discrimination. Recently, the Student Anti-Racism Network took a survey asking about student's racial diversity education in elementary school, here are the results:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yW_gT2RrF7NpbuKEnfHIuL8lXBZQpVuipVuhAqL3UcI/edit?usp=sharing
A way to combat this inequity would be to change the mainstream curriculum to be more inclusive for all students, this includes learning about housing segregation. The Color of Law book and the video goes over untaught American history. It also will be a jump-off point for other conversations. Without these conversations, students will not ever learn about unfair justice in our government. They also will never grow up to change these government policies.
Through our network, a dozen or so of us students are bringing the Color of Law lesson plans to our teachers in the hopes they can include it in the mainstream curriculum where all students are exposed to it.
We'd love it if you could also share these lessons through your network and perhaps include it in the curriculum. Here are ways to get involved:
here is the video:
Here is a lesson plan created for the high school level and based on the book but can also be used based on the video.
The Zinn Ed project has Free Teaching Activities based on The Color of Law (book).
Scroll down through this link for links to those Teaching Activities.
https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/color-law-segregated-america/
Terms & Definitions from Teaching Tolerance