4) Unit Four: The Role of Race in Sports and Popular Culture

Homework: "Where Did All the Activist Athletes Go?" Read and be prepared to debate.

LESSON FIVE: DIGGING BENEATH THE SURFACE OF RACE AND SOCIETY

A TWO-DAY LESSON PLAN

By the end of these two classes, you will be able to.. answer essential questions for our unit:

How does one define one’s self within the larger expectations of society?

How do we “Other” people when it’s hard for us to share our positions and power?

What is our responsibility to ourselves vs. families and society?

The Purpose of Digging beneath the Surface of Race and Society

We are going to begin reading a play with themes that connect to our course about sports and society through discussions of race and racial issues in U. S. society, both historically and in today's society. The play is called Fences, by August Wilson. In order to understand and appreciate this work of literature, it is important to gain background knowledge.

You are going to be compiling a resource bank of artifacts that will help to inform the class about various issues of race and racism in U.S. society, both historically and in contemporary society. Your resource bank will be filled with various texts: photos, headlines, poems, video clips, and audio clips. These artifacts will reflect the period, background, and social situation of the playwright, August Wilson, of the contexts in his play, Fences, and the state of racial issues in the U.S. today.

You will present your resource bank of artifacts to the entire class. You'll tell us what each artifact is, but, more importantly, you will also tell us why it is significant. Wherever possible, try to connect your resources to our course themes. Please do not acquire artifacts from the Jackie Robinson story or the film, 42. Dig deeper. Choose interesting and unfamiliar but informative artifacts. Remember: everybody else in the class is doing the same assignment, so you want to eliminate possible repetition whenever possible. More...

Digging beneath the Surface of Race and Society: The Task

1. You will work together eith one or two assigned students to create a collaborative slideshow. It is important, though, to remember that each student is graded

individually. Check out this Rubric as a guide to expected group and individual performance. Here is the link to the Vocabulary of Prejudice to help you out.

2. You must create two group slides and three individual slides. Your total slides should look like the following:

• a group cover slide
• an individual slide that focuses on magazine or newspaper headlines
• an individual slide that focuses on a poem
• an individual slide that focuses on a visual statistic about racial discrimination
• a group cumulative slide

12H Students: Add in a slide of 3 scholarly excerpts with interpretation about the role of race in sports, popular culture, and society.

Check out this Rubric as a guide to expected group and individual performance.

Note: It is important to describe each of the artifacts with a 1-2 sentence caption that explains its meaning and importance.

Remember: Every other student in the class is doing this same assignment, so try to find original multimodal texts --- try not to duplicate the ideas you see that other students have gathered, whenever possible.

Homework: No homework over April vacation! But you should check out some of the resources below in order to get some really good ideas.... You will time in class to work on this upon our return from vacation.

Some Keyword Search Suggestions for Racial Issues

Museum of Tolerance

Gallery Keyword Album

Discrimination Quotes

Suggestions for Contemporary Discussions of Racial Issues