Teaching Lab 1

In this lesson teachers participated in a Read Aloud on Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson's Born in the Water.  They completed a See, Think, Wonder, Feel protocol that encourages students to deeply analyze poetry and art. Many teachers discovered that Born in the Water could be used in any grade level as it pushes students to make connections between African culture and resilience and the Black community today.  One teacher in his AP African American Studies class used the book as part of Unit 2: Freedom, Enslavement, and Resistance.

An African mask is depicted in one of the joyful early pages of Born in the Water and helps portray the beauty and diversity of African cultural traditions. In this lesson teachers engaged with clips of the Black Panther movie, read about different African masks, and then discussed how they could be used in the classroom. Out of all the lessons, teachers submitted the most student work related to this lesson. Several teachers in many grade levels had students brainstorm and create a mask that reflected their own identity. 

Other Suggested Resources

• Paul Lawrence Dunbar “We Wear the Mask Poem”

• “We Wear the Mask’ Philadelphia Mural