Cass Tech 2020-2021

August 2020: COVID 19 has certainly turned our teaching lives upside down! This school year will be like never before and while I tend to have high expectations for myself as a teacher, I really have to be patient with myself because this is a new experience for everyone. This school year, my priority is to apply all that I have learned from the Ethnic Studies and abolitionist teaching readings/webinars into my practice. Michigan State planted the seeds in my head, but this summer they really came to fruition as I attended these learning opportunities and really began to plan. I want to show my students that they are agents of change as well as show them what liberation and freedom can look like inside and outside of the classroom.

Syllabus

My goal this school year is to decolonize my classroom: ie, let my classroom become a space of community where the power is not entirely in my hands. Students should be given the opportunity to create classroom norms that they intend to follow and hold their peers (and myself) accountable for. I want my students to understand that they have the power to create community.

June Reflection: Oh how optimistic I was back in September. Most of the things I listed on my syllabus stayed true, but all of my expectations for Khan Academy, and No Red Ink, and a strict late penalty just kind of fell through. Trying to teach as if everything was normal was just not going to work. I'm proud of the school year I had and the flexibility I was able to give myself and my students. I'll likely use this syllabus next year and I'll try my best to stick true to it. But of all years to stress myself out about a syllabus?! Not this year.

20-21 Syllabus.docx

Online Norms Slide

Creating Online Norms

Teaching online is not ideal, but it's important to be flexible, mindful, and patient because when technology wants to bug out, IT WILL! I wanted to clearly outline my expectations and explain the routines they'll experience in my classroom. I'm not all for enforcing school rules in students' homes: we don't know all of their circumstances and there are certain rules I'm willing to re-evaluate such as school uniform or having their hair done. It's important to keep in mind that are students are experiencing discomfort with online learning and we should extend the respect we expect them to give to us.

Courageous Conversations/Community Building

Last school year, a lot of students expressed the need to have time in class to just talk about life and what they're experiencing. So many young people are struggling with their mental health and feel lost, isolated, and ignored. One thing I wanted to intentionally introduce in my space were weekly "Courageous Conversations" sessions where students can take up to a whole class period to just talk about what they're experiencing, what they've witnessed, and to provide support to one another.

In our original virtual school schedule, every Friday was our designated community building session where students posed ice breaker questions, would you rather questions or just general topics they wanted to discuss. Eventually we rearranged our schedule to reduce screen time and my classes voted to move our community building towards Wednesdays which were our shortest days of 20 minute classes. While our class time was drastically cut, we played rapid rounds of ice breakers that gave space for laughter, dramatic facial expressions, and moments of joy as they continued to build a connection with each other.

Despite being totally online and not knowing my students faces aside from their profile pictures, I really loved getting to know my kids! They introduced me into a lot of new things and I'm grateful for that!

Each hour had a distinct personality:

1st Hour was my Gamers & Athletes

3rd Hour was my Social Justice/Future Activists

4th Hour was my Gamers & Anime Lovers

5th Hour was also my Social Justice/Future Activists

7th Hour was my Food/TV/Movie Connoisseurs

At the end of it all, I hope that I was able to create a space where they genuinely enjoyed themselves and each other. One of my students in particular would send "Supportive Memes" at the end of the week and I always thought they were lovely and hilarious. To the right are my favorites.

Unit 3: Extending Freedom's Reach

Essential Question: What is the relationship between freedom and power?

I was SO excited to teach this unit because this was where I got cut off because of the pandemic, so rather than picking up right where I left off, I workshopped it a lot and made it something I was proud of!

The angle I wanted to focus on was challenging my students to be change makers, i.e., helping them realize that they can speak truth to power and make a difference. Coming off the ride of summer protests, I wanted to channel that energy into our classroom. What are issues that they care about? What can they do about them? How do we even start to change the world?

Pearson MyPerspectives ELA 10

Text Selections from the textbook:

“Four Freedoms” by FDR
“Inaugural Address” JFK
“Speech at the United Nations” Malala Yousafzai
“I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
“Some Advice To Those Who Will Serve Time In Prison” Nazim Hikmet

Intersectionality Mini-Unit

Before even diving into the textbook, I wanted students to consider how their identities impacted the ways that experienced freedom and power.

After I read the book to them out loud, we then created social identity circles to help determine our social identities and how they affect our lived experiences.

Students were not obligated to share their wheels with the class as I wanted to respect their privacy but we had an engaging discussion using these questions:

What part of your identity are you most comfortable sharing with other people?
What part of your identity are you least comfortable sharing with other people?
What part of your identity are you most proud of? Explain.
What part of your identity did you struggle the most with growing up?
What part of your identity is the most important to you?
For what part of your identity do you feel you face oppression for most often?
For what part of your identity do you feel you receive privilege for most often?

Intersection Allies.mp4

Intersection Allies: We Make Room For All by Chelsea Johnson, LaToya Council, and Carolyn Choi

Identity Wheel Example (Myself)

Social Identities on Activity:

Gender
Sex
Sexual Orientation
Race
Ethnicity
Nationality
Citizenship
First Language
(Dis)Ability
Age
Religion/Spirituality
Socio-Economic Status

1. (Gun Control) Emma Gonzalez at the March For Our Lives

2. (Climate Change) Greta Thunberg at the UN

3. (Climate Change) Xiuhtezcatl Martinez at the UN

4. (Climate Change) Jamie Margolin at the US Congress

5. (Flint Water Crisis) Mari Copeny at the Social Good Summit:

6. (Gun Control) Edna Chavez at the March For

7. (Trans Rights) Indya Moore in New York 6/10/19 Protest:

8. (Black Lives Matter) John Boyega in London

9. (Mental Health) Demi Lovato at the National Alliance of Mental Illness

Seeing Young People as Change Makers

To start planting the seeds that they can demand change, they were given an assignment where they watched and read a speech by a young activist and complete a SOAPSTone chart afterward.

I wanted the topics to be a variety and particularly important to young people.

Speech Analysis (Using a SOAPSTone Model)

First Impressions. Why did you pick this topic? Do you agree or disagree with the speaker's stance on the topic? Why or why not?
SUBJECT: What is the subject of the piece? Be specific as to what the speaker is talking about. What is their stance on the subject?
OCCASION: What's the context of the speech? WHEN was it written/spoken? WHERE is the speech taking place? WHAT is going on socially/politically at the time the speech was given?
AUDIENCE: WHO does the writer/speaker want to listen to this speech? Who should be listening/reading this speech?
PURPOSE: WHY is the speaker writing this speech? Include one quote to backup your claim!
SPEAKER: WHO is the writer/speaker? What's their background? Google them for more information.
TONE: What is the speaker's attitude about the topic? Include one quote to back up your claim.

Timeline

4 weeks

4 Parts

Brainstorming
Research Compilation
One-On-One Conferencing
Letter Writing

The key to this project was independence and agency. I only provided guidance and clarity when students asked for it.

Semester 1 Final Project: Speaking Truth to Power

For their final, students were challenged to identify one issue in society that they believed needed to be fixed or changed. They were responsible for researching evidence about their topic and then writing a persuasive letter to someone who they believed could help solve or alleviate the problem.

Unit 5: Virtue & Vengeance

Essential Question (April-May): What motivates us to forgive when someone has wronged you?

Essential Question (May-June): What motivates us to forgive when you've been wronged by an institution? How do we make society more forgiving?

Texts:

The Moth "Forgiveness" by Hector Black https://themoth.org/storytellers/hector-black
Our America with Lisa Ling: Innocent Behind Bars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2odHFi0eKBk&t=2161s
"Betrayal, Forgiveness, Revenge & Justice" Playlist for poetic analysis
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P8jDmvb7YNtkH0EGW1fX6i4tFbVchMW-yMuc5Cmn5CY/edit?usp=sharing
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
- The Tempest by the Royal Shakespeare Company (2017)
NowThis: Daniel Villegas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX8fIrRTWWQ
NowThis: Sabrina Butler-Smith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVfga3fBV_E
NowThis: Rodney Reed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmZpj3Kp2RE

Semester 2 Final Project: Criminal Justice Reform

My one regret of this school year is not having enough time to have my students engage with James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk. In a perfect world, I would've settled for the movie as well but we just didn't have time. While I wasn't able to teach the novel, the NowThis: Fight For Freedom series helped center my students as they began to examine and question why the justice systems acts unjustly. Be it class, race, gender, or other social identities, they noticed that there's a pattern of who receives justice, and who is making the laws that create the injustice.

Their final project is challenging them to imagine the ways that we can make the world a better place.

There are 2 parts to their project: a research organizer and a presentation. Simple right?

Criminal Justice Reform Final Project

Criminal Justice Reform Assignment Sheet (reviewed by my wonderful sister who is an expert in all things unjust and wrong with our current criminal justice system)

Presentation Examples

For my demonstration, my topic was marijuana convictions and recreational marijuana. To the right is my demo PowerPoint that my students could use as a reference. Below are the links to my first ever TikTok so be kind with your critiques on whether or not I could ever go viral!

Part 1: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdYRgUUx/

Part 2: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdYR4YLt/

Part 3: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdYRHg4n/

Criminal Justice Reform Project Demo

Using my project organizer, I simply copied the information from the chart and pasted it into a PowerPoint. I wanted my students to have a final project that didn't require too much since we're all pretty exhausted.

Student Submissions

I have to say that I'm really proud of the work that my students' did. Even though the assignment was relatively simple and the stakes were rather low (because let's be real, June is hard time to motivate students but for this year in particular, it was a struggle) I wanted this project to be meaningful for them as we've constantly challenged ourselves and each other how we can make this world a better place. For folks who knock the younger generation for not paying attention to the "real" world, our kids have been paying attention to the rights and wrongs that adults and institutions have made. Look at my little abolitionists here!

Criminal Justice Reform Project.pptm

Taylor S.

Police Brutality

Voting Righs for Incarcerated People

Isaac S.

Voting Rights for Incarcerated People

Salvador S.

Drug Crime Policies

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdyN4met

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdyNpgwq/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdyNnqXS/

Maya S. Mental Illness & Incarceration

Maya S.

Mental Illness & Incarceration

IMG_0040.MOV

LJ D.

Police Brutality

Ryann W. Bails Bonds

Ryann W.

Bail Bonds

english final part 1.MOV

Paris W.

Wrongful Convictions

FullSizeRender.mov

Alauna M

Jury Selection

I'm so excited to have my kitchen back! Solid lighting and decor for online teaching but wow I can't wait to have a cleared kitchen table!

June 24th, 2021

I can't believe the school year is over! No shade to this year, but I'm so glad it's finished. My eyes are so tired from staring at screens all day. And I will say, teaching online isn't the worst thing in the world but it came with its own challenges that made it hard to remain calm and patient. I can only end this year with gratitude because I feel like I built strong connections with my classes despite never seeing their faces. I hope that when we return to the building in the fall that they'll feel comfortable to say hi, ask for help if they need it and find their friends that they made in class this year. But this summer?! I'm LOGGING OFF! I will be at Belle Isle beach every day avoiding the computer. I think we all deserve a break!

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