Cass Tech 2021-2022

So where do we go from here?

I had no idea what to anticipate for this school year. I was thrilled to not be at home but I was incredibly worried about being in small spaces with 35-38 students for 8 hours a day. Luckily our district mandates mask and testing for teachers but it was anxiety inducing to think that I was constantly surrounded by threats of catching COVID because the vaccination rate of the city was so low. But something felt different this time around. For what it's worth, most students wanted to be back in school to see their friends but many of my students admitted that they needed structure in their day--and I could totally relate to that! This year, I wanted to try the same units I made last year but adjust them slightly--add more speeches here, add more novels here, switch things up a bit. This school year is unlike any other so it was important that the grace I was willing to give students, I had to give to myself as well.

21-22 Syllabus - Copy (1).docx

Syllabus

90% of my syllabus is the exact same from last year, small edits included expectations for hybrid learning and adapted late work policy.

1st Hour Norms (1).pdf

Norms

After we went over the syllabus, students created class norms that they wanted to establish. I have my 5 Non-Negotiables, so I was willing to negotiate with these!

Wellness Check

Every Wednesday, we start our class with a brief wellness check. I told my students that I wouldn't follow up with them unless I was concerned and that I would talk to them before calling home or their counselor.

Here you can preview and duplicate the form if you'd like:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=3NCiLp2IvEKbTDAnH4LjNcGXXkEDGwJMlSJhlESDSI5URVYxUUU4NzdQVTZBNENOVjRVOVNMTExITyQlQCNjPTEu

Unit 3: Extending Freedom's Reach

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

Topics: Social identities, intersectionality, advocacy and activism

Much like last year, we started this year with focusing on our social identities and our own relationships with power. Perhaps these lessons would be considered "controversial" now in this fake outrage about how we talk about freedom, power, and privilege, but I'll be frank--I am not afraid of these political threats because most of the politicians complaining are not concerned about the wellbeing of the children I teach. I feel that I would be doing a disservice to not teach about the hard truths about American history: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Unit 1: Intro to Intersectionality

Intro to Intersectionality PowerPoint

Privilege & Power

Privilege & Power PowerPoint

Social Identity Wheel Discussion

Social Identity Wheel Discussion Questions

Speech Analysis:

I've always enjoyed teaching rhetorical analysis through speech, and considering last year's approach with using the district textbook, I knew I had to shake things up. It was important that I incorporated diverse perspectives for this unit because freedom and power look different for everyone else, depending on your identities. Below you'll find the series of speeches my students watched/listened/read and the rhetorical devices they were asked to focus on.

"Our Fight For Disability Rights--And Why It's Not Over" by Judith Heumann

SOAPSTone Chart items: subject, occasion, audience, purpose, speaker, and tone.

Undocumented Yet Hopeful Annotations.docx

"Undocumented Yet Hopeful" by Sandy Rivera

Devices: Anaphora, parallelism, and ethos

"Don't Feel Sorry For Refugees, Believe In Them" by Luma Mufleh

Devices: Pathos and Logos

"Danger of Silence" by Clint Smith

Devices: Alliteration, metaphor, and allusion

Close Reading Guide: (After each part)

1 Summary: write down a brief description of what happened.

3 Quotes: Choose three that you think are important for the chapter/scene, and write a brief explanation of why you think it’s significant.

1 Question: What is a question that you have either about the author, events in the chapter, their experiences, etc.?

1 Evaluation: Write your thoughts on the characters or events.

1 Prediction: Write down a brief prediction you have for what is to follow in the text.

1 Essential Question Response: How do the events in the chapter relate to our essential question: What is the relationship between freedom and power?

Novel: I Am Malala

As we finished our round of speech analysis, we read and analyzed Malala Yousafzai's speech at the United Nations. Most of my students recognized her name and her face, but they didn't know much about her story and her passion for equality.

I was determined that they would hear from someone they're own age that is passionate about justice and equality. I hoped they would really latch onto her story, but with a series of disruptions due to the pandemic and standardized testing, it became more of a chore than a joy. I had to finally admit that I bit off more than I could chew.

Themes:

Women’s rights and gender inequality
The power of education
Corruption and oppression
Solidarity and resistance
Courage

Tentative Assessment: Precis paragraph (Had to scrap this entirely as my goal was to finish the novel before winter break but there was so much chaos with standardized tests that I simply gave up--both me and my students were ready to move onto their final project).

Reflection: As much as I admire her work, I found this book to be a little too dense and dry for my students. I would definitely check out her abbreviated version and see if that would be a good fit for my students and their attention spans. The first two parts of the novel set up a lot of historical context that I probably did not do enough to prepare them for it. Many of my students voiced admiration for her, but felt that the memoir was boring.

Most Popular Recipients

President Biden
Vice President Harris
Dr. Vitti (DPSCD)
Our school principal
Governor Whitmer
Dr. Rice (State Superintendent)
DPSCD School Board Members
Secretary Miguel Cardona (Education)
Admiral Rachel L. Levine (Public Health)

Hopefully we get more responses this year! Always happy to support the Post Office!

Final Project:

Speaking Truth to Power

Just like last year, I wanted to give my students the chance to advocate for themselves on whatever topics they felt passionate about. And a lot like last year, I was really pleased with their work.

Most Popular Topics

School-Based Issues: Mental Health services in school, improving school meals, implementing life skills in required curriculum, eliminating sexist items from the School Code of Conduct,

Political Issues: Freed (or affordable college), improving the legal protections for women in the workplace, improving legal protections for the LGBTQ+ community, and eliminating discrimination in the workplace.

Social Issues: free menstrual products, police reform, immigration justice, and decreasing gun violence/gun control

Climate Change: free solar panels for lower-income neighborhoods, carbon tax on corporations, and implementing recycling in DPSCD.

Check out my students' letters here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sFFFsv3D5AT5KaoLKXrAcz_9rI-W6QEp?usp=sharing

Virtual Gallery Walks: Check them out!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1X2fXTxz0ZNmz1V8qmDTbcyGx2UCVqvcg?usp=sharing

As students browsed their class's Google Folder, I asked them to focus on 3 different subjects: one they know pretty well, one they're somewhat familiar with, and one that they have never heard of.

Black History Month Project: Making Black History

This year, I wanted the project to be simple. Rather than searching for information about famous figures within Black history, I challenged my students to consider figures HERE and NOW!

They were asked to create a poster on www.canva.com in order to highlight an African American artist, activist, actor, musician, model, content creator, etc., that they believe is doing good work in order to MAKE HISTORY.

Requirements

You subject is currently still living and under the age of 50
Your subject is visible in the general media and on social media
You have at least 3 facts about them on your poster.

Unit 5: Virtue & Vengeance

Essential Question: What motivates us to forgive?

Topics: Forgiveness, revenge/vengeance, wrongful conviction, the death penalty, and criminal justice reform.

After viewing, my students chose at least one of these questions to respond to in our Discussion Thread Channel on Teams.

What are your thoughts on Hector’s compassion towards the murderer of his daughter?
If you were Hector, would you choose virtue or vengeance?
Do you believe that people can be inherently bad or that people make bad choices due to external circumstances?

The Moth: "Forgiveness" by Hector Black

Wanting to gauge where my students were at on the spectrum of virtue or vengeance, we listened/watched to Hector Black's complicated journey of forgiveness.

I was so hopeful that most of my students chose virtue at the beginning, but when I opened it up for discussion the next day, they absolutely BLEW UP. When they were reminded of the horrors of the crime, they immediately switched perspectives as they felt that their pain was too great to be forgiving. I wonder if we all would feel the same way?

Wrongful Conviction

Gearing up for our novel If Beale Street Could Talk, I wanted to introduce my students to the injustice within our criminal "justice" system. The YouTube series "Now This: Fight For Freedom" provides comprehensive stories of real people who have experience (and are still experiencing) injustice here in our court system. We also viewed an episode of 60 Minutes focusing on eyewitness testimonies and its reliability.

We listened to the first episode of PBS' Broken Justice podcast series so students are familiar with how the court system works, particularly from the perspective of public defense attorneys who are overwhelmed and overworked. I would love to incorporate more of these episodes--I just opted for the first episode because of a chaotic week before mid-winter break.

Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1skGTDzKsLcEqxE6io9OhI?si=10c1e328057d4a68

IBSCT Novel Overview

Overview of Novel

If Beale Street Could Talk Observation Notes

Observation Notes

Novel: If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

For the first time in about 2 years, I've been able to teach a novel that my students and I really liked! The joy I feel when students come into class and are eager to read means the world to me! The fact that I can get them off their phones where they read for 30 minutes is an absolute blessing! Before the pandemic, my expectation was that students would read at home on their own but that proved to be...a challenge this year. An insane challenge. Asking students to read at home feels like an impossible task. So I decided that we would read together Monday-Thursday for no more than 30 minutes. Considering their attention spans, it's tricky to assume that students are so immersed in the text that they'll memorize everything they've read, so every few minutes, I pause the audiobook and pose "observation" questions so that they can jot down their thoughts and we can discuss briefly. This routine has made it so much easier to teach this book! I will definitely do this for the novels to come!

I'm glad that I've finally been able to teach a book that is beautiful, sad, and profound. My students struggled to connect with I Am Malala but perhaps because these characters are Black Americans and they're late teens, early twenties, they felt some kind of kinship. Granted, I did hype up this book A LOT as well as explore wrongful conviction with them extensively: tough cases and lively conversations so it definitely worked in my favor.

Assessment:

Once we finish reading the novel, students will write a precis paragraph to focus on the message, author's technique and the audience. A precis paragraph is much more precise (hehe) than a summary but I wanted my students to have a chance at writing something a little bit more formulaic. Each sentence has a specific criteria so that should make it easier for students to write so they aren't writing out of thin air. But we shall see!

4 Corners: The Death Penalty

To jumpstart the shift from wrongful conviction, I asked my students to share their thoughts and opinions about the death penalty. I'll be honest, I thought after their passion for justice while reading If Beale Street Could Talk would make them more merciful, I was soooo wrong. Whew! Swift with vengeance!

As I read aloud each statement, students had 5 options (yes, I know it's called 4 corners but I wanted neutrality to be an option): strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree and strongly agree. Students weren't obligated to share their thoughts but students were eager to express their anger, frustration, and sometimes their compassion.

Listen: https://themoth.org/stories/coming-of-age-on-death-row

The Moth: Coming of Age on Death Row

As a proper devil's advocate, I'm hoping to provide my students a chance to hear from someone close to their age arguing against the death penalty as an innocent man is set to be executed.

As they listened to Gautham Narula, I challenged them to think: who should be held accountable when we execute innocent people? What does justice look like when that's our reality?

TED: "We Need To Talk About Injustice" Bryan Stevenson

In hopes of gaining a better understanding on the subject of abolishing the death penalty, I had to call in reinforcements: aka Bryan Stevenson. As an advocate against the death penalty, I wanted students to hear his side of the argument. As they watched, I asked them to respond to the following observation questions:

Of the statistics listed below, which one shocks you the most and why?
1. In 1972, there were 300,000 people in jails and prisons. Today, there are 2.3 million.
2. The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. We have seven million people on probation and parole.
3. One out of three Black men between the ages of 18 and 30 is in jail, in prison, on probation or parole.
4. In urban communities across this country -- Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington -- 50 to 60 percent of all young men of color are in jail or prison or on probation or parole
Does it surprise you that we're the only country in the world that sentence children as young as 13 to life in prison? Why or why not?

3. Consider the German scholar's stance on why Germany does not have the death penalty. Why has America not considered ending the systemic killing of people?

4. "...I believe that each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done...there's this basic human dignity that must be respected by law" Do you agree or disagree with this quote?

5. "...you judge the character of a society not by how they treat their rich and powerful and the privileged, but by how they treat the poor, the condemned, the incarcerated." How do you judge America based on these standards?

Guest Speakers:

MIC Presentation

Megan Richardson from the Michigan Innocence Clinic

To wrap up our unit on wrongful conviction, I reached out to the Michigan Innocence Clinic to talk with my students about their efforts in overturning wrongful convictions. Megan presented for about 25-30 minutes about common mistakes and intentional choices that lead to wrongful convictions. We ended the session with a Q&A where my students posed questions. Would definitely want to do this again and try to get them in-person rather than virtual.

Stephanie Wiley from Survivors of Abuse in Recovery (Trauma Therapy)

As we geared up for our final project, I invited my sister to talk with my classes about what she's observed in the criminal justice system and what justice reform she would recommend. I figured Steph would be the perfect person since she has focused most of her career on helping people transition out of homelessness, incarceration, and find healing while incarcerated.

If you'd like to see their presentations, here is a Google Drive Folder!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dqNGZNvUvBjLUYWwiDtmEcrXukXZLP_E?usp=sharing

Final Project: Criminal Justice Reform

To end off this school year focusing on justice, my students and I created criminal justice reforms. Similar to their first semester project, my students have full autonomy on their topic, stance, and production! For the sake of my sanity, I was in no mood to read 160 essays in the middle of June, so same as last year, they are creating PowerPoint or TikToks to showcase their proposals.

Their project ultimately had to answer one of these two questions:

How can we make society more forgiving?
How can we make society safer?

If I use this project again next year, I'd love to reshape it for a proper social media campaign: digital flyers/posters, week long campaigns on social media, the works!

The goal is to push students to think about how we can make the world better for EVERYONE! It's too abstract to think about how we can change people's individual attitudes towards each other, but if we challenge the structure of how we treat and value people, we could really see change come through!

At the end of it all...

Even though teaching hybrid was exhausting and student motivation was...messy, I really loved this school year. My kids were so fun! They were opinionated, vibrant, silly, and shockingly vulnerable. I had a lot of students in crisis and it was hard to navigate that as a teacher who is incredibly empathetic but not a therapist. The amount of tears, anxiety-ridden faces, and low morale I saw this year was devastating. Our kids are not the same and we can't teach like this pandemic never happened. As most teachers just want to get back to a "normal" year, our kiddos are far from "normal".

Though I will say, the lack of motivation to turn in work (at all), ask for grace after weeks of indifference or apathy, it was pretty demoralizing. But I learned that I couldn't take it personally. I can't MAKE students care about their work, but I can still show joy in learning and hope that it encourages students to take responsibility for their education. I was as merciful as I could possibly be, and I look forward to checking students for their accountability more next year, but I didn't want students to suffer this year. Ultimately, I didn't want to suffer. I'm about to reach the "critical" time that young teachers quit the field. I'm about to start my 5th year teaching and I want to do this for the rest of my life!

In terms of content, I wasn't evaluated this year so frankly I felt like I could be a little bit more rebellious in my practice and I'm glad I did! Really wonderful and honest dialogues with my classes and I'm so grateful for my students who were willing to open up after a hellish 2 years. I hope I was able to inspire them to think about the structural changes that should be made to help make the world a better place. Future lawyers? Future politicians? I can only hope that they feel inspired to fight for justice!

Building relationships with students is my strength. I love getting to know young people and I really do cherish the time that my students share with me. Did I reach all students? No. There are some kids who kept a wall this whole time and that's okay! I don't expect to be everyone's favorite teacher but I can only hope that they felt safe, comfortable and respected in my classroom.

It was a tricky and wonderful year but I look forward to doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING this summer.

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