Introduction to Curriculum

Letter of Introduction

Dear educators, parents, partners, and other curriculum leaders,

The Cottonwood School of Civics and Science, understanding the importance of education equity, has created an opportunity for students and educators to learn the Black History of Portland through the “Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs: The Black History of Portland, Oregon” curriculum. This is not the definitive story of Portland’s Black history. This is a start to telling an evolving story, one that will change as new perspectives are added and current events unfold. Within this curriculum we have attempted to capture images, voices, and commentary on a myriad of people, places, and events associated with Portland’s Black community over the past 170 or so years. It is the result of years of research, conversation, and discovery but it is far from complete. As you lead the lessons, be ready to learn new insights, experiences, and information from your students, partners and parents. Be prepared to identify gaps based on your own racial identity, personal experiences, and/or knowledge. Think of this curriculum as a living document, one that you can revise and add to over years.

Race and our personal beliefs about race are at the heart of this curriculum. This requires us—the educators—to examine and reflect upon our own biases and assumptions. In order to teach this curriculum, it is imperative that we do this work. This means: take time for reflection, be willing to “lean into discomfort,” process your emotions, and be ready to make mistakes. Consider identifying a network of people to support you and help you process as you prepare and lead this curriculum. A network could be made of fellow educators in your school or organization, or it could made of friends, family, or other colleagues who are doing similar work. This is one way we can seek growth as educators, preparing to learn alongside our students while also offering them the additional support they may need.

The development of this curriculum was rooted in the philosophies of place-based education and culturally responsive teaching practices. Through our collaborative work writing this text, we have found there is tremendous overlap between these two educational approaches. We believe that employing place-based education and culturally responsive teaching practices is simply good teaching and it is our assumption that the following lessons will be held up by these foundational frameworks.

It is our hope that through this curriculum students and educators will recognize the multiple perspectives and experiences that can take place in one city. An essential insight we wish to impart is that different groups of people have unique experiences of history and place. Students who often do not see themselves represented in the dominant historical narrative—including African-American, Latino, Asian, Native Hawaiian, American Indian, Alaska Native and more—may see within this curriculum that there are alternatives to traditional history and avenues to share their story. As educators, it is imperative for us to listen. In order for our young people to better understand their communities and their neighbors, we need to give them access to stories that have been silenced for too long. It is only by examining the past and their own understanding of the present, that they will become empowered agents of change in their lifetime, if not in ours.

Again, we offer this curriculum as a living, breathing document. We offer it with humility and the belief that you need to start somewhere. We are certainly open to feedback and suggestions—feel free to connect with us as you take this on.

Thank you for doing this work,

Sarah Anderson and Lisa Colombo

Who Are We?

The two primary authors of this curriculum are staff members of the Cottonwood School of Civics and Science in Portland, Oregon. Lisa Colombo is the 6th grade teacher and has been with the school since it opened in 2007. Sarah Anderson came to the school as the 7th/8th grade humanities teacher in 2008 and then transitioned into the position of fieldwork and place-based education coordinator. We are both white women who work at a school with a primarily white student body. Neither of us grew up in Oregon. We struggled at many moments and junctures of this process with the question, “Should we be the ones to write this curriculum? Is it our place to tell these stories?” There were times when our uncertainty slowed us down, but we were continuously bolstered and re-energized by colleagues and associates, many of them people of color, who assured us that we could do this. But we didn’t need to do it alone and we shouldn’t do it alone.

We recognized early on that this work could not be done in isolation without including the direction and perspectives of others, especially those who have lived this story. We deferred to the knowledge and experience of associates and colleagues who are much more intimate with the Black history of Portland and for whom this is not an academic task; it is part of their life. We are deeply indebted to the following individuals for their collaboration and consultation:

Darrell Millner, emeritus professor of history and former head of the Black Studies Department at Portland State University, guided us as we wrote the history in this curriculum. Professor Millner’s many suggestions and revisions have enabled us to produce a more honest and accurate narrative.

John Lenssen and Hector Roche served as equity consultants for the first leg of this project. John and Hector brought process and reflection to the forefront of the curriculum and helped us to recognize our own biases embedded in the text. With their assistance, we designed the diverse perspectives worksheet and worked to create documents that will help all educators be more self-reflective.

David Martinez and the focus group of PPS Teachers served as advisors as we prepared revisions to our “final” draft. David is the Multicultural Curriculum Curator for Portland Public Schools. He gave initial feedback and worked to gather a group of diverse educators to provide recommendations. The team’s comments helped to identify weak spots, missing content, and areas that generally needed improvement.

Joyce Harris, Kendra Hughes and Victor Cato came on as consultants towards the end of the process to address the feedback from the PPS advisory group and generally enhance the curriculum. All three had a hand in bringing the curriculum to the next level, but we would especially like to acknowledge Victor for his work aligning lessons to state and national standards; Kendra for her work designing and preparing the three-day teacher training that accompanied the launch of this curriculum, and Joyce for making sure we got the story right, and when we didn’t—fixing it.

We are extremely grateful to have worked with such talented and thoughtful people. Without their contributions, this curriculum would lack texture, insight, and heart. It would fall flat. This has been a truly collaborative process; we continue to learn more with every conversation and connection. Thank you.

Additional Acknowledgment

In addition to the people mentioned above, we would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to the following people for their varied talents and expertise:

Sarah Korach, grant manager for the Cottonwood School, toiled over formatting and other logistics to help make this publication organized and user-friendly.

Courtney Ferrari, middle school educator at Valley Catholic School in Beaverton, helped to assemble an earlier version of this curriculum and identify additional resources.

Kathy Beckley, middle school reading specialist, helped us to identify vocabulary words within the student text to make the readings more accessible to students in grades six through eight and align them with language arts standards.

Jada Pierce, high school English-Humanities educator from Northwest Academy, served as both copy and content editor.

Why This Curriculum?

We initially decided to teach the Civil Rights Movement to our middle school students at the Cottonwood School of Civics and Science because we wanted to share its lessons of courage, perseverance, resilience, and compassion. The educational mission of our school is place-based, which means that we aim to teach national and global themes through a local lens. This drove us to find local connections to the national story.

We also wanted to teach about Black history specifically because we felt it was imperative to address race and racist history, above all because it is not history. The Civil Rights Movement started over sixty years ago, but the struggle continues. In Oregon, segregation is still a reality in our schools and neighborhoods, police brutality occurs with little consequence to the authorities, and white supremacy under the guise of the “Alt Right” is on the rise. Teaching Tolerance and the Southern Poverty Law Center gave Oregon an “F” on their report card for civil rights coverage in state standards [1] and we wanted to change that.

When we set out to develop the first version of this curriculum in 2009, we had difficulty locating a student text to teach the Black history of Portland to middle school students, so we did our own research into both primary and secondary sources written for adult audiences. It quickly became clear that even though Portland and Oregon did not feature on the main stage of the Civil Rights Movement, there is an equally important story to tell here.

In 2016, the Cottonwood School received a dissemination grant through the Oregon Department of Education to train other teachers in the place-based education approach and to share our curricula. We selected the Black history unit because we believe there is a real need for both teachers and students, citizens of Portland and Oregon, to become familiar with this history. Based on our experience, there is also a lack of resources for teaching a comprehensive unit. It is our sincerest hope that educators will find lessons, ideas, and stories to bring into their classrooms that will inspire honest, meaningful conversations about race, history, current events, and this place we all call home. Through these teaching and learning experiences, it is our hope that educators lean in and share experiences that focus on the challenges, successes, resilience and strength of the Black community.