Dear Teacher,
The outcomes we received from our students were amazing and exceeded our expectations but there some advice we would like to give you when teaching this unit. Some advice we have for teachers using our lessons would be to really get to know your students, create more time for discussion, and have students take more independence in their work. We spent a relatively short time with our group of students but we got to know key details of each student such as participation levels, who tends to speak more or less, what they like or don’t like, and what they might already know or don’t know. These things helped us figure out what kind of activities to do, groupings for certain tasks, discussion topics, and probing questions. Creating more time for discussion whether it be student-to-student or student-to-teacher has students become more involved in their learning by having them analyze information, formulate ideas, use evidence, and actively seek out what others are saying to learn from it or use it in their own discussions to agree or rebuttal. Students have wonderful ideas and they need more outlets to let their thoughts out without having to be graded on what they do or don’t know. Similarly, because students can have wonderful and numerous ideas, giving them more independence in their work allows them to shine. Scaffolding might still be needed frequently but it shouldn’t stifle a student’s opportunities and possibilities. Students seem to be prouder of their work, become more motivated to learn, and take ownership of their learning when they get to create something that includes a lot of their own effort and ideas. Some other advice we have is to not be scared to talk about race. Something we came across was the students being hesitant on how to address people of the Black community throughout the unit and we had a conversation with them about the power of words. We explained how Black includes people of darker pigment who experience prejudice and discrimination and how African-American is a word that describes people of African descent. The students were more comfortable knowing that they have a choice in what words to use and that they were able to have the conversation about why we have certain labels for people. We also advise in being careful with words that are dehumanizing. Especially with this unit, instead of saying “slaves” use “people who were enslaved” or instead of “colored people” use “people of color”. This helps with students who are of this identity not feel like they are anything less than a human or hopeless.
Lastly, thank you for visiting our page and we hope you have enjoyed the lessons we provided.
Stephanie Fierro & Jessica Guevara