Whose History?

An Introduction to African American History

Elaine Kuoch
Teaching and Learning in Urban Contexts
August 7, 2016
Mini Unit Narrative
Introduction

This five-day mini unit is intended to be used for the first five days of class in an African

American History course, a mandated class in the School District of Philadelphia, with 10th

graders at Furness High School. Furness High School is a traditional, neighborhood high school

in Southeast Philadelphia with 100% of its students qualifying for free and reduced lunch and

48% of the student population considered English Language Learners. The school is also

remarkably racially diverse with a 47% Asian, 23% African American, 18% Latino, and 10%

White student body. 15% of the students are considered students with disabilities (School

Profile: Furness, Horace High School, n.d.). Through this narrative, I hope to explain my

rationale behind the choices Ive made in designing my mini unit and to show how the content of

EDUC 544 has influenced my thinking. Constructivist and sociocultural ideologies in which

knowledge is not fixed, varies in different contexts, is created collaboratively by students and

teachers, and builds off of students previous knowledge highly influence my thinking in creating

this unit plan (Oakes & Lipton, 2012). The process in my planning also reflects the concepts and

suggestions of Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) in an effort to follow the Understanding by

Design model and to differentiate my instruction.

What are my desired results?

My first step in developing this mini unit was to identify what I hoped my students would

understand at the end of the unit. While thinking about teaching a mandatory African American

history class to predominantly low-income students of color at Furness, I realized that I wanted

students know that many high school students dont have access to African American history

courses or similar classes and that the African American history class requirement in

Philadelphia high schools was developed due to student demands. One of the reasons many

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students dont have access to African American or similar history courses in their schools is due

to the politicians and school board in various areas that oppose the teaching of ethnic studies. I

also wanted students to know that youth and community members across the U.S. have played a

large role in establishing ethnic studies courses. From there, I developed my enduring

understandings and essential questions.

v Students will understand which voices may influence what happens in schools.

What gets taught in high school history classrooms and why?

v Students will understand that they can play an active role in shaping their communities.

What role do students have in shaping their classrooms and schools?

How did I decide on these desired results?

My rationale for developing these enduring understandings and essential questions is

deeply rooted in the readings and concepts from EDUC 544. At the center of my unit and

African American history classes is a strong desire to implement culturally relevant pedagogy.

Ladson-Billings (1995) describes culturally relevant pedagogy as a theoretical model that not

only addresses student achievement but also helps students to accept and affirm their cultural

identity while developing critical perspectives that challenge inequities that schools (and other

institutions) perpetuate (p. 469). This quotation emphasizes that the ability for students to

identify culturally with the material and the development of critique of social inequities as a

result of classwork is crucial. Ladson-Billings (1995) also explains that if teaching is not

culturally relevant, students academic success can have a negative effect on students cultural

and psychological wellness (p. 475). Through my unit, I strive to not only affirm my students

cultural and racial backgrounds but I also hope to affirm their personal perspectives and voices.

Precious Knowledge considers the stories and experiences of high school students important and

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valuable, and I hope that my students learn to value their own stories as well. Milner (2007)

discusses that the experiential knowledge of students of color and researchers of color is often

devalued by dominant education research, and my unit strives to prioritize experiential

knowledge and stories about people of color and by people of color as a way of challenging

racist ideology within education and academia.

Not only does my unit strive to implement culturally relevant pedagogy, but it also

attempts to bring race and ethnicity to the forefront of historical study and to challenge students

to think critically about how schools typically decide what is worthy to be taught as history.

Milner (2007) explains the importance of using race as a primary lens in studying inequity in the

U.S. and that limiting ones analysis to socioeconomic status is deeply inadequate. By starting

off through a case study about ethnic studies in Tuscon, my unit plan centers the importance of

thinking through race in thinking about the world. By asking students to think about what

typically gets taught in history classes and what gets left out, I hope my unit plan will focus on

disrupting and extending what it means to be normal (Milner, 2007, p. 389). This unit

emphasizes the substantial role that politicians and school boards have over school curricula in

order to make explicit the ways in which dominant histories are not simply taught due to their

intrinsic values but rather that dominant histories are actively implemented to maintain the status

quo and structural power.

While my unit plan actively centers race at the forefront of our discussions, it does not

necessarily address the identities of my students, the teacher, or how these identities interact.

Milner (2007) emphasizes the importance of recognizing ones positionality as the teacher in

relation to ones students and explains that the failure to do so can impede students learning and

deeply damage individuals and communities. Although my unit plan does not explicitly address

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positionality, I hope that students will be able to connect the material with their personal

identities and experiences in the reflection portion of the final assessment. The assessment rubric

states the expectation that students projects explain how the units ideas relate to their lives and

experiences, so I hope that in this section students will bring in the ways that their personal

identities and experiences connect to the main messages of the unit.

While the African American History course requirement mirrors the 50% African

American student body in Philadelphia district school students, the different racial composition

of the Furness student body creates an interesting dynamic studying African American history

(District Schools, 2015). Because most of the student body is not African American, I imagine

that some students will wonder why African American history is taught in place of another

ethnic studies class. Although I do not have an easy answer to this question, I hope that taking an

African American history class and learning about a case study of Mexican American Studies

will help students understand the overall benefit in taking ethnic studies classes and will

encourage students to seek out ethnic studies classes in other contexts. Moreover, I hope that

taking African American studies classes will allow students to gain an understanding of crucial

themes that transcend specific topics and can be used in analyzing the experiences of other

racialized groups as well.

I also wonder about the ways in which my own positionality and my own identities will

affect my teaching and my students learning. What does it mean to an outsider of the

community and an Asian American teacher in a heavily Asian and Asian American school

teaching an African American history class? How can I, as an Asian American teacher teaching

an African American history class, confront and challenge my own cultural ways of knowing to

minimize misunderstandings and macroaggressions in my classroom? How can I recognize and

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view my identities as an Asian American woman as an asset to my classroom in trying to support

all of my students? I am still working through these questions. As a teacher who hopes to

recognize her positionality and a strong believer in growth mindset, its important to recognize

that I dont have all of the answers, and I hope that I can encourage my students to think about

complicated questions as opportunities for learning and growth.

How did I determine my assessments?

In this unit, I will assess my students understanding by listening to their partner and

group discussion, reading their journal entry, and evaluating their final projects. The first day of

class starts off with a discussion activity that encourages students to build connections with their

classmates and acts as a low-stakes pre-assessment. By listening to students explanations about

what they think should be taught in history classes, I will learn more about my students and their

relationship to history class and will get a glimpse into my students grasp of the units enduring

understandings before delving into the unit concepts. Throughout the unit, I have included

various assessments that differ in modality in an effort to give students more chances to succeed,

to showcase their multiple intelligences, and to support student needs and learner variance such

as student interest, readiness, and learning profile (Gardner, n.d.; Tomlinson and McTighe,

2006). I also designed the final project of this unit with the GRASPS framework for developing

authentic assessment as explained by Tomlinson and McTighe (2006). In order to build an

authentic assessment with a real-world goal, the purpose of the final project of this unit is to

build public awareness about the ethnic studies case study in Tuscon and the history of the

Philadelphia African American history mandated course. Ive also created a rubric for the final

assessment to try to set clear expectations for my students and to make explicit the characteristics

of quality work.

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How did I plan learning experiences and instruction?

Tomlinson and McTighes (2006) WHERETO model has largely shaped my process in

planning everyday learning experiences. I have especially thought about how to incorporate

differentiation beyond my final project and focused on one of these authors questions: How

will I tailor the learning activities and my teaching to address the different readiness levels,

learning profiles, and interests of my students? (Tomlinson and McTighe, 2006, p. 125) In an

order to support learner variance especially at a school with a high ELL student population, this

unit heavily incorporates group and partner work, which may support students who need reading

and/or writing support and students who struggle being present in class. The unit also allows for

individual work in the journaling activity and gives students an option to work individually for

their final project. Ive also tried to include multiple modes of teacher presentation through the

use of various movie clips and an article from The Atlantic. Furthermore, I have tried to engage

and encourage my students to relate their learning to their experiences and interests through my

use of the movie Precious Knowledge, which is a highly accessible movie that centers the

experiences and stories of high school students of color.

My unit also strives to promote classroom community. The first days lesson plan invites

students to participate in a discussion activity in which students speak to a handful of other

students one-on-one while answering questions about their relationship to history. I hope that

students will start to become acquainted with each other and build a respectful classroom

environment while also starting to engage in content. My attempt to incorporate community

building into my unit plan reflects EDUC 544s emphasis on creating respectful and inclusive

classroom environments. The last day of the unit also invites students to collaboratively develop

community guidelines. This activity connects to the units enduring understanding that students

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can play an active role in shaping their communities. Building classroom community allows for

students to feel comfortable in our learning space and to develop relationships amongst

themselves and with the teacher. Establishing classroom community and supporting relationship

building within the classroom hopefully creates a sense of belonging for students and possibly

even minimizes the effects of stereotype threat (Steele, 1997).

Conclusion

Ive designed this unit with the enduring understandings and the essential questions at the

core of my process, and my essential questions are crucial in studying any type of history in

school. While Ive tried to implement many of the suggestions of the authors we have read, I

wonder about my units possible shortcomings. For example, my unit doesnt explicitly teach

academic skills that will help my students succeed in the future. Delpit (2006) emphasizes the

importance of teaching academic skills to low-income students of color, especially Black

students, because mastery of such skills are necessary in excelling in academic environments and

Black students might not have access to these skills otherwise. The lack of explicit teaching of

academic skills in my unit plan could surely be a point of weakness or an aspect to critique.

Although this unit does not directly address traditional academic skills, I would hope that these

topics would be covered later in the course. I would also like to acknowledge that other than the

community guidelines created on the last day of the unit, this unit plan does not give much time

or space to set classroom norms or routines. I hope that this unit will provide a fruitful start to the

year, and I will consider the shortcomings of this unit as I build curricula in the future.

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References:

A Beginners Guide to the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI). Retrieved from

http://multipleintelligencesoasis.org/about/

Delpit, Lisa. (2006). Other peoples children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. NY: The New
Press.

District Schools. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.phila.k12.pa.us/about/#schools

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, American

Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491

Oakes, J. & Lipton, M. (2012). Teaching to Change the World. NY: Paradigm Publishers.

McGinnis, E. I. & Palos, A. L. (2011). Precious Knowledge. USA: Dos Vatos.

Milner, H. Richard. (2007). Race, Culture, and Researcher Positionality: Working through
Dangers Seen, Unseen, and Unforeseen. Educational Researcher 36(7), pp. 388-400.

School Profile: Furness, Horace High School. Retrieved from

https://webapps.philasd.org/school_profile/view/2160

Steele, C.M. (1997) A Threat in the Air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and
performance. June, American Psychologist 52 (6), 613 - 629.

Tomlinson & McTighe (2006). Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by

Design: Connecting Content and Kids. (Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD Publishers).