{"id":691,"date":"2018-06-22T00:51:37","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T00:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/?p=691"},"modified":"2018-06-22T02:35:58","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T02:35:58","slug":"rooted-in-care-campus-school-second-graders-explore-civil-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/2018\/06\/22\/rooted-in-care-campus-school-second-graders-explore-civil-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"“Rooted in Care”: Campus School Second Graders Explore Civil Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf the structure does not permit dialogue, the structure must be changed\u201d \u2013Paulo Freire<\/em><\/p>\n

In the classroom as in life, difficult conversations catalyze powerful learning. Second grade teachers at the Smith College Campus School, Robbie Murphy and Maggie Bittel, teach this truth by example. In their annual unit on the Civil Rights Movement and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, constructive dialogue about challenging topics is not only \u201cpermitted\u201d but promoted. Students grapple with past and present issues of racial inequality through a guided, interactive read-aloud of Richard Kelso\u2019s <\/a>Walking for Freedom, <\/em>supplemented by projects that turn observation into inquiry, and inquiry into action.<\/p>\n

The unit builds upon a l\u00ad\u00adong-standing first grade unit at the Campus School that is focused on individuals who inspire great change in the world. Each first grader is assigned a \u201cGreat Changer,\u201d a historical figure such as Satchel Page, Yo-Yo Ma, Georgia O\u2019Keefe, or Sally Ride, about whom they become an expert through research, writing, and art.<\/p>\n

In second grade, students carry knowledge of these individuals into discussions about human rights. After students generate their own list of universal rights, teachers facilitate a comparison between their ideas and the United Nations Human Rights of the Child, often revealing much synonymy. \u201cCan people survive without love?\u201d one student asked during this year\u2019s lesson\u2014a question that inspired others to think and talk about issues of safety, sustenance, and well-being. \u201cWhat is survival?\u201d teachers probed, framing and propelling classroom discussions. \u201cWhat makes a good life?\u201d<\/p>\n

An important curricular goal of the unit is to invite children to think critically about matters of identity. One of the ways in which Robbie and Maggie inspire such inquiry is through an activity that asks students to name their own skin color (\u201cpancake\u201d was one resonant term!), thereby acknowledging the array of appearances that melanin lends and disrupting the binary skin color descriptors that pervade many discussions of race. \u201cWhat\u2019s really important in this conversation is for people to define for themselves how they talk about their skin,\u201d Maggie says to her students, guiding them through discussions about misrepresentation and nuance.<\/p>\n

Students return to their classrooms in January ready for focused study. \u201cCivil Rights are your rights to participate in your community,\u201d Robbie (pictured above) shared with her students at the launch of this year\u2019s unit. \u201cGoing to school, getting to vote, those are examples of Civil Rights.\u201d\u00a0 Students were asked to recall their Great Changers: \u201c[Great Changers] help people understand things differently. They are leaders,\u201d Robbie said in segue. \u201cFor the next couple of months, we are going to study\u2014not just leaders\u2014but how big groups of people work together to make change when they notice something unfair about the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a wall in Robbie\u2019s classroom, a big construction paper tree displays student-generated values that serve as tenets for classroom conduct: \u201cThe 2M Community is Rooted in Care,\u201d it says at the top. With such care, students and teachers honor, but transcend, \u201cknown\u201d heroes by considering the unsung community members who work to make social movements possible. Recalling the qualities that define \u201cChangers,\u201d second graders consider how even these qualities alone cannot institute change without collective participation and mobilization. Paulo Freire, a pioneer of social justice education, writes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed<\/em><\/a>, \u201c[O]ppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole but rather selected leaders” (143), and it is to that end that second grade teachers stress the role of community in change.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Across the hall, second grade teacher Maggie Bittel also eases her students into Civil Rights study by reflecting upon Great Changers. Tacked to her blackboard is a sign with adjectives like \u201cBrave; Strong; Determined\u201d scrawled in magic marker. These characteristics, students decided, define the work of Changers.<\/p>\n

But vulnerability informs change, too, and Maggie acknowledges that humanizing fact. \u201cFriends had some feelings last week,\u201d she said to her class as they sat down on the rug. \u201c[Our lesson] was making you feel sad, compassionate, angry.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI felt teary,\u201d one student shared\u2014a comment that initiated a wave of \u201cCampus School shimmies,\u201d or the hand motion that silently signals agreement at the Campus School.<\/p>\n

Maggie asked her students what Dr. King and other activists might say to themselves in the face of difficulty or fear. Kids brainstormed phrases like: \u201cThis is a lot of effort,\u201d and, \u201cWe have to keep going. We CAN do it!\u201d<\/p>\n

Building on their ideas, Maggie spoke to her students\u2019 emotions: \u201cWE are strong,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are brave. We are determined. It takes a lot of effort to study this material, but we can keep going because this is REALLY important! And the Great Changers will start to make change in this story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Maggie Bittel, a second grade Supervising Teacher at SCCS, leads her students in discussion.<\/p><\/div>\n

One community of changers in the story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott is the Women\u2019s Political Council (WPC), \u201ca group of teachers, nurses, social workers, and others trying to improve the way black people lived in their cities.\u201d Maggie reminds her students that women were also marginalized by the legal system, introducing an idea much discussed in Smith College classrooms\u2014that of intersectionality, or the notion that a confluence of identifiers (gender, race, class, religion) comprise an individual\u2019s identity, and therefore cannot be separated into mutually exclusive categories.<\/p>\n

Maggie tells her students about Jo Ann Robinson, a Great Changer who was president of the WPC. Robinson met with Mayor Gayle of Montgomery, Alabama, to ask that he join forces with her Council and work to dismantle seating segregation on buses. Though Mayor Gayle \u201cacted polite,\u201d he refused to make change\u2014a resistance that ignited many second grade gasps and the idea that \u201cThe laws made white people more happy than black people, so maybe Mayor Gayle wanted to stay more happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students\u2019 dismay led Maggie to introduce \u201cprivilege\u201d to her class\u2014 a word with which they could describe the idea of being \u201cmore happy.\u201d She then gave her students the chance to take action: \u201cGuess what!? You are going to get to tell Mayor Gayle what you think! I want you to write a letter to the Mayor, just like the Women\u2019s Political Council, and tell him how you feel. Convince him to change the law, and tell him why. You can be yourself or a historical character, but be sure to grab his attention. What might you say in the beginning?\u201d<\/p>\n

Students scribbled hurriedly in this argumentative writing exercise. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you have courage?\u201d one student asked the Mayor. \u201cYou were not fair back then,\u201d another told him. \u201cIt\u2019s not fair that you are not changing the law. People who have more melanin have to sit in the back of the bus. You\u2019re going to get about ten more letters\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

It was a sunny afternoon in Robbie Murphy\u2019s classroom, and her students were equally fervent. \u201cWhy would someone not want to change an unfair rule?\u201d she asked her students before talking about white privilege. \u201cSome white people might not understand why people want to change the laws,\u201d she synthesized when a student asserted that \u201cwhite people can\u2019t understand what it\u2019s like to be bossed.\u201d After touching on notions of empathy and third-person perspective-taking, Robbie continued: \u201cWhen people feel threatened, they start to make up stories to understand what\u2019s happening to them\u201d\u2014an idea that is filled with latent references to the psychological concepts of schema theory<\/a> and confirmation bias<\/a>, cognitive tendencies that perpetuate all forms of stigmatization and stereotyping.<\/p>\n

That morning, Robbie introduced an enactment similar to the letter-writing going on across the hall. She asked students: \u201cHow could you let people know to NOT ride the buses on Monday, December 5th<\/sup>, the day of Rosa Parks\u2019 court appearance?\u201d Students were invited to create their own flyers, and some adapted the provocation by designing posters for the Black Lives Matter movement\u2014connecting \u201cthen\u201d and \u201cnow.\u201d Adding to a timeline of the week when the boycott began, Robbie asked students where they might put their flyers had they been organizers during the Civil Rights Era, reminding them that 40,000 African Americans used public buses to travel to work, school, church, and doctor\u2019s appointments. Aware that they attend elementary school on a college campus, students were thrilled to find out that the spread of boycott pamphlets was organized by professors and students at Alabama State College, a \u201cblack college\u201d founded by former slaves.<\/p>\n

Serendipity struck while students focused on their timeline: The sound of first graders filled the hallway, and second graders rushed to the door to find their peers marching by with picket signs. Messages like \u201cI stand for everybody!,\u201d and \u201cSave the environment!\u201d were painted across each poster, offering a reminder that social justice education infuses the entirety of the Campus School experience.<\/p>\n

Itself a depiction of Freirean collaboration, first graders reminded Robbie\u2019s class of a lesson portrayed in their book: One person holds immeasurable power when joined by a crowd of like-minded allies. Returning to the rug and settling back into their lesson, second graders were energized. One young boy pulled at his Sketcher, raising his hand to share: \u201cMaybe [the organizers of the boycott] could tell the bus companies [their plan] so they could raise the bus fares or something!,\u201d an idea supported by Kelso\u2019s narrative, which makes clear that many people of color did not mind the fare going up, but rather the fare going up while they continued to be treated unfairly.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso,\u201d he asked Robbie with a pensive look on his face, \u201cafter this lesson could you help me untie my shoes please?\u201d<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Astute and sincere, these second graders are making great change one step at a time. At the culmination of their unit, Robbie and Maggie join together and encourage students to take another\u2019s perspective by walking one mile \u201cin another person\u2019s shoes.\u201d To understand the trek that boycotters endured when they bypassed buses in Montgomery, students participate in their own mile-long march\u2014reminiscent, perhaps, of the picketing that they practiced one year prior.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you need in order to walk a mile?\u201d teachers ask.<\/p>\n

Every year, students\u2019 reach a similar conclusion:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Written by Brittany Collins<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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