{"id":13771,"date":"2020-04-02T15:51:17","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T22:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=13771"},"modified":"2020-04-02T15:59:47","modified_gmt":"2020-04-02T22:59:47","slug":"lets-give-them-something-to-talk-and-act-about-privilege-racism-and-oppression-in-the-middle-school-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/lets-give-them-something-to-talk-and-act-about-privilege-racism-and-oppression-in-the-middle-school-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Give Them Something to Talk (And Act!) About: Privilege, Racism, and Oppression in the Middle School Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our April reading for the 2019-20 Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN Marginal Syllabus<\/a> describes the collaborative work of Ashley Boyd, a teacher educator from a university, and Jacinda Miller, an experienced middle school English Language Arts teacher. With a shared interest in social justice literacies and passion for engaging youth in current issues, the two educators used the novel <\/em>All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely to anchor conversations about race and privilege. This piece describes the classroom culture that made this work possible, rich classroom discourse about critical issues, and the creative social action project that resulted.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the fourth month of LEARN 2019-20, a Marginal Syllabus co-developed with the National Writing Project (NWP) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Each month of the 2019-2020 academic year, we\u2019ll collaboratively read and discuss an article, published in four different NCTE journals, that investigates the intersection of literacy and equity. Refer to the the 2019-20 syllabus<\/a> for information on all the annotatable readings, which will go \u201clive\u201d on the first Monday of each month, along with related events hosted by the National Writing Project.<\/p>\n

April Topic: Creative social action as response to contemporary young adult literature about race in a middle school classroom<\/h4>\n

As one White student attempted to argue that some stereotypes are \u201cnice,\u201d such as that all Asians are smart, a student in class who identified as Asian rebutted this first student\u2019s attempt, sharing with her that he did not want to be thought of as smart because of his race, but rather because he was in fact smart.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s Give Them Something to Talk (And Act!) About: Privilege, Racism, and Oppression in the Middle School Classroom<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

As part of our close study of this text, Ashley Boyd and Jacinda Miller joined the Marginal Syllabus team to talk about their article.<\/p>\n