Black Lives Matter at School
In February, my co-teacher and I (along with our entire school) learned about Black Lives Matter’s 13 Guiding Principles as part of Black Lives Matter at School week. My co-teacher and I chose to spend more than a week as we felt that we needed more time to introduce the topic, teach each principle, and allow time for reflections, shares, and questions before creating our own class statement.
After learning about all 13 principles, we came up with the above statement about what our class believes. All of the language in the statement comes directly from students, and we worked to make sure their beliefs and voices were being expressed. Every student signed the statement (including two virtual learners who sent me their signatures electronically) and it hung outside both of our classrooms (we had to be in two rooms with smaller groups this year due to COVID).
We started thinking and wondering about Black Lives Matter the week before with a preview activity. We projected the slide shown above and gave each student a notecard to record thoughts and questions.
For students who needed more structure, we had them fill out an I think/I wonder t-chart in response to the image/slide above. Students had a lot of thoughts and questions. Many said they had seen the images on signs, murals, street art, and t-shirts. Others mentioned protests and the events that occurred last summer after George Floyd was killed.
We also shared some images of art in DC neighborhoods and let students know that we would be talking about Black Lives Matter in more depth next week for Black Lives Matter at School Week. We finished our introduction with a read aloud of Milo’s Museum by Zetta Elliot, a wonderful picture book that provides an example of institutional exclusion for students.
The next week, we started with an introduction to Black Lives Matter. We had an exclusively online learning day due to snow, so we were teaching over Zoom, which has it’s disadvantages, but allowed us to be altogether as one whole class and gave students the option of privately chatting us to ask questions or respond.
We started by answering the questions below and included some images and graphics to help students understand.
Where does the name Black Lives Matter come from?
We shared images of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman and Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi
How did BLM grow?
We used images of Mike Brown and Darren Wilson, as well as the protests in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City (following the killing of Eric Garner).
How big is the problem?
Students looked at some graphs and statistics.
Have protesters won any changes?
What opposition has there been to BLM?
We shared images of protests and rallies in Washington, DC in June of 2020.
We also watched this video, which was released on the 5th anniversary of Black Lives Matter. We ended up running out of time because we prioritized answering students' questions and giving time for reflection, but we had planned on introducing the 13 Guiding Principles of the Movement for Black Lives as well. There are posters geared towards elementary school students here (one for each principle) as well as a teacher copy, activity book, and booklist which we used in the following days which we found through the Black Lives Matter at school week site resources page.
For the next day, we covered the principles of Restorative Justice, Empathy, Loving Engagement, and Diversity. We used Jamboard to make slides (the introduction slide for this day is above) and put images of each poster on slides as well. Once we had discussed and answered questions about each principle, we moved into our read aloud Leaders Like Us: Shirley Chisholm by J. P. Miller. We used Jamboard and an online read aloud as we had two students attending school over Zoom while I taught the other students in the classroom, so this format worked best for us. After the read aloud, we gave students time to consider these pages in their activity book, respond to the questions, or color.
The following day, we covered Globalism, Transgender Affirming, Queer Affirming, Collective Value, and Intergenerational. It was really hard to choose one read aloud as there were so many good ones that could work, but we finally went with Pies from Nowhere: How Georgia Gilmore Sustained the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Dee Romito (runner ups included One of a Kind Like Me, This is the Rope, and Voice of Freedom).
After that, we learned about Black Families, Black Women, Black Villages, and Unapologetically Black, with the read aloud When the Beat was Born by Laban Carrick Hill (runner up: The Book Itch!).
We concluded our week with a “gallery walk” of the 13 principles. In pre-COVID times, we would have had anchor charts for all 13 principles up around the room and students would eventually have stood next to the one that spoke to them, but since we had students on Zoom and we needed to distance, we gave students the instructions above and when everyone was ready to share, we stood in a distanced circle and each shared what principle we connected with and why.
Finally, we were ready to create our whole class statement. We used the instructions pictured above and then took student responses and used excerpts to make sure everyone’s voice was included. After we all signed the statement and it was displayed outside both classrooms, we also decided to showcase our work on our class bulletin board. Students chose what they wanted to display. Some chose certain pages from their activity book, others created their own Black Lives Matter posters, and others wanted to share their response to the prompt above.
We were explicit with students about the fact that this work is always ongoing in our classroom and lives, and that making our class statement and sharing it with our community was the first step to the continuing work of putting our statement in action. We continued making connections, sharing current events, and more as the year progressed.
Other helpful resources:
Newsela Black Lives Matter Text Set
Learning for Justice Race & Ethnicity Resources (formerly Teaching Tolerance)