Black Lives Matter at School Week and Black History Month

It is suddenly February and BLM at School Week (February 6-10) is here! I am not in a classroom this year, so am sharing some of our past work below in case anyone is looking for a new angle, read aloud, activity, or any other reminder.

One quote that has been sticking with me lately is from Walidah Imarisha as she masterfully explains Why Aren’t There More Black People in Oregon? She says, “I call it a living legacy not history because it walks with us everyday.” That seems like a perfect way to conceptualize Black History Month and how to center what we teach our students in the present and the future.

Black History Month (from 2022)

Black History Lesson: Sit-Ins (from 2021)

Black Lives Matter at School (from 2021)

Black History Month: Past Ideas & Thoughts (from 2020)

Ideas for Black History Month and Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action (from 2019)

Reflecting on Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action (from 2018)

BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Black History Month

Happy February (and Year of the Tiger!)

This week is Black Lives Matter at School week (we interpret the “week” part loosely and will probably spend 2-3 weeks introducing BLM, going through the 13 principles, and crafting our own class statement). You can read some important reminders in our Black History Month past posts here.

As always, try to focus on relating whatever you learn to the present so students can make the connection to their own lives and the current world we live in. And remember that Black history is American history.

Here are two examples of stories that help students to make the connection to now:

Maya Angelou will be first black woman on US quarter: this is the Newsela link, so if you sign up for a (free) account, you can access the article at different reading levels. We had students read this article and then design their own quarter featuring someone inspiring. You can see their quarters above!

We Are Not Asking Politely: How letter writers won the campaign to name the library after Dr. King | District of Columbia Public Library A great, local story about action, persuasive writing, and libraries!

Some book recommendations that will help students think about the present (and are just great books!):

M is for Melanin by Tiffany Rose

Don't Touch My Hair! by Sharee Miller (a huge hit in my 3rd grade classroom!)

Stay tuned as we try out some of these ideas and take part in Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action in our classrooms.

Black Lives Matter.

MLK Day 2022: Reminders & Ideas

Photo credit: https://www.childrensbookworld.com/book/9781629799391 

Another 3rd grade teacher I know had a colleague forward her a link to an Art of Teaching post I wrote 4 years ago (a slightly modified version of this post on our blog) about teaching MLK day! It was a nice surprise and funny coincidence, as well as a welcome reminder to use primary sources with my 3rd graders.

This year, however, we went with a different approach as my co-teacher (who is new to me this school year!) had the brilliant idea of widening our focus to Dr. King’s legacy and movement and thinking about the people who came before and after him.

I also always remind educators to tie Dr. King’s work back to today and future work. This is not a one lesson or one day reminder, it is something you should think about all year. Two obvious examples of this work continuing are Black Lives Matter at School Week and Black History Month, but you don’t have to stop there.

My co-teacher helped my students (and me) learn about other people who contributed to the movement. The examples are endless, but here are a few with links to related pictures books:

• Lizzie Jennings: I had never heard of Lizzie Jennings, but she fought for her right to ride a streetcar in New York City in 1854 (100 years before Rosa Parks!). This is a wonderful story for so many reasons, but might help students conceptualize that the fight for equal rights on public transport was not limited to the South.

• Claudette Colvin: she was a 15 year old who was arrested and dragged off the bus in Montgomery for refusing to give up her seat nine months before Rosa Parks triggered the bus boycott.

• Georgia Gilmore: she sustained the Montgomery bus boycott by selling food and collecting donations. She also protected the members of her organization from employer retaliation. We read this book last year as part of work we did during Black Lives Matter at School week

Picture books are a wonderful medium for students of any age, but they are not the only option! Even if a picture book about something doesn’t exist, you can use photos, video clips, Newsela articles (or write your own!). You can always adapt materials that aren’t accessible for your students and explain to them how you did so. 

As always, we would love to hear how other educators (or families) addressed this topic or commemorated the holiday. If you didn’t have a chance due to so many factors complicating our day to day lives, remember it is never too late!

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Black History Lesson: Sit Ins

This past February, we spent most of the month taking time to learn about, talk through, and create our own statement for Black Lives Matter at School Week. However, we wanted to address Black History Month and explicitly connect American history to our lives today. There are, of course, many ways to do this, but one way I’ve always loved teaching history to elementary school students (or really any students) is using primary sources and read-alouds. They can make the past tangible and far more real for students, as well as feeling “grown up” and authentic. 

I took inspiration from PBS History Detectives and modified one of the lessons they created for high schoolers or middle schoolers. We started by watching the 2nd video titled Integration Report. (It’s the one that is 2 minutes long. The 6 minute video clip included in this lesson included hate speech and violence so we decided against showing it to our third graders.) 

Photo credit: http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/slideshow/the-civil-rights-movement/#

Next, we showed students two images (numbers 1 and 3 in this slide show/ the cover image for this post as well as the image above) and had them analyze what they saw (as inspired by this resource from PBS), as well as answer some reflection questions to tie the activity into BLM, American history, and the present. 

We let them know that these photographs were primary sources (and explained what that means) and showed important moments during a significant historical event. Students were aware of the civil rights movement before we taught this lesson.

We created this handout and gave a physical copy to each student (with other reflection questions on the back).

We gave students time to look at each photo and respond. We let them know that they might write more in some boxes than others, and that was totally fine! You can see one student’s answers below.

One student’s responses after/while looking at the photographs.

Once we had given everyone time to look at both photos and fill in the table above, we moved on to the reflection questions (on the back of their papers) which were: 

• Why is this American history (not only Black history)?

• How are the strategies activists used during the sit ins similar to or different from BLM activism today?

Once students had time to answer both questions, we shared, first as partners and then as a whole class. Students were able to make a lot of comparisons between protests today and in 1960. We talked about how long ago (or relatively recent, based on your perspective) 1960 was, as conceptualizing the past and understanding the magnitude of time is always tricky for concrete third graders! I tried to make it more clear by saying that my parents were children when this was happening and that this is something my students’ grandparents lived through and might remember if they were in the United States at the time. I find that putting something in a family member’s lifetime helps students as otherwise a thousand years ago versus twenty years ago doesn’t feel that different to them since both occured before they were born.

Student’s response! She misspelled “signs” in her second answer.

Above is one student’s responses. They felt that the question about this being American history and not only Black history was obvious and therefore they did not need to elaborate in their written response, but explained to me verbally that this was something that affected everyone and still matters today. 

We followed up with sharing other resources available that students could use to learn more, including Newsela articles, books on Epic, Brainpop videos, and physical books in our classroom. Students asked if we could hear the read aloud in class as they wanted to know more about it, so we watched Sit In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney. I have the physical book in my class library, but due to distancing requirements and the fact that I had two students on Zoom (while the rest of the class was at school in person with me), video or online read alouds worked best for us this year.

This was just one lesson and of course there is so much more to address and learn, but hopefully it kindled some primary source excitement as well as starting connections in students’ minds from history to today. We wanted to avoid the pitfall of teaching Black History as something that happened a long time ago and is now “fixed” or even “better,” as well as equip students with tools to be media literate, think critically about images and information, and notice, ponder, and wonder about what they see and hear.

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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.

1. 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

2. 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).

3. How big is the problem?

   Students looked at some graphs and statistics.

4. Have protesters won any changes?

5. 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:

Black Lives Matter Timeline

Newsela Black Lives Matter Text Set

Learning for Justice Race & Ethnicity Resources (formerly Teaching Tolerance)

Teaching for Change Black Lives Matter Archive

Seven Ways to Approach Black History Month in Your Classroom published by McGraw Hill!

Our piece about Black History Month in the classroom was published by McGraw Hill’s Inspired Ideas! You can see the live piece here. We thought today was a good day to send it out, as is it February 1st. Today is also the first day of Black Lives Matter at School week. I (Nina) am not teaching today as we have a snow day (hence the photo of the masked snowman above), but already started having conversations with and hearing questions and thoughts from students last week. This year, I am hoping to go over all 13 of Black Lives Matter’s Guiding Principles which will naturally take more than a week (for everyone, but especially 3rd graders).

DC Area Educators for Social Justice (a project of Teaching for Change) has some really useful resources for educators.

Also, read about the first year we participated in Black Lives Matter at School Week here! We also wrote a piece with teaching and classroom ideas for Black History Month and BLM at School Week in 2019 that has a lot of read alouds.

Please share resources and ideas below. We’d love to hear from you.

Black Lives Matter.

Black History Month: Past Ideas & Thoughts!

Seeing all of the activity around Black History Month on various social media platforms inspired me to write a blog post again (I know it has been a long time - I (Nina) was busy having a baby!). I am on maternity leave, so won’t be teaching in a classroom this February, but will link to some of our past posts with our ideas and reflections. 

My memories of Black History Month when I was in elementary school are pretty vague, but I remember learning about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and maybe even singing some songs about how he helped our country. As an elementary school teacher myself, I definitely have had to teach into the idea that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “fixed” racism in our country or that racism was something bad from our past. You can read more about one way we approached MLK Day in the past here. The past few years, my co-teacher and I have been participating in Black Lives Matter at School week. It’s a nationwide movement that occurs the first week of February.* 

It’s important when teaching history (especially to concrete third graders) to tie it to the present, and I always think about any of the “history” months (Black History Month, Women’s History Month, etc) through this lens. Starting with Black Lives Matter at School week is a great way to do this. You can read more about our participation in Black Lives Matter at School week and get some resources and ideas for Black History Month here, as well as read our reflections after participating with more details about how we chose to approach the week in our classroom here. 

I’m sure we’ve said this before, but it’s also really important not to relegate Black history to one month of the year (we love the title of the book How Long 'Til Black Future Month, has anybody gotten their hands on this one yet??). Black history is American history and should be part of our curriculum year round. Also, our curriculum should reflect our world, and the world we want our students to live in.

Some things to keep in mind when approaching Black History Month: 

• Since your curriculum reflects the diversity of our world, you do not need to cover all of Black history in one month (often times depth in one area they didn’t know about can be more quality instruction with essential ideas than the grand sweep over conversation). Choose your focus based on student interests, knowledge, or ignorance or what works well with other units. Students will often need background information and time to process, so it is far better to cover something in depth than give them information out of context. 

• Make sure you have time for student reflection and feedback. We had a student who wrote a comment on an article we read that helped us know what we wanted to do next. Open ended comments and reflections also let students have a way to let you know what they are thinking and feeling.

• Give students opportunities to share and process, but do not expect Black students to share or answer other students’ questions. They are not in the classroom as examples to white students. Also, make sure students of color have a way to communicate with you in case they need to process or feel uncomfortable about the way something is framed or understood by others.

• Think critically about the resources you use (which of course we teachers do each and every day). Just because a picture book is about a Black historical figure does not mean that it is a good resource for your students. Think about framing, whose story or voice is highlighted, and unintentionally reinforcing stereotypes. Also consider context you might have to provide for the resources you choose (if there is slang, slurs, or historical terms your students don’t understand -- ie: the use of “Negro”, for example, you have to prepare to teach into these!). 

• As a side note beneath this- we are huge fans of explicit vocabulary instruction. Students rarely have opportunities to have these conversations, and when they do, the big ‘adult words’ do not get broken down for them and that is a missed opportunity for learning and excludes them from participating in the conversation. Freyer models, group work, vocabulary logs or what have you--  you can bring your Black history vocabulary into systems you already have! 

• Use original sources! There are so many ways to do this. Some ideas are through videos of historical events or speeches on YouTube, adapted text of speeches or letters on Newsela, and documents. It is a wonderful way to bring history to life and preserve the voice and intent of the primary source.

• Poems can be an excellent way to start. I have always believed we need to use poetry more in all subjects. For example, the beginning of the Langston Hughes poem, “Let America Be America Again” is below. Have students read the poem and write connections and questions. Also, teach them about Langston Hughes! We’ve also used poems from Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (if you are stuck on where to start, she has so many wonderful books for a variety of ages!).

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

-Langston Hughes, from Let America Be America Again

Please share your thoughts and ideas below! We’d love to hear what other educators are trying out this month. I especially enjoy hearing about other classrooms as I am away from my own students right now.

*We love Teaching For Change and if you want resources or a good community in the DMV area they are worth connecting with and receiving emails from! 

**This asterik is from Gabby just to note that she has yet to see schools that she has been working in, in Oregon, participating in BLM week. Of course, the work continues!

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Ideas for Black History Month and Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action

Happy snow day all! Not teaching today means I have time to reflect on and write about some activities we tried out this month related to the Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action (which we also participated in last year), and Black History Month.

While it happens that our biographical essays unit (which ties in with our non-fiction reading unit) falls during this month, we of course try to teach with an anti-bias framework every day (and all day!). Our curriculum, language, literature, and so much more should reflect the diversity of our world (as we the teachers do!) and we work hard to make this a reality everyday. So we are very purposeful about what we teach during Black History Month/Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action in hopes of avoiding the pitfall of teaching Black history only one month out of the year.

This month, we used a number of wonderful read alouds to enlighten our third graders. On February 1st, we joined millions of educators and participated in the National African American Read-In with a read aloud of Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson. This book connected with so many things we were learning about including our year long study of geography, biographies, and of course, Black History and the Black Lives Matter At School Week of Action. We also read a Newsela article about Jacqueline Woodson being named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Finally, we read Each Kindness and continued working on thinking about author’s purpose by asking ourselves a series of questions leading up to conceptualizing why the author chose to write this book and what the author might want us to learn.

Student responses to Granddaddy’s Turn

Another powerful read aloud was Granddaddy's Turn: A Journey to the Ballot Box by Michael S Bandy, Eric Stein, and illustrated by James E. Ransome (pictured above). We read this book right after we read a Newsela article about poll taxes and present day voter ID laws. Students made the connection right away and had so many questions about literacy tests at the polls, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and more.

My students were also enthralled when we read Libba by Laura Veirs, illustrated by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh as part of our biography study. They loved seeing and hearing about the statue of her and had so many questions about playing the guitar upside down! They are often amazed that they haven’t heard of someone who is so talented and this feeling leads into discussions about whose stories are highlighted (or omitted) in our homes, schools, and in the media.

This post would not be complete without including Milo’s Museum by Zetta Elliott. Third graders usually know and can describe what being excluded feels like, so they relate to Milo even though she is reflecting on institutional exclusion. There is so much to love about this book and we used our framework for inferring author’s purpose to think about how it feels to be excluded and what you might want others to learn from hearing your story about it.

February (and the school year) is not over yet, and of course there are always more wonderful books to share and enjoy! Please share activities or ideas that worked well in your classroom - book recommendations especially are always welcome.

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Reflecting on the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action

Now that February is ending (how is it already March?!), we are looking back to the beginning of the month when we participated in the nationwide Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action.  When talking about something like Black Lives Matter with third graders, we work hard to make sure that the points of entry and examples are tangible, accessible, and developmentally appropriate.

As we reflected on Dr. Martin Luther King Day, anti-bias education is not something we do just one week (or day, or month) out of the year. It is something we try to do all day, every day as part of our curriculum, teaching philosophy, and classroom culture. The people we highlight and celebrate in our classroom day to day reflect the diversity of our world (just like we the teachers do!).

Image from https://wearoutthesilence.org

We started our BLM week by asking students: What do you know about Black Lives Matter? We showed them the image above and then had them reflect using an I think/I wonder chart on large notecards. We were impressed with the thoughtfulness of our students’ responses. They understand that “Black Lives Matter” needs to be explicitly said because we still don’t have equality (as you can see from a few of their responses pictured above).

We continued sharing images throughout the week as an image is a tangible and accessible way for our students to start a discussion or learn about something new. When showing a new image, we would ask: what do you notice? What questions do you have? What do you think you know?

This is a great way to incorporate social justice work on all levels into your classroom - always start with an image! Ask what students notice. Ask what they think they know. Ask what questions they have. They will often surprise you and will have space and time to think deeply and reflect in a meaningful way.

Later in the week, we read this article from Newsela about implicit bias in teachers and how black preschoolers are 3.6 times as likely to be suspended as white preschoolers. After reading the article, we had students write three statements (responses or questions) after reading it (one student's responses are pictured above), and then had a whole class discussion. This example (black preschoolers being suspended at far higher rates) is really helpful for pushing our students to move beyond the idea of history and past discrimination. It provides a way to explain systemic and institutional oppression through a concrete example. The idea of preschoolers being suspended also really upset our students. Many of them made connections to their Kindergarten Reading Buddies (who they read with once a week) and they were shocked that children so young could be discriminated against and suspended.

Another resource we loved (and are keeping until the end of the school year) was our “Black History Month” book bin! As you can see (above), it is bursting with books. Students enthusiastically asked to read books from that bin and recommended them to each other. Important note: these are obviously not ALL of our books about black peoples (or that have characters of color). We have many that infiltrate all other categories. This was one way to organize some books related to Black History Month and Black Lives Matter that really worked for our students.

We also did a read aloud of Milo’s Museum by Zetta Elliot and discussed the book afterward. During the read aloud, students volunteered to explain why Milo might be feeling uncomfortable, and said it’s racist because the painting is uncomfortable (referring to a painting of a white woman and a black woman who appears to be a slave), she’s the only black girl there, and she’s not in the museum! This was another tangible and concrete example of institutional exclusion. Students connected to Milo feeling upset about not seeing herself in the museum and many of them empathized (either through the read aloud or from their own experiences) with the concept that representation matters.

We culminated our week of action by asking students to write their own statements of what Black Lives Matter means to them, and why it is important. We told our students before they started writing that we would read and combine their responses into one piece for all of us to sign and display on our door with our “everyone is welcome here” sign. The process of taking all of their ideas and combining them into one overall statement is familiar to them as this is how we created our class contract.

After we received all of their statements, we spent some time paring them down and choosing parts that summarized overall ideas and came up with the statement pictured below. Finally, we had an  unveiling of our finished class statement and each student came up to sign their initials in cursive (which was a big deal because we had finally finished learning how to write all of the letter in cursive the week before!).  Some of our students also surprised us by creating their own Black Lives Matter poster as a small group and asking us to “put it up somewhere everyone can see it!” So today we have two posters up outside our door.

Did you participate in the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action? What resources or activities would you recommend? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

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