What an AMAZING museum.

Our minds are still reeling with personal thoughts and our own identity politics, along with the incessant thinking that teachers do about every single one of their students and their learning. Our brains are on museum-fire!

Here are few things we are thinking about post-trip.

As adults -- we were reminded yet again the beauty, pain, and necessity of education. We especially loved the quote above. We also felt immensely grateful to be teaching at a (progressive and independent) school where we have autonomy over our curriculum and discussion topics. We feel even more well-equipped (even just taking photos at the museum has given us so many resources and jumping off points). In addition, we feel even more charged to continue educating, re-educating, and unlearning with our students this year!

The students responded to the museum incredibly well. Being ten and eleven years old, they needed concrete artifacts and connections to confront the reality of slavery (and historical oppression) instead of thinking of it as a distant, past event in history. Our students found learning about ships used to transport enslaved Africans really powerful.

One student shared how one ship only arrived with only one person still alive (out of 171). He added that the conditions on the ships were terrible and Africans weren’t “being treated like people.” Another student noticed that some ships that carried slaves had names like Happy or Innocent, which really seemed like the wrong name to her, but it makes you think about perspective and how maybe what they were doing didn't seem that bad to them at the time. Our students really benefited from visiting a museum with a different perspective. One child mentioned that he often hears one narrative about Jackie Robinson, but at the museum he heard a totally different perspective about how the Negro leagues were deprived of their best players and took away some heroes from African American communities. This is, of course, a pattern we see in many avenues in our society.

For example, as adults, we see it admissions and employment and we love that they are starting to think about the complexity of a dynamic like this, in which accepting a few "model minorities" is a method of quieting the rest of that demographic and reinforcing the American Dream. Those few exceptional people who have 'made it' (ie a role model like Jackie Robinson) can now turn around to their own people and say (along with the rest of the system) "work harder and you can achieve this, too!" narrative. We won't necessarily take it there with our students, but we love that they could hear this idea explicitly at a MUSEUM!

Our students also have brains that are on museum-fire:

“I used to think that African American history was small and was mostly about being slaves. But now I’m thinking that their history is a big part in our society because they aren’t just slaves, or free, they are people and they had their own society.”

“My favorite part was learning history, even though it made me sad/upset. We can't pretend bad times didn't exist because they did and this museum made me more aware.”

We were a little apprehensive about whether or not this museum would be too much for our students. However, just as the incredible Ida B. Wells says, "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them." We feel so incredibly grateful to work as being educators (and in turn, lifelong learners), and we found ourselves especially appreciative to be educating students in this city at this time. This museum is not only a labor of our entrenched American history but it also serves as a beacon to our students to learn many truths and remind them that they can be our lights towards a more pluralistic society.

Lingering Wonderings/ Moving Forward...

Now is the time. Now is the time to call the timeout in a classroom conversation to discuss an interaction that seemed intertwined with nuances about race. Now is the time talk with our students about how complicated some pieces of this conversation are… and how clear some others are, to share with them explicitly what a movement like Black Lives Matter is all about and how it came to be.

As teachers, it is our job to move a schedule forward, meet curriculum deadlines, do that thing called grading.. It never feels like the 'right' time when we are in it. Nevertheless, our students (and kids) are not going to get any better about conversing about these integral issues.. Without practice. And quite frankly, neither are we.

So here's to all you brave conversationalists out there 'leaning in' (is that still trendy to say?) and taking on conversations that feel nerve-wracking, painful, and confusing. As we tell the students, conversations in which you have a lot of feelings are incredible things as that usually means you care and/or you are speaking your truth.

Let's get to it and keep on keepin' on! And if you get a chance, check out the NMAAHC!

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We must be the luckiest humans in the world! (Well, that and Nina spent a good 7+ hours on the phone listening to Wade in the Water). Can you guess where we are going with our students?

We are going to the NMAAHC!

After this elated moment of realization, it hits us.. Wow. We are going to the NMAAHC. That is phenomenal AND… How in the world do we prepare fifth graders for such a monumental moment, challenging and remarkable history, and then of course, logistically how many hours can we stretch with 26 ten and eleven year olds in a museum?! The questions, concerns, and backwards planning gears all began cranking at terrifying speeds.

So here we are. Sharing with you some of the first pieces of preparation before we head to the museum on Tuesday (!!).

1. We think together as a class about: why do we learn about history? Why does it matter? We did this before we studied Indigenous People's Day/ Columbus Day and we also did some class thinking around why we celebrate holidays. If you don't have these kinds of thought circles before content-- we highly encourage you to do so. They set the tone for what you are about to embark on and we refer back to these throughout the entire year-- case and point, right now to prepare for this museum!

2. We've already modeled in our classroom that we call time outs and pause for real conversations and learning around race. Just yesterday a student said something that another student found offensive and replied "That's racist!". We paused our lesson as teachers and as a class.. And we talked about it together. Our students already know that conversations about isms (like racism) and identities are not distractions from our learning. They are our learning

3. We work on a definition of racism ahead of time. It is going to come up. They (and many adults) don't actually know what it means. We use the equation:

Racism = prejudice (against a race) + institutional power

It doesn't quite make 'sense' to many of them and very well may not until the end of the year or in ten years. However, we believe in teaching into the complexities of these conversations and cheering students on as we converse and question about all the confusing nuances together. We also believe in being honest with our students and so already in October (yesterday) we got sincere questions like, "These black boys said what is this white girl doing here?' was that racist?" Questions like these are honest and we love to encourage our students to be available for the heavy thinking that comes along with answers that are sometimes (often) quite counter to what they have been taught. The answer to that question was, "Ouch, that doesn't sound like it felt good. No, it was not racist.." And then we talk about WHY!

4. We celebrate and learn from Black excellence all. Of. the. Time! From our This I Believe pieces in which we used Howard White's "The Power of Hello" recording to the many amazing authors we have been using already in our Poetry unit… our students have already seen (and are learning from) phenomenal black thinkers. We hope this has set them to be even more excited about the NMAAHC.

5. We have an overview of SOME* major moments of American history from some black perspectives. We have them go over these (they will by no means take most of them in) so that by the time we get to the museum they at least have a general sense of how history has gone. We also are explicit about the weight of some of the subject matter/imagery and we go back to our earlier conversation about why we value learning about history

*There is a LARGE emphasis on the some because I (Gabby) had a tremendously hard time figuring out exactly what pieces to add into our timeline. I ended up adding poets we have been studying and other authors we know well (Like Jacqueline Woodson) so that this timeline is personalized to our classroom learning. We also, of course, have moments like Emancipation all the way to Michael Brown… This final lesson hasn't happened yet so you might want to stay tuned to see if it goes terribly! It is an clear overload of information and they will not t retain all of it, but we are aiming for it to provide some grounding for students and moments they personally gravitate towards.

6. We do pre-museum homework. In our classroom, one key way we are doing this is by reflecting ahead of time using the 5 W's. Some of these include reflecting on why we are going, why it is important to go, what we are excited about learning etc.. This also includes who will be there and who we might be in this space, along with how we should act. How we should act can include the basic metro safety tips, but can also include identity politics (we love promoting self-awareness!). This also gives us as their teachers a moment to see where different kids are coming from before we take them. We can assess nerves, discomfort, excitement, and so on.

7. We model excitement (because we are!) and we tag some awesome colleagues to join us on this journey. We are grateful they have agreed to weave their way through this museum and experience it with ten and eleven year olds.

8. There's always more but we are leaving you with these. How would you all prepare? What have we missed? How do you prepare for field trips with your students?