I’ve just updated my January/Winter Holidays Wakelet — which means that there are a few more new links you can find and some outdated ones that I’ve deleted. It includes resources for MLK Day, Lunar New Year, and Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Holocaust Remembrance Day is a new column that I just added. One of the resources I added to that column is a picture book called, Bartali’s Bicycle. This was one of the Texas Bluebonnet Books for which I had the opportunity to write curriculum for a local school district, and it really made an impression on me when I read it. It is the true story of the heroic Italian cyclist named Gino Bartali, who secretly saved countless lives during World War II. Students will be amazed by his daring and innovation, and you can find a link to a discussion guide on the author’s website.
Also, just a reminder that I’m scheduled to present at TCEA in San Antonio with Amy Chandler (Assistant Director of Gifted and Talented in North East Independent School District) on January 30th, 2023, on Digital Differentiation. We’d love to see you in person!
On Monday, January 17th, 2022, we will honor the life of Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States. I say, “we,” though I know that not everyone, even today, appreciates this man’s contributions to the advancement of civil rights for all. And there is a disturbing amount of people in our country who would rather not acknowledge our past. Some will ignore the date, some will protest against it, and some will argue that commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. somehow harms the children of this generation.
My anti-racist link for this week is to a Storycorps video about one of the men who motivated Martin Luther King Jr. to become an activist, Maceo Snipes. Snipes was an army veteran who returned from fighting for our country in World War II, voted the next day, and was murdered for exercising his right — one of the many rights he defended valiantly as a soldier.
This egregious crime prompted a young college student, Martin Luther King Jr., to write a letter that was published in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. In that letter, King refers to the “scarecrow” arguments racists utilize to defend their terrible acts, attempting to justify themselves by claiming they were only protecting White people from Black people who want to take over. Sound familiar?
We often recall Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech this time of year, but I think we need to make sure we don’t forget why that speech needed to be made. It’s not pleasant to think about the horrific sins of our past, but we are in grave danger of returning to them if we choose to ignore them.
For more resources for teaching about Martin Luther King, Jr., you can go here. I will also be adding a link to this post to my collection of Anti-Racist Resources.
“We learned about a man who got killed today,” a kindergarten boy solemnly informed me Friday afternoon. We were waiting in the cafeteria to board buses at dismissal time. The day before, he had been all excited about his train book he had checked out from the library. But now things had gotten serious.
I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Martin Luther King,” the little girl next to him nodded.
“Oh,” I said, somewhat relieved. I don’t know why that made it better – that it was a man who was killed years ago instead of hours ago. Time shouldn’t make it less disturbing, should it?
“No one liked what he said, his speeches,” the boy went on, “so the police killed him.”
“Wait a second!” I said, as gently as I could, “The police did not kill him. A bad man did. And lots of people did like his speeches.”
“Okay,” the boy said. He didn’t seem very concerned with the details. But he patted me on the arm because he could see that I did care.
By then it was time to board the bus, so the conversation was over.
The day before, I had been talking about courage with my 5th graders. They had to rank 5 pictures from lowest to highest on how much courage they felt was being demonstrated in each image. There was disagreement about the ranking of a picture that showed a Selma protest march. Before ranking, the students had set some criteria for courage, one of which was that the person chose to perform that action not knowing if the outcome would be harmful to him or her.
“I ranked it high because they were marching for their civil rights,” one student said.
“But they didn’t have a choice!” one student exclaimed.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They weren’t getting treated right, so they had to march. It wasn’t their choice, so it’s not courage!”
I tried to wrap my mind around this interesting logic and a few of us did our best to explain the situation – which the student admitted he didn’t know very much about.
“Well, and plus, they didn’t have to worry about being harmed because we have the right to protest, don’t we?” he asked.
Wow, I thought. This had obviously not been covered in his history class.
Ironically, our entire conversation had been brought about because we just finished reading The Giver, a book about a dystopian society where only one person holds all of the memories of the past – the good and the bad. We had talked about the importance of keeping even horrible memories because we learn from them. Yet here we were struggling to understand the importance of historical moments that are already starting to fade as newer generations tell the story with less and less detail.
I am worried. Every time I read The Giver with a class, I try to get across the message that, even though it’s fictional, it is not entirely unrealistic. People are willing to give up many freedoms to ensure safety – especially if they have no experience in having their rights taken away. I don’t want to be an alarmist, and I don’t want to send my students to bed with nightmares about atrocities from the past (or even the present). But I worry that we assume that rights that have been won can never be lost, and underestimate the incredible courage and strength it takes to capture and retain our tenuous freedom.
I’m sorry that I was relieved when I found out my student was talking about the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. We should all be just as angry and horrified today as those who mourned when it happened. We need to feel the pain of his death so acutely that we will not allow those circumstances to ever develop again. I feel, especially in our country this week, that we are at an important crossroad and we desperately need the wisdom of the people who understand what it really means to live in, “The Land of the Free.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is coming up in the States next week. Sadly, so much has been in the news lately about civil rights violations all over the world that it’s difficult to comprehend that anything has improved since King’s legacy survives. As a teacher, I want to be sure that my students learn empathy and respect for others. But it’s hard to find lessons that hit the right chord with every grade level I teach.
For integration with current events, middle and high school teachers should definitely check out the multitude of lesson plans for civil rights on the New York Times’ Learning Network.
Do you teach Kindergarten? You can teach a lesson about civil rights, too! Check out this adorable idea from Joelle Trayers, where she assigned her students to imagine what rights snow people would demand!
In the United States, many of us will be celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr. next Monday. Here are a few resources that can help our students to understand the impact this great man has had on our nation:
