The Anti-Black Racism area of the Social Studies curriculum is a subject I am both inspired and lost in. I believe there are so many tangents and avenues to pursue deeper learning unpacking the realities of racism in the world today and wish to encourage this exploration with my students. This subject most closely relates to the overall and specific expectations for Strand A – Heritage and Identity: Communities in Canada, Past and Present. The mind map poses many questions and proposes talking points to approach this sometimes-difficult subject matter. I thought a mind map was the best way to express how one idea might stem from another and show how ideas are interconnected and related. While this is a Social Studies related topic, I wanted to incorporate my teachable, the Visual Arts, and specifically social justice art, as an interdisciplinary way for students to reflect and make sense of their feelings about something they both have experienced and continue to experience in their own community.
Establishing ground rules about creating a space where all students feel safe is necessary to the introduction of this subject matter. While instructors often want to introduce with a strong hook, a reminder to not lead with trauma is important for these lessons. The classroom should be a space of love and respect where we are mindful of our words.
Who, what, where, why and how are simple, easy questions to begin with but open up further conversations. Many of the tasks within these lessons will be discussion-based and incorporate a reflective practice, via writing, drawing or in whatever options students see fit. Observation and collection of writing samples can be used for assessment for and as learning. By posing the question “What is racism and where have you experienced it?” is a question posed for learning that asks of students what they already know about the subject, and brings directly it into their focus by seeing it as something that is happening right now, not just in the past.
Direct instruction can be used to talk about the historical context for racism (why and who does racism serve), as well as definitions of key terms such as bias, white privilege and systemic racism. Direct instruction should be broken up by activities in the classroom, working in pairs and groups to deconstruct the meaning of these terms or reflect on video resources shown in class. There are opportunities to use literary sources (by black authors) in other classes to demonstrate both historical and contemporary racism. Pointing out themes in these books and discussing how they relate back to the umbrella of anti-black racism will be important throughout the entire school year. As often as possible, black representation and black excellence resources should be used in the classroom.
In my teachable course four year 1, we had a guest speaker visit to speak about art for social change. Jimmy Baptiste is a black artist living in Wakefeild, Quebec who worked alongside Kalkidan Assaraf and Allen André to create the We ‘Gon Be Alright’ mural on Ottawa’s Bank Street in 2020 as a part of the city’s mural grant program (http://jimmybaptiste.ca/wegonbealright). Inviting this local artist was meaningful for me, and hope that the experience would be similar for my students. Representation matters, not just in the images we see, but whose creating them. He spoke of the idea of creating an uplifting message in the community, the collaborative practice of art-making was not just for the artists, but also with passers-by on the street. While the empowering visuals of a strong black woman’s face were loosely in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd protests against systemic anti-Black racism; justice and police reform, this mural was about a message of hope, solidarity, and movement towards a brighter future. The high visibility of such a large mural was echoed in contemporary culture as photos of the typography used were attached to a COVID-19 online article that went viral. I thought this artist talk was a meaningful way to introduce social justice art and inspired the essential question “How do we make art to inspire social change?”
Thinking about assessment of learning, I would like to address activism and how to move forward. I had found an article about Grade 6 students at a Toronto school who had made posters about anti-Black racism that were displayed and then later defaced in their community (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/students-posters-toronto-racism-vandalized-1.5632897). While this is a disgusting and pathetic act, I also thought it was very meaningful to speak to a contemporary local Canadian context for racism. While I hadn’t fully developed a summative task, I thought it would make for an interesting project to have students choose to work independently or collaborate on Black Lives Matter posters/protest signs and respond to hatred/backlash from certain members within their community. I would hope to discuss the power of protest, movements (Black Lives/Civil Rights), mass groups of people and community change in relation to this task.