Rationale
Academic Context
Teaching a unit on the Freedom Riders will allow students to feel the significant impact of the Civil Rights Movement by focusing on a particular framework for understanding social justice. To construct the framework for this unit, I will refer to PBS’s documentary, “Freedom Riders,” as well as historian Raymond Arsenault’s Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. To tie key elements of literacy into the curriculum, I will refer to the Grade 5 CCSS for both Literature and Informational Text. Specifically, I will tie in standards that relate to poetry, summarizing text and determining main ideas and supporting details.
By spending two weeks studying the Freedom Riders, and by incorporating multiple intelligences into the unit, my overall goal is for each student to empathize in their own way with the activists. Whether that means students will have a deep understanding of the courage it took to ride the buses, why they did not stop after one ride, or how the theory of nonviolence helped spread their objectives, I want students to take away salient memories of these riders’ experiences by constructing meaning through unit design.
Under an Expeditionary Learning model, Russell Byers is embarking on an expedition about the Civil Rights Movement. Although I did not chose the topic or subtopic of the Freedom Riders, I believe that it is of fundamental importance to study the events of the Civil Rights Movement because of their impact on our everyday lives. Studying the Freedom Riders will create a framework for understanding one of the earliest successes of the Civil Rights Movement, and will allow students to understand that what they see and experience was something that was not a given; people of all races had to come together for social change in order for us to exist as we do today. By understanding the tenets of perseverance, nonviolent resistance, and sheer courage, the Freedom Rides became a catalyst for social justice. Testing the legal system and fighting against bus station segregation, the Freedom Riders movement continued until the Interstate Commerce Commission forbade bus station segregation. The Freedom Riders were finally rewarded with the social justice they had been fighting for; the segregationist signs came down throughout the South. This action marked the first unambiguous victory in the long history of the Civil Rights Movement, and raised expectations for the movement’s future. In addition to not giving up, the Freedom Riders exemplified the theory of nonviolence, which was characteristic of the Civil Rights Movement. By studying this theory as one of the major components of the Freedom Rides, students will better understand how nonviolence worked, and why this theory was used for future campaigns.
Why this is interesting…
…to my students?
I believe that learning about the Freedom Riders and their role as activists in the Civil Rights Movement will be interesting to students because it will bring to light the juxtapositions between life in the early 1960’s and present day life. Understanding who the Freedom Riders are and why they are important serves a real-world purpose of linking our past as a country to our present. I think that students will be engaged with the material because of its historic impact. I believe that students will be appalled by how black people were treated, and their authentic curiosity will fuel engagement. In addition to the authenticity that can accompany matters of social justice, my hope is that students will feel an authentic connection with the Freedom Riders by understanding the deeply authentic nature of why they embarked on a mission to end segregation in the South. The activists’ courage they exemplified throughout the movement highlights their commitment to their cause. Examining the purpose of the Freedom Rides creates a real-world connection to the purpose of social justice movements today. Understanding this movement and its contribution to the attainment of civil rights for all individuals in this country provides a foundation for understanding current demonstrations regarding racial stress in the media. Although I am not planning on going into extensive detail about recent events, understanding the struggles of the past allows students to understand the struggles of modern day society.
Both images of Freedom Riders and segregation in the South are startling. I will initially engage students in inquiry by having them participate in a gallery walk, pairing images with sound clips from speeches and freedom songs, and completing a K-W-L chart. Building on materials such as a documentary and newspaper articles, discussions will be woven throughout the unit. I will encourage students to respond to one another and to answer each other’s questions before offering suggestions. Incorporating Gardner’s multiple intelligences into the unit, including visual, auditory, intrapersonal, interpersonal and kinesthetic intelligences will strengthen students’ engagement with the material. In addition to the ‘wonder’ section of the K-W-L chart, I will provide a ‘bus station’ where students can park their questions at any time throughout the unit. Keeping track of their questions will allow me to see common threads of inquiry and will allow me to tailor the unit as needed.
To allow students to construct their own understanding of the importance of the Freedom Riders and who they are, I will create tasks that appeal to individual perspectives. By designing questions that elicit a subjective response, my intention is for students to begin to empathize with the riders by imagining what it was like to be one of them. Questions include: How and when do you draw on courage in your own life? If you were a Freedom Rider, how would you feel? If you wrote a letter to your parents explaining what you were embarking on, what would you tell them?
In addition to open-ended responses, I will use figurative language including metaphors, similes, and poetry to foster personal connections with and reactions to the material. By using sensory language and eliciting visceral reactions to express one’s feelings about the Freedom Riders and their experiences, students will, in turn, be expressing their own experiences while learning about the subject matter. Prior to discussing their emotional reactions to the subject matter, my intention is to give students time with the subject matter, supporting Stephanie Harvey’s claim that “interest and curiosity breed engagement” (as cited by Ray, 2004, p. 100). In order to expect students to “care deeply about how they write, they must care deeply about what they are writing” (Ray, 2004, p. 101). By creating a contextual background for understanding the Freedom Riders and by spending time with historic informational text, students will be able to develop a sense of interest and curiosity. They will also be able to express their reactions to these historic events by journaling each night, which is an important component in students’ construction of their own understanding of the Freedom Riders.
...to me as a teacher?
In addition to creating a foundation for understanding recent social justice events by understanding our country’s past, teaching the Freedom Riders is interesting because both black and white people came together to fight for the same cause. Contrary to other movements, whites working alongside blacks to test segregation laws was very unusual. I feel that the inclusion of multiple races in a fight to end segregation for one race exemplifies the authenticity of the activists’ motives.
When my teacher told me that I was going to teach the students about the Freedom Riders for my unit, I expressed to her that I felt it was a heavy topic, and that this subject matter is difficult to teach. She said to me, “They need to know it. It’s their history.” Learning that whites, blacks, rabbis, priests, and young and old people were Freedom Riders verified that it really is everyone’s history. As Americans, it is important to know the history of our country, especially since in comparison to other countries, ours is relatively young. In researching the Freedom Riders, I was astonished at how behind the South was in its call for social justice. Although I did not chose to teach this topic, learning about the Freedom Riders’ role in the Civil Rights Movement has such important real-world value that I feel students need to understand. As my teacher said, they need to know their history and how it has helped construct the identity of the place we live in.
Teaching and learning about the Freedom Riders offers a chance to practice mutual meaning making. As Rodgers and Raider-Roth discuss, “In the process of mutuality both parties watch the other to see how their expressions and actions are received” (Rodgers & Raider-Roth, 2006, 276.) “Similarly, teachers observe students to see if their (the teachers’) actions support a student’s capacity to learn, to make connections, to take a step forward” (Rodgers & Raider-Roth, 2006, p. 276). Teaching the Freedom Riders unit will be an opportunity for me to monitor myself as a teacher, and to monitor my students. Seeing firsthand the reciprocal nature of teaching will allow me to grow as an educator, especially while teaching a topic that must be approached sensitively. Rodgers and Raider-Roth continue to discuss the process of student self-assessment in achieving the vision of mutual meaning making. Asking students to write daily journal entries along with a reflection at the end of the unit will allow me to see if students have taken that step forward, and see if my efforts as a teacher have helped them to do so.
Accessibility…
In terms of developmental appropriateness
The topic of the Civil Rights Movement is a broad and heavy topic in itself, and while narrowing it to a unit on the Freedom Riders condenses the events, the topic is nonetheless both difficult to teach and difficult for students to digest. Creating a contextual framework of the Freedom Riders movement will be the first step in constructing a scaffold for the unit. With the gallery/sensory walk and K-W-L charts, I will be able to assess students’ familiarity with the subject matter and will be able to see what questions I can address to help guide them through Vygotsky’s zones of proximal development. To establish the contextual framework in a developmentally appropriate way, I will read a children’s book titled Ruth and the Green Book, which shows a young black girl in the early 1950’s whose family is only allowed services at select hotels, restaurants and gas stations during a drive from Chicago to Alabama. This book offers a solid comparison to the Freedom Riders in that it introduces the impetus for the Freedom Rider’s journey through the South in a developmentally appropriate and digestible manner.
In planning the tasks for my unit, the informational texts, documentaries, and articles that I have found do not sugarcoat the Freedom Riders’ struggles in any way. Guiding the students through these documents will help them to reach Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, as will discussions, open-ended writing responses, and free writing. By journaling each night throughout the unit, these journals will act as not only formative assessments that students can self-reflect on at the end of the unit but will also capture an inner dialogue revealing thoughts that might otherwise never be communicated. With my guidance, my intention is that students will be able to accomplish tasks that they could not do on their own, and move from having limited to no knowledge of the Freedom Riders to having a connection with the movement.
In terms of available resources
Located two blocks from the Free Library’s central branch, Russell Byers Charter School is situated near a historic resource that houses several archives highlighting the Civil Rights Movement. In addition to microfilm that I retrieved from their Newspaper Collection, the Print and Pictures Department also contains several original photographs of the Civil Rights Movement and segregation in the late 1950’s to early 1960’s. Towards the end of the unit, I want to bring students to the library so they can see the collection of prints. I plan to time the trip later in the unit so that students will better understand what they are looking at, and will be able to apply their knowledge of the Freedom Riders to the images.
Opportunities for connections
Students at Russell Byers live all over the city, and each morning, they are bused into school. Imagine if they were told that they could not sit in the front of the bus; that they could not sit wherever they wanted; that they had to go to a separate school for students who had the same color skin as they do. Learning about the Civil Rights Movement, particularly the freedom riders, creates a context for comparison between the past and present. Understanding that people had to come together to fight for segregation to end, and for the right to use desegregated service centers or sit at the same lunch counter without being refused or attacked creates a connection to students’ out-of-school learning because of its real-world application. The Freedom Riders’ fight to end bus segregation is part of our history as Americans. By exploring their courage and resilience, and by asking students to draw on their own experiences with courage and resilience, my intention is to create a parallel between the Freedom Riders’ experiences and students’ own lives.
Many of the students also previously studied the Civil Rights Movement in a prior expedition. Although my teacher thinks they do not have a strong foundational understanding, by discussing segregationist photographs, reading accounts from multiple perspectives, and studying the Freedom Riders, students might connect their learning with their previous in-school studies. Through writing activities and discussions that draw on subjective responses, my intention is for the study of the Freedom Riders to become relevant to students’ lives, and for connections to form between their understandings of their past, and how that shaped their current surroundings.
Works cited
Rodgers, C., & Raider-Roth, M. (2006). Presence in teaching. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 12(3), 265-287.
Ray, K. (2004). Why Cauley Writes Well: A Close Look at What a Difference Good Teaching Can Make. Language Arts, 82(2), 100-109.
Teaching a unit on the Freedom Riders will allow students to feel the significant impact of the Civil Rights Movement by focusing on a particular framework for understanding social justice. To construct the framework for this unit, I will refer to PBS’s documentary, “Freedom Riders,” as well as historian Raymond Arsenault’s Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. To tie key elements of literacy into the curriculum, I will refer to the Grade 5 CCSS for both Literature and Informational Text. Specifically, I will tie in standards that relate to poetry, summarizing text and determining main ideas and supporting details.
By spending two weeks studying the Freedom Riders, and by incorporating multiple intelligences into the unit, my overall goal is for each student to empathize in their own way with the activists. Whether that means students will have a deep understanding of the courage it took to ride the buses, why they did not stop after one ride, or how the theory of nonviolence helped spread their objectives, I want students to take away salient memories of these riders’ experiences by constructing meaning through unit design.
Under an Expeditionary Learning model, Russell Byers is embarking on an expedition about the Civil Rights Movement. Although I did not chose the topic or subtopic of the Freedom Riders, I believe that it is of fundamental importance to study the events of the Civil Rights Movement because of their impact on our everyday lives. Studying the Freedom Riders will create a framework for understanding one of the earliest successes of the Civil Rights Movement, and will allow students to understand that what they see and experience was something that was not a given; people of all races had to come together for social change in order for us to exist as we do today. By understanding the tenets of perseverance, nonviolent resistance, and sheer courage, the Freedom Rides became a catalyst for social justice. Testing the legal system and fighting against bus station segregation, the Freedom Riders movement continued until the Interstate Commerce Commission forbade bus station segregation. The Freedom Riders were finally rewarded with the social justice they had been fighting for; the segregationist signs came down throughout the South. This action marked the first unambiguous victory in the long history of the Civil Rights Movement, and raised expectations for the movement’s future. In addition to not giving up, the Freedom Riders exemplified the theory of nonviolence, which was characteristic of the Civil Rights Movement. By studying this theory as one of the major components of the Freedom Rides, students will better understand how nonviolence worked, and why this theory was used for future campaigns.
Why this is interesting…
…to my students?
I believe that learning about the Freedom Riders and their role as activists in the Civil Rights Movement will be interesting to students because it will bring to light the juxtapositions between life in the early 1960’s and present day life. Understanding who the Freedom Riders are and why they are important serves a real-world purpose of linking our past as a country to our present. I think that students will be engaged with the material because of its historic impact. I believe that students will be appalled by how black people were treated, and their authentic curiosity will fuel engagement. In addition to the authenticity that can accompany matters of social justice, my hope is that students will feel an authentic connection with the Freedom Riders by understanding the deeply authentic nature of why they embarked on a mission to end segregation in the South. The activists’ courage they exemplified throughout the movement highlights their commitment to their cause. Examining the purpose of the Freedom Rides creates a real-world connection to the purpose of social justice movements today. Understanding this movement and its contribution to the attainment of civil rights for all individuals in this country provides a foundation for understanding current demonstrations regarding racial stress in the media. Although I am not planning on going into extensive detail about recent events, understanding the struggles of the past allows students to understand the struggles of modern day society.
Both images of Freedom Riders and segregation in the South are startling. I will initially engage students in inquiry by having them participate in a gallery walk, pairing images with sound clips from speeches and freedom songs, and completing a K-W-L chart. Building on materials such as a documentary and newspaper articles, discussions will be woven throughout the unit. I will encourage students to respond to one another and to answer each other’s questions before offering suggestions. Incorporating Gardner’s multiple intelligences into the unit, including visual, auditory, intrapersonal, interpersonal and kinesthetic intelligences will strengthen students’ engagement with the material. In addition to the ‘wonder’ section of the K-W-L chart, I will provide a ‘bus station’ where students can park their questions at any time throughout the unit. Keeping track of their questions will allow me to see common threads of inquiry and will allow me to tailor the unit as needed.
To allow students to construct their own understanding of the importance of the Freedom Riders and who they are, I will create tasks that appeal to individual perspectives. By designing questions that elicit a subjective response, my intention is for students to begin to empathize with the riders by imagining what it was like to be one of them. Questions include: How and when do you draw on courage in your own life? If you were a Freedom Rider, how would you feel? If you wrote a letter to your parents explaining what you were embarking on, what would you tell them?
In addition to open-ended responses, I will use figurative language including metaphors, similes, and poetry to foster personal connections with and reactions to the material. By using sensory language and eliciting visceral reactions to express one’s feelings about the Freedom Riders and their experiences, students will, in turn, be expressing their own experiences while learning about the subject matter. Prior to discussing their emotional reactions to the subject matter, my intention is to give students time with the subject matter, supporting Stephanie Harvey’s claim that “interest and curiosity breed engagement” (as cited by Ray, 2004, p. 100). In order to expect students to “care deeply about how they write, they must care deeply about what they are writing” (Ray, 2004, p. 101). By creating a contextual background for understanding the Freedom Riders and by spending time with historic informational text, students will be able to develop a sense of interest and curiosity. They will also be able to express their reactions to these historic events by journaling each night, which is an important component in students’ construction of their own understanding of the Freedom Riders.
...to me as a teacher?
In addition to creating a foundation for understanding recent social justice events by understanding our country’s past, teaching the Freedom Riders is interesting because both black and white people came together to fight for the same cause. Contrary to other movements, whites working alongside blacks to test segregation laws was very unusual. I feel that the inclusion of multiple races in a fight to end segregation for one race exemplifies the authenticity of the activists’ motives.
When my teacher told me that I was going to teach the students about the Freedom Riders for my unit, I expressed to her that I felt it was a heavy topic, and that this subject matter is difficult to teach. She said to me, “They need to know it. It’s their history.” Learning that whites, blacks, rabbis, priests, and young and old people were Freedom Riders verified that it really is everyone’s history. As Americans, it is important to know the history of our country, especially since in comparison to other countries, ours is relatively young. In researching the Freedom Riders, I was astonished at how behind the South was in its call for social justice. Although I did not chose to teach this topic, learning about the Freedom Riders’ role in the Civil Rights Movement has such important real-world value that I feel students need to understand. As my teacher said, they need to know their history and how it has helped construct the identity of the place we live in.
Teaching and learning about the Freedom Riders offers a chance to practice mutual meaning making. As Rodgers and Raider-Roth discuss, “In the process of mutuality both parties watch the other to see how their expressions and actions are received” (Rodgers & Raider-Roth, 2006, 276.) “Similarly, teachers observe students to see if their (the teachers’) actions support a student’s capacity to learn, to make connections, to take a step forward” (Rodgers & Raider-Roth, 2006, p. 276). Teaching the Freedom Riders unit will be an opportunity for me to monitor myself as a teacher, and to monitor my students. Seeing firsthand the reciprocal nature of teaching will allow me to grow as an educator, especially while teaching a topic that must be approached sensitively. Rodgers and Raider-Roth continue to discuss the process of student self-assessment in achieving the vision of mutual meaning making. Asking students to write daily journal entries along with a reflection at the end of the unit will allow me to see if students have taken that step forward, and see if my efforts as a teacher have helped them to do so.
Accessibility…
In terms of developmental appropriateness
The topic of the Civil Rights Movement is a broad and heavy topic in itself, and while narrowing it to a unit on the Freedom Riders condenses the events, the topic is nonetheless both difficult to teach and difficult for students to digest. Creating a contextual framework of the Freedom Riders movement will be the first step in constructing a scaffold for the unit. With the gallery/sensory walk and K-W-L charts, I will be able to assess students’ familiarity with the subject matter and will be able to see what questions I can address to help guide them through Vygotsky’s zones of proximal development. To establish the contextual framework in a developmentally appropriate way, I will read a children’s book titled Ruth and the Green Book, which shows a young black girl in the early 1950’s whose family is only allowed services at select hotels, restaurants and gas stations during a drive from Chicago to Alabama. This book offers a solid comparison to the Freedom Riders in that it introduces the impetus for the Freedom Rider’s journey through the South in a developmentally appropriate and digestible manner.
In planning the tasks for my unit, the informational texts, documentaries, and articles that I have found do not sugarcoat the Freedom Riders’ struggles in any way. Guiding the students through these documents will help them to reach Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, as will discussions, open-ended writing responses, and free writing. By journaling each night throughout the unit, these journals will act as not only formative assessments that students can self-reflect on at the end of the unit but will also capture an inner dialogue revealing thoughts that might otherwise never be communicated. With my guidance, my intention is that students will be able to accomplish tasks that they could not do on their own, and move from having limited to no knowledge of the Freedom Riders to having a connection with the movement.
In terms of available resources
Located two blocks from the Free Library’s central branch, Russell Byers Charter School is situated near a historic resource that houses several archives highlighting the Civil Rights Movement. In addition to microfilm that I retrieved from their Newspaper Collection, the Print and Pictures Department also contains several original photographs of the Civil Rights Movement and segregation in the late 1950’s to early 1960’s. Towards the end of the unit, I want to bring students to the library so they can see the collection of prints. I plan to time the trip later in the unit so that students will better understand what they are looking at, and will be able to apply their knowledge of the Freedom Riders to the images.
Opportunities for connections
Students at Russell Byers live all over the city, and each morning, they are bused into school. Imagine if they were told that they could not sit in the front of the bus; that they could not sit wherever they wanted; that they had to go to a separate school for students who had the same color skin as they do. Learning about the Civil Rights Movement, particularly the freedom riders, creates a context for comparison between the past and present. Understanding that people had to come together to fight for segregation to end, and for the right to use desegregated service centers or sit at the same lunch counter without being refused or attacked creates a connection to students’ out-of-school learning because of its real-world application. The Freedom Riders’ fight to end bus segregation is part of our history as Americans. By exploring their courage and resilience, and by asking students to draw on their own experiences with courage and resilience, my intention is to create a parallel between the Freedom Riders’ experiences and students’ own lives.
Many of the students also previously studied the Civil Rights Movement in a prior expedition. Although my teacher thinks they do not have a strong foundational understanding, by discussing segregationist photographs, reading accounts from multiple perspectives, and studying the Freedom Riders, students might connect their learning with their previous in-school studies. Through writing activities and discussions that draw on subjective responses, my intention is for the study of the Freedom Riders to become relevant to students’ lives, and for connections to form between their understandings of their past, and how that shaped their current surroundings.
Works cited
Rodgers, C., & Raider-Roth, M. (2006). Presence in teaching. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 12(3), 265-287.
Ray, K. (2004). Why Cauley Writes Well: A Close Look at What a Difference Good Teaching Can Make. Language Arts, 82(2), 100-109.