10/5 - Class Recap

This weekend, I (Mr. Fritz) will be travelling through Vancouver, British Columbia (pictured above) to get to Victoria, British Columbia. I am treating my wife to an overnight getaway using airline points for her birthday!

Dear class,

Thank you for your work today together, as we soldiered on without Ms. Labossiere for the day. Here's what happened in class today:

Learning Targets Addressed:
I can communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing.
I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place, or region.

Soundtrack: "Colored People" by dc Talk. Selected for today because I talked about the song during my sharing of my (Mr. Fritz's) racial autobiography last class. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 10/5/17:
Check In/Review Agreements
Grades
What is Whiteness?
White Like Me: Awakenings
Racial Autobiography Work

Homework: Read the blog! Racial autobiography assignment (PRINTED) due at the start of next class.
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Check In/Review Agreements: At the beginning of class, we went over the Courageous Conversations Agreements, as always, to begin our work together for the day.

As part of the check in, we talked for a while in class about gun control vs. gun rights as a reaction to the Las Vegas shooting. Here were the two articles I (Mr. Fritz) showed in class:

WashingtonPost.com - Just three percent of adults own half of America’s guns

BBC.com - Las Vegas shooting: NRA urges new rules for gun 'bump-stocks'

Thank you for the spirited conversation here. I apologize that I eventually had to cut it short so we could do everything else we needed to in class!

Grades: I wanted to talk about the grades you are seeing in StudentVUE, which have been updated. The major assignment so far in class was the Where I'm From poem. The other grade in the gradebook is a +/=/- grade for the collection of evidence, meaning the letter to me, blog comment, and syllabus signed. If you did all three of those, you got a +, if you missed one, it was an =, and if you missed two, it was a -. If you would like to improve your grade, please resubmit work to us.

The next big graded assignment will be the Racial Autobiography, due next class. We originally said that the Socratic Seminar would be graded, but due to how short that Wednesday class was, we will most likely just include that in a Behavior grade.

What is Whiteness?: For this section of class, I went over what a working definition of "Whiteness" could look like, by showing the following material:

Google Drive - Tim Wise: White Like Me Discussion Guide

The page I showed in class was #12, which goes into some history regarding the social construction of Whiteness.

The second image I showed in class is here:

I wanted students to know what it means when we say, during the Courageous Conversations conditions "Examine the presence and role of Whiteness," what exactly that means.

White Like Me: Awakenings: The next part of class was diving into a book that I (Mr. Fritz) talked about last class as a part of my racial autobiography, White Like Me by Tim Wise. Link to buy the book from Powells here.

In particular, we wanted to have students read about Tim Wise awakened to this field of work, as a white man. I read part of an excerpt from the book, and then had students finish reading it, while annotating and making questions. This was intended as a way to look at another racial autobiography as you continue to put thought and care into crafting your own.

Racial Autobiographies: The rest of class was devoted to continuing to work on our racial autobiographies. Here is the assignment for students who want an electronic copy or who missed class:

Google Drive - Racial Autobiography Assignment

This will be due at the start of next class on Monday, October 9th. Please bring a paper copy. Writing a racial autobiography forces us to consider all of the ways that race has impacted our lives. Please continue to put lots of thought and effort into yours! See you next week!