2/12 - Class Recap

The Courageous Conversations Agreements, Conditions, and Compass that we went through today in class.

Dear class,

Our first day with us all together! Thanks for your patience as we develop this new structure and team teaching model. Here's what we did today in class:

Soundtrack: “Comin’ From Where I’m From” by Anthony Hamilton. Selected for today because students are continuing to work on the Where I'm From poem (due next Tuesday). Lyrics here.

AGENDA 2/12/18:
Introduction/Attendance
Where I’m From
Courageous Conversations
Whiteness

Homework: Read the blog. Post a comment if you have not. Complete “Where I’m From” assignment if you did not already.
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Introduction/Attendance: For now, with the open walls, as we get to know all of the students in the combined class, we will take attendance by passing around a sign in sheet. Please make sure to sign in during class!

Where I’m From: The Where I'm From poem was assigned to Ms. Labossiere's class last week and it due today in class (she asked for a paper copy, but there is also a turn in box on Google Classroom). Here is a copy if you forgot to grab one in class:

Google Drive - Where I'm From Poem Assignment

Courageous Conversations: This is the framework for our ground rules and expectations with what we are doing together this year. As we noted, we use this same framework in our own equity meetings and with staff here at Westview. We went through the picture linked to above at the top of this post, point by point.

Whiteness: For this section of class, we went over what a working definition of "Whiteness" could look like (related to the Courageous Conversations guide), by showing the following material:

CNN.com - Trump decries immigrants from 'shithole countries' coming to US

Google Drive - Tim Wise: White Like Me Discussion Guide

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

The second image we showed in class is here:

We 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) found super helpful in terms of thinking about race when I was growing up, called 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. We read part of an excerpt from the book, and then had students finish reading it, while annotating and making questions. We will be having a discussion on this chapter later.

Thanks everyone! See you on Wednesday!