Watching the news coverage surrounding the death of George Floyd at the end of a very tumultuous school year and then learning more and more about the reality of racism in the USA and the world as the summer opened with Black Lives Matter protests, I felt helpless (beyond donations) in my ability to support the cause from the comfort of my home in Guadalajara, Mexico. That was before I remembered I have one of the most powerful platforms for change available: I am an educator and I have power and choice in what my students read, discuss, and analyze.
Summer 2020, quarantined from the world, I threw myself deep into reading and educating myself in order to be able to share my findings with my students. One book, from a reading list I compiled, that struck me was Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. I quickly talked to my principal and switched a unit in my AP Lang class in order to have students read the book. I was definitely building the plane as I was flying it, since we were starting the year with a full online schedule, but it was worth it. Here are some activities I used to facilitate the reading and discussion. (I only meet online with my students twice per week in 80 minute sessions, so the activities are organized around that schedule).
Since rhetorical analysis is such a big part of the AP Lang course, I assigned the “Introduction” of the book as a reading assignment to the students and then together we filled in a SPACECAT organizer, at least up to and including the “Exigence” section.
Then, I used the TQE method as designed by Marisa Thompson for the weekly discussions, following the schedule found in the template I used for the group discussions. We used these discussion questions from EJI, Equal Justice Initiative, (Stevenson’s organization) to help guide the breakout room discussions.
Just to contextualize, we had been reading several other essays prior to this book, such “Just Walk on By” by Brent Staples and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. When Kamala Harris was elected as the first female, Black, South Asian American Vice President we spent a lot of time discussing Bria Goeller’s image of Kamala Harris walking with the shadow of Ruby Bridges, as a metaphor of how the work and struggle of women before, has helped pave the way for women like Kamala Harris to reach her current achievement.
Finally, for the summative assessment, I had students write two timed essays. I had told students from the beginning that they would be writing timed essays for transparency purposes, but also to keep them motivated to read. Obviously with the group discussions, some students could be calling it in, but the essays were meant to be a check on whether they had read the book, especially the Argumentative Essay where I required specific evidence from the text as support for their argument.
Here are the prompts I used for the summative assessment and some student sample papers.
Rhetorical Analysis Prompt – Passage from the chapter “Broken”
Argument Prompt – Quote from MLK Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” about just and unjust laws.
I grade these using Autocrat – a great hack for grading in these online times! All in all, I was happy I made a last minute switch to the curriculum. Seeing my students’ engagement and passionate responses reminded me that teaching is not about having the most perfectly organized unit plans but bringing real life, passion and justice awareness into the classroom (zoom room) every day.
