Teaching Students about Racism with Technology
Tackling the difficult topic of Racism in your classroom is no easy task. As we've mentioned in class, there are many risks in teaching the topic that may cause unpredictable outcomes and questions we may not be able to answer. In my opinion a good place to start using technology is to "find out what they know first". You could do this by creating a word cloud through Poll Everywhere which allows students to 'text' in their answer and it will appear on the screen. The words with the most use will be larger indicating that many students also selected the same word/s. This will give you a feel for what students already have some understanding of and will spark a very thoughtful conversation. Asking them questions about the definitions of privilege and prejudice as we had done in class is a great conversation starter and will allow students to anonymously submit answers they may or may not feel comfortable with saying out loud in a group discussion. Starting off with things that are relevant in their world including pop culture(movies, music, news broadcasts, headlines, etc) they are able to analyze how Black people are portrayed and what messages they are sending out by portraying them this particular way. Presenting different examples through a Powerpoint is a simple way to present snippets of various different examples to bring to light different ways the media portrays black people. This can include headlines, interviews, news reports, etc. This could then also be branched off into:
Something to reinforce these concepts of Black peoples negative portrayal in media as well as the oppression black people encounter with police brutality can be found in the documentary, 13TH. The 13TH creates a timeline to understand the alarming rates of incarceration and the countless forms of police brutality targeting black people from the 60's to the present. Personally this documentary resonated for me because it pieced together the events that slowly created different ways black people were and continue to be targeted in our society.
- What ideas and messages are they intending audiences to grasp from them?
- How do these messages affect the way people view black people?
- Is it an accurate representation? Why or why not?
- What events show us black people are treated unfairly in our society?
- and the list goes on.
Something to reinforce these concepts of Black peoples negative portrayal in media as well as the oppression black people encounter with police brutality can be found in the documentary, 13TH. The 13TH creates a timeline to understand the alarming rates of incarceration and the countless forms of police brutality targeting black people from the 60's to the present. Personally this documentary resonated for me because it pieced together the events that slowly created different ways black people were and continue to be targeted in our society.
I think the anonymity aspect of this activity is really important because I think that can be a good starting point when talking about racism and the dominant ideology portrayals found in the media. A lot of students are not initially going to be comfortable making a strong stance on how they feel if they've never had conversations around incarceration statistics or stereotyping in tv shows, so they need a little boost to start them off. This is particularly true if the student/s are at a stage in their racial identity development where it has not been explained to them the power that comes with whiteness.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE word clouds, and also LOVED the movie 13th! You have some awesome and very critical discussion questions as well! Great activity Bianca!!
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