11.17.15

WU: Middle School/Junior High Experience

Describe your middle school experience? How many electives/after school programs were offered? Was it K-8 or 6-8? Was your school close to your house or did you have to drive far to get there?

If you could choose to go to a different middle school or high school, would you? Do you think students and parents should have the right to choose where you go to school?

Discussion: Connection between your experiences and the ideas discussed in "The Equalizer".

Watch: "The March on Washington at 50": Still Segregated [|http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/march-on-washington/web-series/episode-3-equality-in-education/#.VFAFIyh8va4]

1) What surprised or interested you in the clip? What questions or ideas did it raise for you? 2) How does this connect with you experience at, or insights about, Lincoln? 3) What did the speaker mean when he says it’s not “magic to sit next to a white student, but is magic to attend a middle class school”? 4) Do you agree with his last comment that desegregated America doesn’t exist yet? Why?
 * Discuss: **

View/discuss: "I Too am Harvard": http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonvingiano/21-black-harvard-students-share-their-experiences-through-a#.ihVGovpQV

HW: Prep for Socratic Seminar on Thursday. This will include any of the sources we looked at today, the two articles we've read, and both "Recitatif" and "Black Men in Public Space". To prep for the discussion, make sure the note-taking guide for the two articles is complete, and that you bring any notes from "Recitatif" and "Black Men in Public Space" that you took to class. The guiding question of the S.S. will be: What are issues around equality for African Americans that have endured to the present day? How do the texts we read in class comment on these issue?

As you review the texts, I would suggest developing questions that will help address these questions.