Start with Yourself (psychological literacy)

Self-reflection is important preparation for facilitating sensitive conversations with our students. As educators, we have to process our own feelings and become aware of the way our own identities and experiences shape the perspectives we hold. Read the “Start with Yourself” section on page 2 of our Fostering Civil Discourse guide. Then reflect on the following questions:

• What emotions do the recent events surrounding the death of George Floyd raise for you?
• What perspectives will you bring to your reflection on these events with your students?
• What can you do to ensure that students with a range of perspectives are supported in your reflection?
• As this story develops, how will you continue to learn alongside your students?

“You’re probably anti-Black.” Read this. 

Prepare for Teaching  

A remote learning environment poses particular challenges for difficult conversations. These ideas will help you to plan a sensitive and effective conversation with your students:

• Plan where and how you will hold this conversation. Live, moderated board or asynchronous? One off office hour?
• Tell students ahead of time what to expect from your conversation about the events surrounding George Floyd’s death or other traumatic event a few days before you post, so that they can emotionally prepare. Consider giving students the opportunity to opt-out of talking during the conversation.
•  Refer students to their Guidance counsellor if necessary.
• Consider communicating with parents and caregivers about the conversation you are planning to hold (may be more realistic outside of remote learning).

Create Space for Student Reflection

• Let your students know that their learning environment is a safe space. Use ideas here: Contracting . Then follow with an acknowledgment of the event and its emotional impact.
• Consider sharing a resource from a trusted news outlet to establish baseline knowledge of the events and dispel misinformation. You might choose to share an article from a local news source to focus on the impact of recent events in your area. (Do not show graphic videos or images to your class, in part because it risks retraumatizing students.)
• Give your students an opportunity to reflect individually. Prompts:

• How is the news of the past week, including the murder of George Floyd and the resulting protests, affecting you?
• What would you like others to know about what you are thinking, feeling, and experiencing?
• What do you need from others to understand, cope, process, and be safe as this story continues to unfold?
• What can you offer to others to support them in how this story is impacting them?

Go Deeper: Learn about The History of Police Violence 

American

• In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson explains how today’s police violence towards black Americans is rooted in our past and a false narrative of racial difference.
• The article The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops from The Conversation traces the historical precedents of aggressive and violent policing of African Americans in slavery and the Jim Crow era.

Canadian

• Read about the history of the RCMP and control of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.
• Watch and show this to your students: The Skin We’re In. I created this organizer to accompany the film from questions from a Hot Docs teaching guide.
• Customize this Slides  (French version too) by K. Warriner, and share with your students (understanding the protests and making connections to Canada).

Go Deeper: Reflect on Protests Today

• Play Trevor Noah’s video George Floyd, Minneapolis Protests, Ahmaud Arbery & Amy Cooper for your students. (Note: In the first few minutes of the video, Trevor Noah focuses on the video of Amy Cooper taken in Central Park last week. You may choose to play the video from the beginning or start the video at 5:40, when Trevor Noah begins discussing the death of George Floyd.) 18 minutes total
  Then, reflect with students:

• How is Trevor Noah making sense of the news from the past two weeks? Why does he believe that the pandemic and the series of high profile incidents of racism and racist violence are connected?
• How does Trevor Noah define a social contract? How does he use the idea of a broken social contract to explain the protests and unrest we have seen across the United States?

• In Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech The Other America, he talks about how “a riot is the language of the unheard.”
  Play a video excerpt of his speech or share the transcript with your students.
  Then, reflect with students:

• What do you think Martin Luther King Jr. means when he says that “a riot is the language of the unheard?”
• What examples does Martin Luther King Jr. give of problems he believes are going unaddressed during his life? What are examples of problems you believe are going unaddressed today?

Raise Students’ Voices

Conclude your discussion by:

• Inviting students to step back and consider what is at stake in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and in the midst of widespread protests.
• Making a connection to the protests in Canada.
• Asking students to comment on the following quote (author unknown): “History is the process through which the structures of our today are set up.” (Cause and Consequence)
• Askings students to write as if they are communicating directly to one or more key figures in this story (they will not actually contact families, but may send correspondence to policy makers)

• The family of Regis Korchinski-Paquet (empathy exercise only)
• The chief of the Toronto police
• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
• President Donald Trump
• George Floyd’s family

Iceberg OR Tree Activity with Jamboard (use mine!)

You might have students synthesize what they have learned from one or both of these resources by having them create an iceberg diagram.

• At the top of the diagram, students can write “the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the connections to Canadian history.”
• Next to the bottom part of the diagram (under the water), students should write their answers to these questions: What are the historical roots of police violence toward black Canadians? How does this history impact policing today?
• Finally, ask students to share their diagrams.

Prompts you might use to guide journal writing and/or class discussion include:

1. What did you learn from completing your iceberg?
2. Of the causes listed in the bottom part of the iceberg, which one or two do you think are most significant? Why?
3. What more would you need to know to better understand why this event took place?
4. What could have been done, if anything, to prevent this event from happening?
5. What have you learned about how to prevent similar events from happening in the future?
6. How does the information in this iceberg help you better understand the world we live in today?

OR

Use this tree analogy Jamboard (use mine!

• In this variation, students record basic facts about the event in the trunk of the tree (name of event, when it happened, where).
• The different people involved in the event (bystanders, perpetrators, victims, upstanders) are listed in the branches of the tree.
•  Sometimes teachers have students draw a line connecting each person or group to a choice he/she/they made related to this event.
•  Finally, the causes of the event are listed in the “roots” section.

Activity by Farisa Rahman: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vfQJOKMHE89iN1Auq49_kmcfbrp09gnbRvw1jaVB7ys/edit

A list of resources I have used recently in my classroom and/or have created (tried, tested, and true). There are so many more resources I have used and can list, but these are current.

1. Ted Talk: The Danger of a Single Story

2. The Skin We’re In (Documentary)                                                                

3. Black on Ice (Documentary),  Black Communities in Canada: A Rich History (NFB playlist, 25 documentaries), Hair Love (short film)

4. Jackie Shane Shout Out and activities (CBC, Secret Life of Canada) - 4 worksheets, 1 slide deck, podcast. Click on “bonus mini-episode” to access and download.

1. Annotating lyrics for meaning
2. Compare racism in Canada and the U.S. (segregation history and the legal system)
3. Intersectionality word art (you may add your own instructions)
4. Understanding gender identity reading and analysis

5. The Secret Life of the Province of Jamaica (CBC, Secret Life of Canada) - 11 worksheets, 1 slide deck, podcast. Click to download.

1. Prior learning, new learning, misconceptions graphic organizer (like a KWL but better)
2. Map of the Caribbean activity
3. Aha moments about Canadian history with concentric circle activity for students
4. Sketchnote the learning
5. Make a current events scrapbook
6. Triangle of oppression graphic, gallery walk, exit card
7. Deemed unsuitable: primary source analysis of racism in Canada (1911)
8. Historically significant events ranking organizer
9. RAFT Opinion-Editorial in support of Black Porters (not appropriating voices)
10. Active reading response conversations with cue cards
11. Timeline with Attitude with choice (physical, digital)

In development!  The theme of racial amnesia in Canadian history education and propaganda. This will be based on a series of tweets by Sean Carlton, citing the work of S. Razack,  Race, Space and the Law .

Carlton writes:

1. Razack argues that Canadians hold core myths about themselves that are invented and propagated, and learned in ways that hide real history of racism and genocide that Canada, like the US, is built on.
2. We learn about history in selective ways that reinforces racial amnesia, protects status quo, keeps systemic racism intact, and allows people to make denialist claims (see Doug Ford, June 3, 2020).

Carlton uses Heritage Minutes as evidence: Sitting Bull (starvation and violence as colonial policies ignored), Underground Railroad (we are better than the U. S., Canadian slavery ignored), Nitro (racism as an anomaly, clip does not situatuate moment in systemic anti-Chinese racism: no mention of Head Tax, etc.)

***Find your own stories of resistance, resilience and achievement. Start with the story of Chika Oriuwa from 2018 to present day.  This photo is inspiring!