Essential Questions:

• How do we teach students to see historical events through multiple perspectives?
• How does changing the “voice” of the class materials challenge stereotypes about non-Western civilizations and cultures?
• How do we teach students to value the achievements of civilizations that are not their (or our) own or that have traditionally been seen through a deficit lens?
• How can highlighting examples of interactions between oppressed and dominant groups throughout history reveal injustices that affect our students’ lives?

I began this process with several goals in mind. First, I wanted to examine my curriculum from an anti-bias lens. Second, I hoped to make a clearer connection between the identities and experiences of students of color and the content of the course. Finally, I was increasingly aware of the necessity of exposing and challenging my biases. I knew none of these goals could be accomplished without extensive support. The Institute on Diversity and Social Justice was the perfect way to jump-start the process. The workshop was better than I had hoped. It was informative, challenging, and jammed full of practical tips on how to move closer to my goals. I left each session full of ideas and looking forward to the next. At the end of the week, my vague notions about how to develop and implement an anti-bias curriculum now had a clearer model and extensive resources. Peter and I used this inspiration to begin the redesign of the ninth grade world history class. 

The 9th-grade redesign began with a clear question: How can we decenter whiteness while telling the story of world history? Our first step was to replace the western-centric textbook. That decision created both an opportunity and a challenge. Dropping the textbook  allowed us to include more diverse voices, but we quickly found that non-western textbooks were hard to find. US history courses can draw on a wealth of anti-bias materials explicitly developed to include marginalized voices. Although you can find books that focus on peoples and perspectives often left out of the standard Western narrative, we have not found an age-appropriate textbook that did that while providing a clear global overview. In contrast, we did find a wealth of primary documents including indigenous and non-western sources online. In fact, there are so many that the issue we faced was not a lack of resources, but how to choose who to include and who to leave out. As Peter and I developed our actual lesson plans the connection between the Teaching Tolerance anti-bias standards and what we could do in 65 minutes in 9th-grade class was not always as clear as we hoped. We adapted our activities but it soon became clear that the redesign would be a multi-year project. Each year revising the last as we learned from the students, each other, our peers, and our own mistakes.

Despite the obstacles, we did make progress. By using Africa as the lens for examining the growth of civilization we centered a region that was often on the periphery of the class and doing so disrupted the assumptions and stereotypes held by many students, possibly. It also laid the groundwork for how we approach other periods in world history by using a nonwestern centered perspective. The new text we chose was not as successful. In attempting to find a more globalist approach we picked a text’s with a birds-eye-view of history that removed the people.

My attempts to bring to light my blinders and biases are still very much a work in progress. Outside of my search for materials for the ninth grade class, my reading has focused on trying to understand the power racism and racist institutions have on the opportunities and experiences of people of color. Since the summer I finished reading “The Warmth of Other Suns” an extraordinarily effective piece of historical writing. It’s combination of historical overview and lived experience conveyed the trauma of Jim Crow and the Great Migration.  While my family and I drove around the Adirondacks I listened to the new biography of Frederick Douglas, another model of in-depth research and engaging writing. Right now I’m in the middle of “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” a thorough history of the evolution of racism in America written by a man of color. I’m also working my way through the 1619 project, elements of which I have already used in my electives. Although all of these sources are US history focused, their insights into the power of institutionalized racism and its centrality to the story of America is pushing me to reevaluate my understating of history.