February: Celebrating Black History Month

The students in the High School Classic Sociology class embarked on a 3+ week unit on African American history, in addition to a focus on how African Americans have contributed and shaped the United States.

 The following is a glimpse of the areas studied that surrounded this unit:

• We began the unit with a reading from Kwame Alexander's poem, "Undefeated".  Students used words like, "amazing, inspired, gave me goosebumps, wow, awesome" as we had our discussion after the video. See it for yourself: https://youtu.be/_cHIWtl8PNk
• Historical review and discussions of how African Americans became a part of the United States and the history of : Slavery
• Cultural Traditions
• The Harlem Renaissance 
• Oral Tradition such as story telling, poetry, and literature (Amanda Gorman, Dr. Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, etc.
• The Civil Rights Movement with discussion of segregation, Walk on Selma ("Bloody Sunday"), and focusing on Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr.,  and  Thurgood Marshall, etc.
• Music, in which we discovered the significant influence that African Americans have had on Blues, Jazz, Motown, Hiphop, etc.  Students were exposed to each type of music aforementioned.  Additionally, they studied and explored artists such as, The Supremes, Louis Armstrong, Beyonce, Dinah Washington, etc.  The students especially enjoyed and were in awe by the song, "Glory" sung by artists John Legend and Common.   It was evident from much student talk that the music section of the unit was their favorite!
• Cinema in which we looked at the history of African Americans in film, as well as discussed actors including, Cicely Tyson and Chadwick Boseman
• In sports, we looked at the strong and accomplished African American male and female athletes like, Tiger Woods, Venus Williams, Hank Aaron, Jennifer King, and Michael Jordan

Through the unit the students participated in multi media project assignments including, generating a poem, finding a song/artist by an African American, watched videos, created collages of how they wish to contribute to a more peaceful and unified society.  The students ended the unit with a research project, in which they studied and wrote about 3 great African Americans.  The projects were presented to the group.  

The unit was a celebration of people and truly represented how we should learn and celebrate Black History everyday, not just in February.