26 Antiracist PBL Ideas
Dec 14, 2020
This is the third post of the new Caucus Series: “Everybody’s talking about it at home, but nobody wants to talk about it at school.” Check out these links for the continued conversation about how to be an antiracist in the classroom.
1st post Why I’ve been Afraid to be Antiracist
2nd post Beyond Woke
We started off this series with a post containing two examples explaining the fear of addressing race at school ending with “Cheers to the Troublemakers” and extolling teachers to speak up on racial issues.
The second post was Jim Bentley’s personal story of becoming an antiracist teacher. It is vital, especially for white teachers, to “do the work” first of learning more about the history and experience of Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) in the United States before diving in with students. Without first reading and listening to BIPOC and spending time on introspective reflection about one’s one beliefs and actions, the white teacher is in danger of shallow responses that can be micro aggressions or presenting themselves as a fraud.
Once you are deep in the self-work of learning antiracism and are ready to lead your students into explorations on the history and implications of race, then of course Project Based Learning (PBL) is a great framework for deep inquiry. Many teachers have shared antiracism resources for the classroom and the purpose here is not to duplicate them, but rather share specific project ideas, many of which have already been successfully implemented in the classroom.
These are not fully developed PBL projects with worksheets that you can buy off TPT and photocopy, but PBL ideas that need to be adjusted and adopted for your students and community. The projects can be scaled up or down in age from 4 to 100.
You are never too young or old to learn about equity, justice, empathy, and love!
Most of these projects could be integrated across multiple content areas for an interdisciplinary deep dive. Below the table are some other resources including an extensive, final product list. The final products listed in the table are suggestions and you may want to pivot to a different one depending on your student interests and community involvement. Choosing a product that has a strong impact locally, will make the project experience something that students will never forget!
So check out this table of Antiracist PBL ideas at bit.ly/AntiracistPBL and remix them for your students and let us know how it goes!
1st post Why I’ve been Afraid to be Antiracist
2nd post Beyond Woke
We started off this series with a post containing two examples explaining the fear of addressing race at school ending with “Cheers to the Troublemakers” and extolling teachers to speak up on racial issues.
The second post was Jim Bentley’s personal story of becoming an antiracist teacher. It is vital, especially for white teachers, to “do the work” first of learning more about the history and experience of Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) in the United States before diving in with students. Without first reading and listening to BIPOC and spending time on introspective reflection about one’s one beliefs and actions, the white teacher is in danger of shallow responses that can be micro aggressions or presenting themselves as a fraud.
Once you are deep in the self-work of learning antiracism and are ready to lead your students into explorations on the history and implications of race, then of course Project Based Learning (PBL) is a great framework for deep inquiry. Many teachers have shared antiracism resources for the classroom and the purpose here is not to duplicate them, but rather share specific project ideas, many of which have already been successfully implemented in the classroom.
These are not fully developed PBL projects with worksheets that you can buy off TPT and photocopy, but PBL ideas that need to be adjusted and adopted for your students and community. The projects can be scaled up or down in age from 4 to 100.
You are never too young or old to learn about equity, justice, empathy, and love!
So check out this table of Antiracist PBL ideas at bit.ly/AntiracistPBL and remix them for your students and let us know how it goes!