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🎭Dramatization is a teaching method that invites students to become active participants in their learning and bolsters comprehension. Through dramatization, students can explore different perspectives by assuming the roles of various characters or act out specific events.

🧩Gamification incorporates learning with game-based elements, such as point scoring or team work, to increase student engagement and motivation.
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What are types of dramatization and gamification?

Reenactments: Students act out a scene, time period, or historical event as it actually happened. For instance, the constitutional convention.

Simulations: Students are placed in a "world" or scenario that mimics the characteristics of a historical event or social phenomenon. Here, students can explore their understanding of such events by making choices and experiencing consequences. For example, a mock trial.

Role-Plays: Students assume the role of specific characters to help gain knowledge, explore different perspectives, or gain skills.

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Use Gamification & Dramatization with Caution!

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Use Gamification & Dramatization with Caution!

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While gamification and dramatization can be powerful and effective teaching strategies, if used incorrectly, they can employ more harm than good! When these strategies are used to teach topics without an anti-oppressive lens, dominant narratives are reinforced, trauma becomes trivialized, and students can become confused or even retraumatized themselves.

⭐"If you don't have a clear pedagogical purpose for a lesson that dramatizes or gamifies content that is in any way connected to trauma or violence, then you are not ready to teach it" (Rodriguez & Swalwell, 2021).⭐

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🌏 Using reenactments or role-playing to teach about immigration oftentimes:
- Trivializes the experience, leading students to believe that immigration is a seamless and potentially fun process.
- Undermines the gravity of the experience and the reasons why people are compelled to leave their homes, such as war, famine, and/or poverty.

Additionally, focusing solely on Ellis Island when teaching about immigration means reinforcing the dominant narrative and neglecting demographics of immigrants that were not European or did not arrive to the United States through Ellis Island.

❓What can be done to rectify this:
- If utilizing reenactments or role-playing, teachers are responsible for providing rich contextualization of content beforehand and learning that is complementary to the topic.
- Teachers can have students compare and contrast immigrant experiences, as well as examine historical photographs before engaging in a dramatization that allows students to deepen and gain a nuanced understanding of the experience.

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When teaching about westward expansion, the focus is generally on the experience of non-Native settlers moving across the United States, rather than the settlement and displacement of Native Peoples. Dramatization of westward expansion is also often met with zero respect towards Native traditions (e.g. building teepees or constructing "Indian headbands").

❓What can be done to rectify this?
- Consider phrasing when teaching about settlement.
- Highlight Native Peoples' and Nations' perspectives, go beyond stories about British and American colonists.
- Histories of displacement and genocide should not be recreated through gamification.
- Avoid reinforcing settler colonial logics by whitewashing or sidestepping harms.

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🧠 Dramatizations of experiences related to slavery can reinforce White supremacy, anti-blackness, and retraumatize BIPOC students. Additionally, the use of these strategies to teach about slavery commonly depicts Black people as helpless/compliant victims or a monolithic group with the same experiences and opinions.

❓What should be done instead?
- Field Trips to sites that provide the perspectives of enslaved people and do not reinforce dominant narratives.
- Use role-plays responsibly, such as having students design a reparations bill or commemoration to slavery-related history.

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If you prioritize entertainment over educational value, you risk teaching about immigration, slavery, and settlement in problematic ways.

✨Dramatization and gamification should be used purposefully to clarify counter narratives, honor experiences, and transform students.

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Article & Connection: 3 Ways to Improve Education About Slavery in the US 

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Article & Connection: 3 Ways to Improve Education About Slavery in the US 

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Teachers have a difficult time navigating the topic of slavery in their classrooms. Often times, lessons regarding slavery or related historical figures are inappropriate and inflame students, parents, and their communities. Patterson suggests three strategies for providing a more effective presentation of the topic to students:

1.) Students need to learn that American presidents (12 of them, to be exact) and some of the Founding Fathers were slaveowners. Teachers should identify slaveholding presidents and teach from the perspectives of those who were enslaved.
2.) Textbooks do not contain enough material regarding slavery. Teachers should opt for primary sources, such as records and first-hand accounts, to fill in these gaps.
3.) Teaching about slavery can extend beyond the information books provide. Field trips to museums, exhibits, plantations, cemeteries, auction blocks, or the local library can provide a valuable learning experience about slavery.

📖Connection to the Text: Chapter 6 discusses how improper teaching of slavery can trivialize trauma, reinforce dominant narratives, and potentially retraumatize BIPOC students. In introducing students to the reality of being a U.S. president's slave, this challenges the dominant narrative that U.S. presidents and the Founding Fathers were noble, kind slaveholders. Additionally, teaching about slavery from the perspectives of the enslaved not only challenges these narratives, but honors their experience. Rather than utilizing potentially harmful role-plays or dramatizations, field trips are an effective way to gain a deeper understanding of slavery.

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1.) Is teaching about these topics through an anti-oppressive lens a relatively new approach? After reading about the different scenarios where dramatization or gamification was used in a completely inappropriate manner, why do some teachers lack the critical thinking to understand that their activities are not okay? (E.g. stepping on students' backs to "show what slavery was like")

2.) What types of field trip opportunities are there in Arizona to teach students about slavery or settlement?

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How can I apply this info to future teaching?

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How can I apply this info to future teaching?

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1.) Before even considering utilizing dramatization or gamification to teach social studies, I will consider whether or not trauma or violence is involved. What's more, I will carefully consider whether or not these strategies will supplement learning by honoring experiences, clarifying counter narratives, and transforming students. I can follow the Flow Map provided at the end of Chapter 6 as a guide for this.

2.) Chapter 6 made me realize that slavery is indeed taught in a way that depicts Black people as helpless victims with zero agency. It's important that in the future, I provide students stories from the perspectives of the enslaved, as well as stories of strength. As recommended by the article, I can use the Library of Congress' Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves tell their Stories to allow students to hear powerful first-hand accounts.

3.) When I learned about immigration in elementary school, the focus was definitely on Ellis Island. I now understand that when teaching students about immigration in the future, it's important to also spotlight the experience of non-European immigrants and teach about different ports and entries that non-European immigrants came from. I might incorporate this when teaching students about the geography of the United States.