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Important figures in history such as the founding fathers are seen as sacred heroes, as we hide the truth of their lives, as slave owners or other significant details. Viewing these important figures as either heroes or villains is bad pedagogy. “They celebrated freedom while stealing the substance of life from the people they ‘owned’” (pg. 91)

To humanize the founding fathers and contextualize their accomplishments. This means learning about their interactions with indigenous people, relationships with women of all backgrounds, and connections to enslavement (p.93)

White suffragists are often idolized, and are single handedly given credit for winning the right to vote for all women in the United States. With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, not all women could vote. Some Native women could not vote until 1962; the U.S. government did not allow all Asian American women to naturalize until 1952; and many Black women only secured access to the polls through the Civil Rights Act of 1965 (P.97) The expansion of these rights is to thank due to activists that continued fighting after 1920, one example being Fannie Lou Hamer. Men activists such as Frederick Douglass, and organizations like the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, also provide important cases in allyship.

Civil rights movement leaders such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. are few horrified figures. A focus on individual leaders also erases the importance of organizations, the power of dedicated, constant collective grassroots agitation, and the need for strategic mobilization of individuals in local communities and contexts every day (pg.101). The passive voice preserves the “innocence of whiteness” by describing racism “as happening without the knowledge of the whites”. Saying explicitly that white people enacted harm, and naming specific historically significant people who used their agency to deny rights to others is critical to understanding how white supremacy works.

A unit about the Civil Rights Movement should also acknowledge related struggles for justice like the American Indian Movement, the Chicano Movement, the Asian American Movement, the Third World Liberation Front fight for ethnic studies programs, the disabilities rights movement, LGBTQIA+ rights and the gray panthers fighting against ageism. This opens up opportunities for including an even more diverse, nuances, contextualized range of leaders and to emphasize the phenomenon of long struggle.

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1 photograph : print ; sheet 20 x 25 cm, mount 24 x 29 cm. | Photograph shows men looking at material posted in the window of the "Headquarters, National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage."

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A discussion on at least 3 ways to apply this information to future teaching

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A discussion on at least 3 ways to apply this information to future teaching

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An activity stated in chapter 5 “Great/Not So Great” essentially has students create a pros and cons list of historical figures, after engaging with multiple sources students will identify what is great and what is not so great about this figure. Then with their knowledge they will give a final rating and back it up with evidence. This method is a way to center their counter stories and highlight unique experiences of their intersecting identities. This activity could be completed in a graphic organizer, or students could write a bibliography that includes the complexities they discovered.

Discuss who signed the declaration of independence and why they all “happened” to be white men. Students can fill out an identity chart to ask who was at the proverbial table and who wasn’t, and why? By discovering why only white, landowning men signed important documents can help students understand the homogeneity of the constitutional convention was not a coincidence.

There are many primary sources that students can examine to get a broader understanding, such as photographs. One example, students could examine a photograph of a chapter of  the Colored Women Voters to raise questions about why such a group existed.

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A clear discussion on the article/video/podcast and a connection on how it relates to the chapter

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A clear discussion on the article/video/podcast and a connection on how it relates to the chapter

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The article The Montgomery Bus Boycott: Utilizing Primary Sources and Identifying Multiple Perspectives, discusses the challenges and strategies for teaching elementary school students about Black History Month and the civil rights movement. It emphasizes the need to address the complex and difficult contexts surrounding these historical events, the marginalization of social studies, insufficient background knowledge, and the racial differences between teachers and students. The importance of engaging students from diverse backgrounds and using primary sources to encourage multiple perspectives and critical thinking is highlighted. This passage directly relates to the section in chapter 5 titled Civil Rights Movements Leaders. It goes in depth about the Montgoemry bus boycott, who was involved, who supported it, who didn’t and why it was happening. This lesson taught by a pre-service teacher Megan, uses primary sources to teach and lead discussion about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Mongomery bus boycott.

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[Participants, some carrying American flags, marching in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965]

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1 photomechanical print : photogravure. | Print showing a woman leaving the house to vote on election day while her distraught husband is left behind to tend to the children and house by himself. A plate has been broken, both children are crying and even the cat is in a panic. Hanging in a frame on…

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[Malcolm X and Martin Luther King at the U.S. Capitol at the time of a press conference about the Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964] / MST.

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1 photograph : on contact sheet ; sheet 4 x 4 cm.

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I wonder how much education has evolved just in the past decade or two. I have felt that my education was not as indepth as these discussions. However, my mother was and is a very well educated individual and would give me “the whole story” about whatever I had learned or read in class. I feel fortunate to have had this outside source to expand my knowledge but wonder what knowledge I may hold without my mom having such an influence on my education.

I wonder how many of these “controversial topics” are suitable for k-2, what topics I would be able to discuss with my future students. I love challenging discussions and getting into the reality of history, however what is too much for k-2 students?