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How does this story complicate your understanding of the intersections of race, class, and gender in Oakland?

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Dashka Slater's The 57 Bus presents the story behind a 2013 incident where a black Oakland High school student (Richard) lit an agender student's (Sasha) skirt on fire. This incredible story goes above and beyond the headlines to reveal the complexity of the lives of these two young people, and asks us to rethink our notions of justice and forgiveness. In doing so, Slater compels us to reconsider what might seem like a simple conflict, and to make connections between the intersections of class, race, and gender in a rapidly shifting Oakland.

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Audience: 9th grade ELA

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.6 Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1 Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

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Ted Talk: The Danger of the Single Story 

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Ted Talk: The Danger of the Single Story 

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Purpose: One of the major themes in The 57 Bus is how important it is to consider the context behind situations, and to question our implicit biases. In this talk, novelist Chimamanda Adichie warns that if we only hear a single story, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3
Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
Potential Classroom Use: This video would be a great pre-reading and contracting exercise.  After watching the video as a class, students could reflect on a time when they were stereotyped or understood as a "single story".
Further Information: Adichie's website
Citation: Adichie, C. N. (n.d.). The danger of a single story. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story

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Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

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What gentrification in Oakland, California, sounds like 

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What gentrification in Oakland, California, sounds like 

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Purpose: This interactive audio map, created by young people working for YouthRadio, provides interviews from longtime West Oakland residents about their experiences of gentrification and the displacement of African Americans in Oakland. West Side Stories serves as an important lens for exploring the rapidly changing landscape of Oakland.
Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1
Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Potential Classroom Use: Using a microlab protocol, students will work in small groups to explore the map and listen to the interviews of different Oakland residents. After recording evidence of the range of perspectives around African American displacement and gentrification, students will hold a group academic discussion and discuss their findings and further questions.
Further Information: Youth Radio's West Side Stories
Citation: Gentrification in West Oakland. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://youthradio.github.io/

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Along with podcasts like Serial, audio maps are among the most creative storytelling trends in radio, made possible by a plethora of low-cost, high-quality publishing tools. I first spotted Youth Radio's West Side Stories project thanks to CityLab's Laura Bliss. The Bay Area nonprofit documented the thoughts of longtime residents of West Oakland, California, about the effects of gentrification on their neighborhood, a weighty topic involving race, culture, politics, and economics that is often as difficult to define as it is to discuss.

Gentrification is a part of daily life for Americans who live near and in growing cities, and West Side Stories presents real people, one at a time, to talk about it. Every neighborhood in America could use a map like this. Presented below are three of the subjects Youth Radio interviewed.

DeFremery Park used to be a predominantly black neighborhood - and a primary Black Panther hangout

Ericka Huggins remembers that new residents were "looking for a different quality of life than they bought into. ... You get culture, but if you're afraid of it, you can't see it as that. You see it as other." A few blocks from DeFremery Park, a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment is currently available for rent for $1,950 a month on Craigslist.

Malik, 22, likes that his neighborhood is safer, but says that "we shouldn't let outsiders come in and take our neighborhood away from us"

As Malik suggested, a safer neighborhood should not come at the cost of one's expulsion from it. For many people of color, gentrification means saying goodbye to your house because it becomes too expensive for you to live there anymore. Gentrification has an insidiously discriminatory relationship with communities in need of economic mobility and parity, employment opportunities, and affordable housing.

The number of residents of high-poverty neighborhoods in the US has roughly doubled since 1970 and is spreading into the suburbs, as Danielle Kurtzleben noted in Vox last year. That's not to say that displacement in working-class neighborhoods isn't harmful, too - just look at Washington, DC - but income is the primary factor in who can afford to stay in a gentrifying neighborhood. Oakland is undergoing widespread sociodemographic shifts, and I recommend the Pulse of Oakland's maps and the Brooking s Institution's study on income inequality for deeper dives into local history and trends.

Joyce Elaine Carter (a.k.a. "Miss Cookie") saw many children of the neighborhood sell their parents' houses to white residents from outside the community

Carter has no intention of leaving the neighborhood, and she has a lot of good reasons. "I paid $15,000 for my house, and I'm staying right here," she says. The map includes a series of interviews from West Oakland renters, too; one woman mentions that she wants to use a prospective property as an Airbnb location.

There are other amazing audio maps out there (like this PRI project mapping world sounds), but Youth Radio's map helps clarify a conversation about race, income, and equality that reaches well beyond Oakland. If you're in or from West Oakland, you can add your story to West Side Stories here.

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Audio map shows us what gentrification sounds like in Oakland, California

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Along with podcasts like Serial , audio maps are among the most creative storytelling trends in radio, made possible by a plethora of low-cost, high-quality publishing tools. I first spotted Youth Radio's West Side Stories project thanks to CityLab's Laura Bliss.

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The Pulse of Oakland: Stories on the intersection of health, wealth and race in Oakland neighborhoods.

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The Pulse of Oakland: Stories on the intersection of health, wealth and race in Oakland neighborhoods.

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Purpose: One of the major themes of The 57 Bus is how multiple worlds can exist in one place. This article incorporates a range of interviews, maps, and videos to explore the intersection of health, wealth and race in Oakland neighborhoods. It illustrates how wealth and good health are often concentrated in certain parts of the city.

Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1
Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.1
Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

Potential Classroom Use: Students can

Further Information:
Citation

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If health was distributed evenly, life expectancy maps "would look like confetti," says Bina Patel Shrimali, a health equity expert at the Alameda County Public Health Department, with colors sprinkled everywhere. Instead, she says, poor health and short lives are clustered in certain neighborhoods like East and West Oakland.

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Purpose: The story surrounding the incident on the The 57 Bus has a lot to do with how people perceive and deal with difference. This poem will help students consider the various ways in which we react to difference, and the choices we could potentially make vs. the ones we often make in the moment.

Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3
Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
Potential Classroom Use: As a pre-reading activity, students can read and analyze the poem, and then reflect in their journal about how verbs in the poem connects to a time you experienced difference. After students start reading the book, they can make a map or visual with how characters are dealing with difference.
Further Information: Facing History Resources
Citation: What Do We Do with a Difference? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-2/what-do-we-do-difference

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Poet James Berry raises important questions about the ways we respond to differences in a poem titled "What Do We Do with a Variation?":

What do we do with a difference?
Do we stand and discuss its oddity
or do we ignore it?

Do we shut our eyes to it
or poke it with a stick?
Do we clobber it to death?

Do we move around it in rage
and enlist the rage of others?
Do we will it to go away?

Do we look at it in awe
or purely in wonderment?
Do we work for it to disappear?

Do we pass it stealthily
or change route away from it?
Do we will it to become like ourselves?

What do we do with a difference?
Do we communicate to it,
let application acknowledge it
for barriers to fall down?

1. James Berry uses many verbs and verb phrases to show what we "do" with a difference. Pick out these verbs and think about the variety of responses to difference that they present.

2. Reflect in your journal about how one of these verbs or verb phrases connects to a time you experienced difference. Is there a word to describe how your school or community has reacted to difference?

3. What do you think the phrase "let application acknowledge it" means? How might it connect to the idea of barriers?

4. What is the message of the poem?

5. Write another stanza of the poem describing how you'd like to see your community respond to differences today.

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Poet James Berry raises important questions about the ways we respond to differences in a poem titled "What Do We Do with a Variation?": What do we do with a difference? Do we stand and discuss its oddity or do we ignore it? Do we shut our eyes to it or poke it with a stick?

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Purpose: Part 1 of The 57 Bus tells Sasha's story, and Slater describes Sasha's personal journey through their gender and sexual identity. This glossary can serve as an important companion text and resource and resource for students as they navigate through Sasha's story.
Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.2
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
Potential Classroom Use: Teachers can use the glossary to help students better understand the ever-evolving language and terminology around gender and sexuality. Before reading Sasha's section, students preview the glossary and then apply the terms in writing as they move through their story.
Further Information: NYTime's LGBTQ Pride 2018 Stories & Resources
Citation: Gold, M. (2018, June 21). The ABCs of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/style/lgbtq-gender-language.html

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The ABCs of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ (Published 2018)

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Words and abbreviations are changing with the need to address and respect people who do not feel represented.

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Purpose: In telling Richard's side of the story, Dashka Slater presents a critique of the juvenile justice system and asks the reader to rethinking their perceptions of crime and punishment. "Caught" explores how although all teenagers make stupid decisions, depending on your zip code, race, or just bad luck, those mistakes can have a lasting impact. Mass incarceration starts young. In "Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice", we hear from kids about the moment they collided with law and order, and how it changed them forever.
Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1
Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Potential Classroom Use: Students can listen to excerpts from the "Caught" in order to help prepare for a Socratic Seminar about juvenile justice after reading Part 4: Justice.
Further Information: NPR's KQED resources
Citation: Caught. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/podcasts/589480586/caught

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All kids make dumb mistakes. But depending on your zip code, race, or just bad luck, those mistakes can have a lasting impact. Mass incarceration starts young.