A Thanksgiving Reading List (With Extra Gravy)
On the one hand, the markers of holiday celebrations can buoy spirits during a
challenging school year. On the other hand, a domino chain of sporadic days
off between now and February promise to interrupt classroom momentum and
further strain waning student attendance rates.
Good gravy, that’s a lot to manage! Not to be corny, but here is a cornucopia
of stories from the Education Week archives you can gobble up to help make
your holiday a piece of pie—or at least give you some new ideas to chew on.
“No matter what you are working on in school right now, there is no reason to
ask students to stress about it during the first short extended break of the
school year,” educator Starr Sackstein wrote in this opinion piece.
Sackstein said teachers shouldn’t assign homework on Thanksgiving weekend.
Instead, suggest they talk to a family member with a different perspective and
share what they learned, play with a pet, or help prepare the holiday meal.
“Taking the stress of homework out of my students’ holiday breaks is
important. They deserve an opportunity to relax and rejuvenate as much as I
do—particularly if they are overscheduled to begin with,” she wrote in 2019.
“For beginning teachers, making it to the end of the semester can bring a real
sense of accomplishment. They feel free to write new plans and ready to reset
routines for the second semester,” 2014 Texas Teacher of the Year Monica
Washington wrote in this EdWeek essay. “For others, this time brings questions
and deep reflection. Is teaching really what I thought it would be? Why do I
feel so lost all the time? What else can I do with this science degree?”
In this opinion piece, Washington urged administrators to check in with new
teachers around Thanksgiving to offer support, answer questions, and call out
the things they are doing well.
There’s “less and less” use of construction paper headdresses and
oversimplified stories of pilgrims in schools “as more people are made aware
of that version being a myth, and our realization that there is a really
different perspective that needs to be considered,” Jacob Tsotigh, citizen of
the Kiowa tribe and the tribal education specialist for the National Indian
Education Association told Education Week in 2019.
In this story and an accompanying PBS Newshour segment, Education Week
explored the way classroom teachers have “unlearned” the widely told narrative
of Thanksgiving to understand the Native American perspective.
For educators “the convergence of so many holidays [following Thanksgiving]
can create the December dilemma: how to acknowledge and respect the wide
variety of holidays and traditions their students hold dear without implying
that some are more important than others,” Kimberly Keiserman, an education
program associate at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding,
wrote in a 2015 opinion essay.
Keiserman explored how educators can respect their students’ various cultural
and religious traditions during the winter holiday season. One tip: Teach
students to ask open-ended questions like, “What holidays are important to
you?” instead of, “Why don’t you celebrate Christmas?”
“To reduce the levels of absences in our schools, we are going to have to have
a very intentional, thoughtful, long-term strategy,” Hedy Chang, executive
director of Attendance Works, recently told Education Week.
Chronic absenteeism spiked during the pandemic, and the winter months present
a special challenge for school leaders working to build attendance habits.
Holidays interrupt learning time, and a wave of respiratory illnesses have led
to temporary school closures in schools around the country. In this article,
Chang offers tips to keep students engaged.
“As any teacher will tell you in one of these [high-poverty] schools—a growing
number, thanks to the steady rise of the percentage of children living in dire
conditions—the Monday after Thanksgiving is a particularly challenging (and
important) day to be an educator,” education activist Sam Chaltain wrote in
this opinion piece. “Whereas many of the children will be ready and eager to
resume their school lives, some will return to classes having eaten little
over the four-day break. And others will be numb from their extended stay in a
world of chaos and dysfunction.”
Bonus! Learn how two Washington state district leaders built a community
school strategy to help their community connect students and their families to
needed supports like food pantries, employment services, and mental health
care.
“The constant state of hurry, worry, and fury in which we live and teach,
along with the countless distractions of everyday life, amounts to what author
Brigid Schulte calls ‘the overwhelm.’ And adults aren’t the only ones who
experience it; students feel overcome too,” author Gary Abud wrote.
Juneteenth: How and Why It Should Be Taught in K-12 Schools
“No justice, no peace,” shouts choreographer Markesha Howlett with Visual
Movements, as she leads a march from the Old Courthouse in St. Louis to the
riverfront during the second annual Juneteenth Commemoration, “On Their
Shoulders” on June 19, 2021.
Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP
Juneteenth, a holiday long recognized within the Black community that
commemorates the end of slavery became a national holiday just last year.
And while it’s observed at a time when most K-12 schools are out on summer
break, there is a value in teaching about the holiday and its legacy
year-round, says Sonya Douglass, a professor of education leadership at
Teachers College, Columbia University.
Douglass is also the founding director of the university’s Black Education
Research Collective, which is developing a Black studies curriculum for
preK-12 schools in New York City.
She spoke with Education Week on how and why educators teach about Juneteenth
and the broader value for all students in expanding how Black history is
taught.
It’s really, in essence, the celebration of the end of slavery. It wasn’t
until Union soldiers were able to notify slaves in Galveston, Texas [on June
19, 1865] that the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, that they were in
fact free. And so it’s really a time of celebration, in celebrating
independence and freedom for Black people. That’s really what the holiday is
about.
Why and how should K-12 educators teach about Juneteenth in school, especially
when several schools are out for the summer when the holiday is observed?
Well, I think it’s actually nice that the holiday is in the summer, because it
really is about Black communities deciding how they spend the holiday. But I
think it’s something that requires teachers to have a better understanding of
Black history and studies throughout the school year.
It’s one of the things that the Black Education Research Collective is
actually working on in the New York City public schools right now, in curating
the first-ever preK-12, interdisciplinary Black studies curriculum. And what
we’re finding about this process is that there’s so much information. When we
think about Black history beginning with the origins of civilization to
contemporary issues like Black Lives Matter, there is a lot of information and
a lot of knowledge that needs to be shared in K-12 schools.
Juneteenth is one example of that. I think it embodies, again, the history of
being taken from the continent to the United States, enslavement, and then the
emancipation period. Wthin Juneteenth there’s a lot of information that is
really important to be integrated throughout curriculum and what is taught
across the entire school year.
Like I said, Black studies and Black history have not been a part of what’s
typically taught in K-12 schools, and so many of us, myself included, didn’t
have access to that type of information and knowledge. And so I think it’s
recognizing that as an opportunity to really have informed conversations about
the history of Black people in America.
I think it really begins with us taking that time to really educate ourselves
around what Juneteenth means and then being able to have informed dialogue
about how it resonates in many ways with the struggle for Black lives even in
2022.
What should educators know about teaching Black history at a time when more
states are making efforts to limit discussions of race in the classroom
through legislation and other means?
It’s easier said than done, but it does take courage to do this. I just want
to acknowledge and commend those educators who are continuing to teach the
truth in the face of resistance. But it underscores the need to invest more
energy, time, and resources in history and civics education in the curriculum.
What we are experiencing points to the need to ensure that social foundations
and cultural studies are included in K-12 curricula. And that teaching to
narrowly constructed tests undermines the opportunity to do that.
So I’m hoping that there’ll be more of a reset in terms of what is actually
taught. And we need to really support teachers in this moment. And I think
that through doing more community-based work in connecting parents, families,
and students—and actually letting the young people help teach us some things
as well—we can build the coalitions and partnerships that can help us to get
to a point where we’re not dealing with this really divisive environment, but
really moving toward a shared vision of education, where everyone benefits.
I think it’s important to underscore that we are in a pivotal moment in U.S.
education and history. While we are witnessing a lot of conflict, I do think
it’s the beginning of a new wave in education that is going to be more
conscious and inclusive, and that will better prepare young people to be
productive and contributing members of a functioning democracy.
So it’s rough now but I’m hopeful that by having these discussions and
continuing to educate ourselves on the histories of all people who contributed
to this country, that we’re going to be in a much better place in the years
ahead.
Leave a Reply