Yonsoo P.

Kang
EDUC 544
8/17/2017

My unit plan and lesson plan are for the first week of school in a 10th grade American

history class at a South Philadelphia district school called Furness High School. I planned this

unit by basing it off of Maslows hierarchy of needs. I wanted to offer a space where basic needs

are met such as physiological, safety, and belonging. The first few days are for me and the class

to build the foundations for a supportive classroom community where young people can learn. A

strong foundation centered on youth voice, relationship building, and culturally relevant history

is critical for a productive classroom later in the year. I chose the Delano Grape Strike of 1965 as

the historical basis for my first week because it reflects not only the racial and socioeconomic

realities of my students, but also our school/classroom dynamic. Furness High School is very

unique because 48.5% of the school is Asian American, 20% Latino, 19.5% African American,

9.3% White. (School Profile: Furness, Horace High School, n.d.). Therefore, the classes will

have an incredibly diverse student population with wide range of experiences and English

proficiency. However, diversity does not automatically mean cross racial interaction. Especially

after the racial attacks against Asian American students in South Philadelphia High School, I

believe teaching a historical event where diverse people united together to achieve equity is a

doorway for students to learn and engage with one another.

My first goal as a new teacher is to start building relationships with my students. My first

day activities consist of low-risk, engaging, and identity-focused exercises. These serve three

main purposes: 1) Provides an outlet for personal expression 2) Acknowledges and celebrates

their cultural identity 3) Pushes students to think how history embodies their experiences. These

areas of focus mainly stem from readings by Weinstein and personal experience. This author
devotes a considerable amount of space emphasizing on positive student-teacher relationships.

Weinstein cites that students are more likely to cooperate with teachers who are seen as caring,

trustworthy, and respectful (Weinstein, 2011, p. 50). Reflecting on my work experience, I

remember that one of the main reasons why students continued to come to my after-school

program was because they felt I cared about them and their thoughts. The activity My Name

Is is an example of how a teacher can promote self-worth. Students are to write out their full

name and the proper pronunciation underneath. Then, using I am statements, they provide

three interesting facts about themselves. This provides an opportunity for the teacher to become

familiar with student names and personal facts as well as acknowledge their cultural identity. I

take great effort to know student names and pronounce them as accurately as possible because

names hold great importance to ones identity. I certainly turned off when a teacher continued to

mispronounce my Korean name.

The unit plan gradually turns to focusing on youth voices and empowerment. The lessons

throughout the week are woven together so personal identity from Day 1 will pop up again

throughout the week. The main method for achieving this is through student journals. The

journal have several purposes: it acts as a Do Now so students can engage with the upcoming

mini-lesson, it offers an opportunity for them to have some sort of personal control, and it

accommodates multiple intelligences.

I want to provide all my students opportunities to succeed and the journals can help with

different kinds of learners. Writing allows intrapersonal learners to display what they know. I

would also accept detailed diagrams for those who have spatial or logical-mathematical

intelligence. The Pair Share moments provide time for students who are keen to use their

interpersonal and linguistic intelligence. I also will encourage the students who have low English
proficiency to write in their home language if that is more comfortable. The students may also

personalize the journals however they wish. They may even use the notebook for personal

writing outside of the subject area. I am undecided whether to set up a system for the teacher to

grade students who write in them. On one hand, I want to encourage writing. But on the other

hand, I want to respect their privacy.

One of the main pillars of promoting youth empowerment is to creating space for youth

voices. I want to continue to develop a strong student-teacher relationship through a youth

designed community agreement that is facilitated by the teacher. This does not mean the adult

forfeits all control over to the students. But it does mean that youth will have a greater part to

play in creating their classroom community. Developing a community agreement allows me to

avoid deficit ideology, acknowledge capital brought into the classroom, and demonstrate student-

teacher trust. Gorski writes about deficit ideology (deficit thinking) and how educators are not

immune to embody racial and socioeconomic stereotypes especially toward darker and poorer

people. He highlights how deficit perspective approaches students based upon our perceptions

of their weaknesses rather than their strengths. Such a perspective deteriorates expectations for

students and weakens educators abilities to recognize giftedness in its various forms we

mistake difference for deficit (Gorksi, 2010, p. 2).

The community agreement is essentially a method of communication between teachers

and students. The process of creating this agreement lays out how youth and adults differently

perceive and define behaviors and attitudes and then finds ways to come to an understanding. We

work together to set up norms, expectations, and consequences that reflect the values brought

into the classroom. Tara Yosso describes this as cultural wealth, which consists of an array of

knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed and utilized by Communities of Color to
survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression (Yosso, 2005, p. 77). It is a chance for

students to be genuinely heard and contribute to their classrooms cultural wealth. Their input

derives from cultural, linguistic and social capital developed in their families and neighborhoods

(Yosso, 2005). For teachers, they can demonstrate how strong emotions can be transformed into

supportive rules that will benefit learning and encourage everyone to be themselves. Teachers

can create an environment offering safety, structure, belonging, accountability, and responsibility

while avoiding White, middle class culture as the standard (Yosso, 2005). Finally, the most

important part of developing a community agreement is whether it is consistently enforced by the

adult. In the beginning weeks, youth will test their boundaries to see if the norms and

expectations are a farce. This is a chance for teachers to earn their authority and continue

building interpersonal relationships with students. (Delpit, 1988).

There will be a stronger history presence starting on Day 3 and going on to Day 4 and

Day 5. Delpit, Oakes & Lipton, and Hollins influenced how I structured my unit plan and lesson

plan. As a progressive, Asian American educator, I wanted to form a curriculum where I could

have students use history and social commentaries to observe and make sense of their own

lives (Oakes & Lipton, 2013, p. 146). Because our school and neighborhood contains so many

cultures, I chose to introduce the students to the Delano Grape Strike as an example where

different cultures and languages came together to overcome a shared injustice. My choice was

reinforced by the self-segregation at summer placement, Migrant Ed. The youth all sat based on

ethnicity or gender. Therefore, my lesson plan focuses on asking students to define and directly

engage with the word diversity. I wanted to push students to think how cultural differences can

act as both a bridge and a barrier. By learning about how the Filipinos and Mexican labor unions

overcame their own obstacles, students receive a multicultural education where they get out of
their comfort zone and learn skills and knowledge that can help them function in a diverse

society (Hollins, 2015).

The one point I consistently remember when creating my lesson plan was that [t]eachers

do students no service to suggest that product is not important. In this country, students will

be judged on their product regardless of the process they utilized to achieve it (Delpit, 1988, p.

287). Therefore, I balance engaging activities with the responsibility for teaching my students

tangible skills that will help them succeed in a dominant culture outside the classroom. Students

are introduced to the basic building block of a sentence that will help them in forming persuasive

arguments: Claim Reason Evidence (CRE). They apply CRE by practicing another skill, public

speaking. Then students are eventually asked to use the CRE format when writing sentences.

The goal is to provide my class with the first of many critical thinking skills they can use to

express and effectively advocate for themselves in the professional world (Delpit, 1988). At the

end of my unit plan, I advocate what Hollins calls social action approach to history. It is when

students make decisions on important social issues and take action to solve them (Hollins, 2015).

Students will apply their knowledge about the Grape Strike by identifying, analyzing, and

synthesizing information to form an action plan to bring about change to an issue they care about

in their school or community.

I designed the unit and lesson plan to reflect the realities of the first week of school. From

my experience at AALEAD, it is wiser to invest time in building a strong relationship with

students by focusing on them before going into the textbook. One of my main goals for this year

is to consistently enforce the community agreements. I am very excited to apply my learning and

work experience into the classroom. It was very challenging to form my unit plan where I could

weave relationship building with the academic objectives. This merely reflects how difficult it is
to remain intentional with our choices especially if they are affecting youth. I understand and

embrace the demographic realities at Furness High School but I am still concerned that my

materials are not accessible to ELL students with low English proficiency. I want them to engage

with our activity as much as possible so I hope I can adjust the curriculum to address their needs.

My planning does not really address the challenges of high truancy so I hope to learn more about

different strategies to overcome that.

References

A Beginners Guide to the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI). Retrieved from

http://multipleintelligencesoasis.org/about/

Delpit, Lisa. (1988). The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other Peoples
Children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 280-299.

Gorski, Paul C. (2010). Unlearning Deficit Ideology and the Scornful Gaze: Thoughts on
Authenticating the Class Discourse in Education.

Hollins, E. R. (2015). Deep Meaning of Culture. Culture in school learning: Revealing the deep
meaning. (pp. 19-40).

Oakes, J. & Lipton, M. (2012). Teaching to Change the World. Boulder, CO: Paradigm
Publishers.

School Profile: Furness, Horace High School. Retrieved from

https://webapps1.philasd.org/school_profile/view/2160

Weinstein, C. S. (2011). Secondary Classroom Management. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill

Education.

Yosso, Tara J.. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of
community cultural wealth, Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8 (1), 69-82.