Every now and again, a student will say something that leaves me speechless and desperate for the correct response. I can feel in my bones that the moment is about to become pivotal. One of these moments came while we were reading Katherine Paterson’s novel The Great Gilly Hopkins, in which the main character deals with her racism. We were in the process of analyzing her character, her motivations and her racist attitudes, and I could tell that my sixth-graders didn’t really understand the theme of racism, so I needed to step away from the novel for a moment and put the history in context for them.
The next day, I put together a “big paper” activity, a teaching strategy I learned at a Facing History and Ourselves summer training institute. I used photographs from the Teaching Tolerance guidebook America’s Civil Rights Movement. A big paper activity uses a photograph, a document, a quote or an excerpt of text as a springboard for a “silent conversation.” The source is taped in the middle of a big piece of paper. Students, working in pairs or very small groups, “converse” by writing reflections on the photo or text. Using the photos from the guidebook, I put my students into groups and had them write conversations based on the photos. I chose a diverse selection of photos that represented varying levels and types of discrimination suffered by black people in America to give them a fuller picture of racism. The photos depicted burning churches, lunch counter sit-ins, people being assaulted with fire hoses, members of the KKK with burning torches and other images. The students reacted in writing and developed conversations around the photos. When they were done with their own photo, they traded big papers with other groups and added to or commented on the conversation written on the papers of their classmates.
When all of the groups were finished with their papers, we did a processing activity in which the students discuss their feelings and reactions to the photos. They expressed shock and outrage over the unfair treatment of blacks in the South, shame that these events had occurred in our country, and appreciation and gratitude for the people who fought against such injustices to bring about change. They also began to connect racism in America to the character of Gilly in our novel. So we were ready to turn our attention back to the text.
Just as I was telling my class to open up their novels, Jared raised his hand a bit hesitantly and then lowered it again. I asked him if he had a question, and he said he did not. But then his hand went back up, and he said, “I just wanted to tell you something.” He looked me straight in the eye and said to me, “My father is a racist.” I knew I had to say something, and things seemed to be in slow motion to me; “don’t say the wrong thing” was racing through my head at warp speed, over and over. I took a deep breath, re-established eye contact with him and said the first thing that came into my mind, “That doesn’t mean you have to be.” Time stood still for a brief moment, but then Jared smiled at me slightly and nodded, satisfied.
Spain is a middle school language arts teacher in New Jersey.
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