This year in middle school, PKS students have completed two projects (the first focused on the 2020 Election, the second focused on Newton’s laws of motion that included an egg-drop challenge). The current project is focused on game design, world building, myth, and fantasy. Students are currently working in groups to design D&D campaigns, escape rooms, and choose-your-own adventure stories for Chinese gamers. (Our final project, which will begin in late March, is titled X也和tā, and is focused on a cross-cultural analysis of gender norms.)
In English classes, we have supported the current project work by reading classical myths, learning about the “Hero’s Journey,” and working on close reading skills. Students read Biblical myth, Norse myth, Chinese myth, and Greek myth (with a particular focus on The Odyssey). We have now moved on to reading contemporary fantasy novels and, in celebration of Black History Month, have chosen novels written by black women.
In choosing these novels, our teaching team reflected on the meaning and purpose of Black History Month in our middle school. As with many holidays, memorials, and civic events, Black History Month offers something sweet, celebratory and affirming, and something bitter, somber, and challenging. We celebrate the voices of Tomi Adeyemi, Namina Forna, Somaiya Daud, and Rena Barron and joyfully read their fantastic novels. Simultaneously, we read their work as they intend and discuss systemic privilege, white supremacist culture, and patriarcy.
Forna’s The Gilded Ones is a perfect combination of sweet and bitter. The author, who identifies as a member of the Temni Tribe of Sierra Leone, sets her book in a fictionalized version of the culture in which she grew up. One 6th grader wrote the following after reading the opening chapters of her novel: “What I love about the books we are reading is that they take me to places I may never go (or cannot go). I may never go to Iceland, and I cannot cross the Bifrost and go to Asgard. But I’m glad to read the Icelandic Sagas and learn about Odin’s world. I may never go to Greece, and certainly will never visit Troy (if it even existed). But I had fun joining Odysseus on his journey. And I may never go to west Africa, and I know I cannot go to Deka’s [fictional] village, but the ways she fights racism, xenophobia, and misogyny give me courage in the real world.”
At the end of February, we will ask the middle schoolers to reflect on Black History Month. We will ask, “what does this month mean to you?” We know some students will offer celebrations, others will offer reflections on mourning and pain. What we hope to see from all students is a sense of urgency - a demand that we continue our collective work as an anti-racist community, to “name, frame, and explain” racism and to reflect on our own identities and unconscious biases. As one 8th grader put it during a recent history class, “I don’t think anything should be different during Black History Month - like, we shouldn’t just talk about black history and culture in February and then have 11 white months. But this is a month where I want to be even more deliberate than usual to seek out new voices and think about systems that I usually ignore.”
We look forward to hearing more of our students’ reflections and we leave you with the same question they will answer: what does Black History Month mean to you?