Challenging The "Happy Slave" Mythos: Reclaiming Social Studies Teacher Education With Counternarratives

Challenging The "Happy Slave" Mythos:Reclaiming Social Studies Teacher Education With Counternarratives Dennis L. Rudnick (bio) and Corey Sell (bio) Connections to Social Studies Teacher Education: Students will have a deeper understanding of the "happy slave" narrative and its impacts on historical and contemporary ideologies, policies, and practices; learn about counternarratives as a pedagogical strategy; and apply their content, conceptual, and pedagogical learning to curricular research, design, and implementation. Objectives: By the end of this lesson, students will be able to develop their own critical counternarrative lesson plans. National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Standards and Teacher Expectations: History Teacher Expectations • Assist learners in developing historical research capabilities to enable learners to develop historical comprehension; • Guide learners in practicing skills of historical analysis and interpretation; • Assist learners in developing historical research capabilities that enable them to formulate historical questions, obtain historical data, question historical data, identify the gaps in available records, place records in context, and construct sound historical interpretations. Individuals, Groups, and Institutions Expectations • Help learners analyze group and institutional influences on people, events, and elements of culture in both historical and contemporary settings. Culture and Cultural Diversity Expectations • Guide learners as they predict how data and experiences may be interpreted by people from diverse cultural perspectives and frames of reference. Essential Question: Why are counternarratives necessary? Warm-Up (Anticipatory Set): Students are presented with the book cover of A Birthday Cake for George Washington, coupled with "See-Think-Wonder" prompts: What do you see (observations)? What do you think (inferences)? What do you wonder End Page 26 (questions)? Our debrief centers on naming, historicizing, and countering the "Happy Slave" narrative in this text, and implications for students. Activity: • Dominant Narratives and Counternarratives Overview—We then transition into an overview of dominant narratives and counternarratives, drawing on concepts and themes generated from the warm-up. • "Responsible Citizens in History" Proposed Curricular Revisions—Students identify, analyze, then rewrite dominant narratives found in social studies textbook excerpts. They are then encouraged to rewrite these excerpts using the Transformative Justice Social Studies Framework. • Counternarratives Exploration—Students research narratives about a particular history, community, concept, person, or event, and then research counternarratives to these. For two consecutive classes, students will prepare answers to three questions for peer dialogue: (1) What stories about the past have you learned that you didn't know (share at least three interesting bits of information)? (2) In what ways has a dominant narrative been disrupted for you? (3) From your readings, what might be a topic you could use for the Annotated Text Set Assignment? In other words, what topic do you want to dig deeper into? • Annotated Text Set—Students build off their Counternarratives Exploration to develop an annotated text set. They research their topic, locating a variety of sources, which must include two nonfiction books, one documentary/video, four primary sources, four secondary sources, two children's books, and two verified websites on their topic. Annotations must include a picture or the actual text material, the reference information, and a brief that describes this source. Small group presentations address summaries of what was learned, relevant academic standards, how their counternarrative disrupts the dominant narrative and why this is good for students, and several sources that would be helpful in teaching this counternarrative to elementary students. • Assessment—Students are assessed on how well they clearly identify and align relevant social studies standards; select developmentally appropriate and relevant topics that create opportunities for students to learn social studies using a critical lens through the use of counternarratives; select and detail a variety of relevant and appropriate sources; attend to criticalness of their text sets in how they challenge dominant narratives (e.g., stereotypical representations and biases teachers and others may have); and create spaces for students to experience justice and joy. Teacher Resources: 1 Webinar: "Teaching Hard History: Building Better Lessons About Slavery," https://www.learningforjustice.org/professional-development/webinars/teaching-hard-history-building-better-lessons-about-slavery End Page 27 2 Primary Document: "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html 3 Primary Documents: "Historical Readings: Primary Sources," Slavery and the Making of America, https://www.thirteen...