Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Using Your (Millennial) Powers for Good

This year at my school, there was a big debate (I'm sure) among the IT facilitators and Administration over educational use of cell phones in school.  Once again, the answer was no.  Facebook and Twitter are still blocked.  Even though our network still goes down, and the unspoken code is that cell phones and hotspots are used on a daily basis as back ups for downed networks and taking photos of lesson plans and teacher notes and homework written on the whiteboards.



I was, and always will be, a proponent of teaching students to learn how to use technology freely and responsibly at appropriate developmental levels.  So, I was glad when I ran across this infographic by Christian Brink (sorry, Christian, I can't follow you @christian_brink) who is working with the Family Online Safety Institute.  (Sorry, FOSI, your site is also blocked by our IT).

See, Millennials can use their powers for good, not evil.


Are Millennials Using Technology for Good?
Please include attribution to www.aplatformforgood.org with this graphic.

In addition, check out these goodies:  Digital Citizenship Flashcards!  Everyone should own a set!

Digital Citizenship Flashcard Deck




Wednesday, May 8, 2013

I've Got (Civil) Rights, You Know!: a review of 'Birmingham 1963, How a Photograph Rallied Civil Rights Support' by Shelley Tougas and 'Marching for Freedom, Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary' by Elizabeth Partridge


Partridge, Elizabeth. 2009. Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0670011896.

Tougas, Shelley. 2011. Birmingham 1963: How a Photograph Rallied Civil Rights Support. Mankato, MN: Compass Point Books. ISBN 978-0756543983.

Everyone these days has a general knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement.  Martin Luther King, Jr., has a public holiday.  Barrak Obama was elected as the first African-American President of the United States.  Black artists and entertainers are among the top-grossing and most beloved performers in the music, fashion, and television and film industries.  It is difficult for young people today to imagine a segregated world, the scary kind, where simply talking to someone with a different skin color could get you shunned, bullied, or beaten.  Because it is so hard to imagine, young people today are in danger of taking the fight for Civil Rights for granted, of forgetting the sacrifices of the generation who earned their freedom.  In Birmingham 1963 and Marching for Freedom, authors Tougas and Partridge narrow in on two harrowing years in Alabama.

With insightful, historical media analysis, Tougas tells the story behind one of LIFE Magazine’s “Great Pictures of the Century.”  Charles Moore grew up in Alabama during a time when segregation was an accepted way of life.  Although his father, a minister, did not allow him to use racial slurs or mistreat African-Americans, Moore paid little attention to their troubles, instead focusing on his interest in photography.  After serving in the Marines, Moore returned to Alabama to work at the Montgomery Advertiser.  Moore’s timing coincided with the arrival of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Montgomery, and he soon began to cover various speeches, rallies and protests organized by civil rights leaders.  This is how he happened to be in the right place at the right time to capture a photograph of 14-year-old Carolyn Maull and two teen boys being slammed against a building by a blast of water from fireman’s hoses in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 3, 1963.  This is how he captured a photograph that rallied Civil Rights Support from all over the world. 

Partridge picks up the narrative where Tougas ends by detailing the impact that the Birmingham Children’s Crusade had on African-Americans in nearby Selma, Alabama, in 1964.  While their counterparts in Birmingham marched for desegregation in downtown businesses, the African-Americans in Selma were gathering peacefully to protest unjust laws which kept them from voting.  The narrative is set forth chronologically, following the events leading up to the organization of the famous Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery, including Bloody Sunday, a day-by-day account of the march, and the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Both of these books are welcome additions to any Middle School or High School collection because they focus on the power of young people in the Civil Rights Movement.  Until reading these two books, I had never had a chance to study these movements in detail and was not aware of the great extent to which the movement was one of youth empowerment.  I didn’t know that children were jailed, some as young as 8-years-old, for peaceful protesting.  Both books do a fantastic job of setting the children’s movement within the larger context of Civil Rights and civil rights leaders like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and James Bevel.  Yet they go beyond, to capture eye-witness accounts from the children who marched at the time, the children in the photographs included in the book.  Both books talk about the power of images and the skillful ways in which MLK and the SNCC and SCLC manipulated the media to sway sentiment toward the plight of the African-American community, yet they do not dodge the difficult ethical question of putting children in harm’s way.  Was it right of Civil Rights leaders to ask innocent children to willingly march into situations where they were likely to be beaten with billy clubs, bitten by police dogs, jailed, or even worse, killed? 

These two books are full of primary source photography and interviews.  Their oversized formats make the pictures easy to read.  The texts are clear with adequate kerning and line spacing.  Tougas’ book is written at a slightly lower reading level, with more sidebars inserted for additional information.  Partridge’s book is appropriate for a slightly more informed audience, but is very clearly sequenced.  Both books contain excellent back matter, bibliographies and additional resources.  They would be excellent studies for individual or group presentations in a US history or social studies class, shedding light on some lesser known events in the timeline of the Civil Rights Movement.

Rewards and Reviews for Elizabeth Partridge, Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary
Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction, 2010
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award
Los Angeles Times Book Prize
IRA Notable Book, 2010
YALSA Best Book for Young Adults
ALA Notable Book

Effective and meaningful archival photographs, quotes, poems, and songs are woven throughout the narrative, giving readers a real sense of the children’s mindset and experiences. The bibliography, source notes, photo credits, and resources for further discussion and research are exemplary. An excellent addition to any library. School Library Journal, starred review

Partridge proves once again that nonfiction can be every bit as dramatic as the best fiction. … With a perfect balance of energetic prose and well-selected, breathtaking photographs, the volume portrays the fight for the heart of America. Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Partridge provides just enough context of the Jim Crow South to orient readers before plunging readers into the dramatic and harrowing events of the march. Partridge once again demonstrates why she is almost peerless in her photo selection. Horn Book, starred review

Reviews for Birmingham 1963: How a Photograph Rallied Civil Rights Support
…a motivating introduction to the period it describes, and the photographic analysis makes [it] a valuable source for team teachers of social studies and language arts. Lucy Schall, Voice of Youth Advocates, August 2011

Pair with...
Birmingham, 1963, a narrative poem by Carole Boston Weatherford, which combines primary source photography and commemorates the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church and the death of four girls on Sunday, September 15, 1963.  This event takes place between the events of both books reviewed above.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham, a young adult novel by Christopher Paul Curtis, in which a young boy deals with the aftermath of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing.

Related Websites

Monday, January 14, 2013

A Tragedy in the Making, a review of "Columbine" by Dave Cullen

Students and teachers thought it was a prank.  It was the week after prom, Seniors were getting ready to graduate, and the idea that this was real was unthinkable.  But the unthinkable happened on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School, as it had before at other schools, and would after.  Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, would become infamous, remembered as deranged teenagers who attempted to blow up their school, and when that failed, kill 13 people and then themselves.

Cullen, Dave.  2009. Columbine.  New York: Hachette.

Until Sandy Hook, Columbine was the worst school shooting on record.  Harris and Klebold have been villainized, psychoanalyzed, preached about and lamented, and yet, we know very little about the actual lives of the boys behind the media-created myth.  Journalist Dave Cullen, one of the first on the scene the day of the shootings, would remain with the story for 10 years, pouring over countless police records, interviews, and journals, in order to bring the definitive book.  “The result is an astounding account of two good students with lots of friends, who were secretly stockpiling a basement cache of weapons, recording their raging hatred, and manipulating every adult who got in their way” [book flap].  Cullen debunks many of the myths that were concretized during the media’s coverage of the shooting in the week that followed.  For instance, the shooters were never part of the Trench Coat Mafia, they weren’t bullied, they didn’t target jocks and Christians.  Harris was found to be a psychopath,  while Klebold was depressive, suicidal.  Both were bent on annihilation.    Together, they became a murderous dyad-the perfect storm of teenage boredom , angst, and testosterone. 

I picked this book off the shelves the day after the Connecticut shootings, to see if it would shed any light on the tragic events that happened there.  What I found was a book in the same vein as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.  Cullen carefully recreates the events of the shooting, piecing together interviews and police reports to flesh out a step by step plan.  He explains the science behind understanding the events, and he does a particularly good job of explaining how the media and new mobile technology played a role in forming the American opinion of Columbine.  He explains how good people made mistakes, how connections just weren’t made, and how much of that was kept on the down low.  For example, a police investigator had opened a file on Harris a year before the shootings.  Both Klebold and Harris were in a juvenile rehabilitation program to avoid jail time for breaking and entering a year before.  Cullen makes a firm case for the evidence being there prior to the shooting and our failure, as a society, to notice.  Particularly interesting are his interviews with local pastors about how the shooting galvanized the local Christian community and differences of opinion among the clergy about whether the shooting should be used to bring more people to God.  Most compelling was his explanation of the psyches of Harris and Klebold, mostly through the work of FBI criminal psychologist Dwayne Fuselier.  Cullen honors the victims and families of all the victims through his careful work. 

Rewards and Reviews
Edgar Award
"Top Education Book"--American School Board Journal
Alex Award Finalist--American Library Association

Cullen, acclaimed expert on Columbine, offers a penetrating look at the motivation and intent of the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Drawing on interviews, police records, media coverage, and diaries and videotapes left behind by the shooters, Cullen examines the killers’ beliefs and psychological states of mind. Chilling journal entries show a progression from adolescent angst to psychopathic rage as they planned a multistage killing spree that included bombs that ultimately didn’t detonate. Cullen goes beyond detailing the planning and execution of the shootings, delving into the early lives of the killers as well. Graphic and emotionally vivid; spectacularly researched and analyzed.” -- Vanessa Bush, Booklist (April 2009)

 “Any book about this tragedy can be hard to read, and Cullen's detailed account of the gruesome killings and suicides is no exception. Cullen's style can also make the book hard going, as he skips back and forth through time and among different people involved in the event and occasionally repeats himself. In the end, however, Cullen clarifies a lot of misconceptions that evolved soon after the tragedy and provides new insights into why it occurred, which makes the book definitely worth reading despite the disjointed narrative.”Terry Christner, Library Journal (March 15, 2009)

“Cullen expertly balances the psychological analysis—enhanced by several of the nation's leading experts on psychopathology—with an examination of the shooting's effects on survivors, victims' families and the Columbine community. Readers will come away from Cullen's unflinching account with a deeper understanding of what drove these boys to kill, even if the answers aren't easy to stomach.”  -- Publisher’s Weekly (April 2009)



Ideas for Teaching
Using this with students might be difficult, but there are possibilities for teaching psychological profiling that would work with an AP class.  It would fit with discussions of teen depression and suicide; however, I would be cautious in using the protagonists as examples since their story ends in a worst-case scenario.  It could also be useful for media studies, religious studies or contemporary history.  Journalism and/or rhetoric teachers may find it useful for teaching students how journalists construct a story.  It would be a good read for any school administrator concerned with school safety. 

The author ‘s website includes a very comprehensive instructor’s guide which contains useful connections and study guides.  http://www.columbine-instructor-guide.com/