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Follow on Google News | Teaching Emmett Till: A Resource Guide For TeachersYou are a classroom teacher. Black History Month has arrived and you want to present a meaningful lesson for your students. How can you talk about the murder of Emmett Till -- a significant civil rights event -- without frightening children?
By: Susan Klopfer 
Susan Klopfer So where does a teacher start, when it comes to teaching this particular story of the young boy murdered back in 1955 for whistling at a white woman? Especially during Black History Month? Patricia Fua, a 20-year high school teaching veteran and librarian, believes she has answers and has developed a teaching guide for Help With Teaching a Lesson on Emmett Till. Fua shares this guide for Black History Month: Resources for the Classroom For ongoing classroom lessons which emphasize tolerance and diversity visit Teaching Tolerance through the link below. This organization offers a free magazine for educators with articles for adults, and stories to share with your students. The magazine also offers many ideas for handling discipline and a wealth of lesson plans. The yearly program sponsored by this association is called “Mix it Up for Lunch”. This is a great activity which is strongly recommended as a school wide program for all ages and one that will have a lasting effect on both students and staff. http://www.tolerance.org/ Preparing the Class for your Lesson on Emmett Till The Emmett Till story evokes many strong feelings in modern day teenagers. No matter how you choose to introduce this story to students the result will be basically the same, many will be shocked, some angry, while others will be confused. Initially, before introducing the story the activity below called “Information Circle” can be used to ease students into a topic which might make them uneasy. Using “Information Circle" at the beginning of your lesson allow students who have little or no knowledge of the Emmett Till story to acquire information from their peers, and to practice passing information along. The general discussion time at the end of the activity allows the teacher to correct and modify any information which was shared which might be inaccurate. It is recommended that students have other lessons throughout the year which extend on this story so that they realize it was not an isolated event, that it led to a great movement in American History, and so that they can draw inferences to Jim Crow laws and racism in literature and history as they study throughout the year. Closure on this lesson Students will need some closure which will allow them to put the feelings which have surfaced into a proper context. Again using the activity below students might be given a specific assignment by the teacher to make the sense of closure more eminent. For example students might write a short sentence which they repeat to each student they meet in the circle when the music is stopped. It can be a pledge of what they will do to help end racism in the future, or a specific fact they found in their research. The slow movement together with the music should help to contrast this second staging of the same activity from the first. There should be a quiet sense of peace, a grieving time if you will in this closure activity. After this activity a solemn pledge might be considered. Students could place their pledge which they read to one another into a small special container to be included in a school time capsule, or a pledge wall might be made in the hallway to show their peers how they feel. Ideas are unlimited and depend on the personality of the group. For more closure activities see the Social Studies links provided under the high school section or visit www.teachingtolerance.org . Activity Information Circle This activity is suited for all ages including high school. Before and after your lesson on Emmett Till a rewarding activity allowing students to review the information as well as voice their emotions is to play “Information Circle”. Two circles are formed, one inside (circle A) and the other outside (circle B) thus including all the students in the classroom. Music is played, and in this instance Delta Blues should be used to set the mood. Students walk in a circle slowly with each circle moving opposite of the other. When the music stops the students stand facing that person from the other circle and they exchange for 10 seconds each their knowledge of the event prior to the lesson, and their feelings about race in America after the lesson. The music is started again and a slow walk resumes to the next stop in the music. The teacher should facilitate the 10 second switch by monitoring the time and calling out, “A speaks” and then “B speaks”. At the end of the activity (suggested overall time is 3 to 4 minutes) a class discussion can be held which is monitored by the teacher. All students will be ready to participate after gleaning information and opinions from others during the activity. Springboard Lessons Language Arts Elementary School Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson with illustrations by Hudson Talbott http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ http://www.state.lib.la.us/ Middle School Everyday Use by Alice Walker http://www.bookrags.com/ A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson (sonnets, especially the crown sonnet form) http://www.tolerance.org/ High School Language Arts To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and the Scottsboro Trial http://edsitement.neh.gov/ http://edsitement.neh.gov/ History US Race Relations After WWI http://edsitement.neh.gov/ Analyzing Primary Documents http://www.pbs.org/ Time line of the Civil Rights movement http://www.pbs.org/ Social Studies http://www.tolerance.org/ http://www.tolerance.org/ http://www.splcenter.org/ http://www.splcenter.org/ Miscellaneous Resources http://www.pbs.org/ http://videoindex.pbs.org/ PBS Videos and Lesson Plans http://videoindex.pbs.org/ http://videoindex.pbs.org/ * * * Patricia Fua has taught school for 20 years and is currently the Librarian at a public high school in rural Nevada. Some of her most beloved teaching experiences have occurred in American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas and a troubled inner city school in Central Los Angeles. Through all of these experiences Patricia holds fast that, “young people are the same everywhere. They are concerned with fairness and equality, and they want to do their part to make the world a better place.” Winner of two Christa McAuliffe fellowships Patricia has stretched across the board in education creating programs for the arts in Micronesia, setting up and acquiring funding for computer labs in both Samoa and Saipan and working as a volunteer to help accredit schools at each school where she has taught. Her first love is teaching Broadcasting and Drama but says she has a true passion # # # About Susan Klopfer: Susan Klopfer is a writer and publisher of civil rights books, audio books and e-books. She also speaks on these topics to students, businesses and related organizations. End
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