Design for Deeper Learning

Biology lesson on a marthon. Part of a unit on Marathin runners

2nd grade enrichment

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I'd like to create a project where students study the California CADA standards for student leadership, different leadership styles, and the qualities of effective leaders, and then choose leaders in their community, interview them, look at evidence in their work, and present their findings to the class in a manner that makes sense to them.

I have no idea. Come up with something slightly below grade level because this is technically for a foundations class

Challenge Question: How can we create a practical tool that helps organizers draw on Black resistance traditions to navigate challenges in organizing today? Challenge: Organizers today must make difficult decisions about how to build trust, connect people across communities, protect participants, sustain momentum, respond to opposition, and turn collective action into lasting change. Black communities have confronted related challenges through maroon communities, abolitionist movements, the Underground Railroad, Black political organizing, self-emancipation, and other forms of collective resistance. Students will work with organizers to identify a real need and create a useful tool that translates lessons from these traditions without oversimplifying their distinct historical contexts. What Students Will Make and Do: Students will collaborate with organizers to design, test, and refine a practical organizing resource grounded in Black resistance history. Depending on the partner’s needs and students’ design decisions, the final product might be: An app or interactive website A strategy card deck A decision-making or reflection tool A facilitation guide or workshop A network-mapping toolkit A digital or print field guide Another accessible resource designed for a specific organizing need Students will: Interview or consult with organizers to identify a meaningful current challenge. Research historical examples of Black collective resistance and political organizing. Analyze the goals, strategies, networks, constraints, risks, and outcomes associated with each example. Identify strategic principles that may help organizers think through present-day dilemmas. Develop historically accurate case studies, strategy profiles, or planning prompts. Generate and evaluate multiple possible solutions before selecting a format. Create a prototype and test it with intended users. Gather feedback on its usefulness, clarity, accessibility, historical accuracy, and ethical design. Revise the resource and share or hand it off to the partner. The tool should help organizers examine possibilities and make informed decisions, rather than prescribe a single strategy or suggest that historical and contemporary conditions are interchangeable. Key Content: Unit 2B Topics and Themes Maroon communities and the creation of autonomous spaces Individual and collective resistance to enslavement Abolitionist movements, arguments, publications, and organizing strategies The Underground Railroad as a network of communication, movement, shelter, and collective risk Black political thought about freedom, citizenship, equality, abolition, and self-determination Organizing networks within and across Black communities The roles of speeches, newspapers, conventions, churches, relationships, and community institutions Black participation, resistance, and self-emancipation during the Civil War The relationship among Black collective action, the Civil War, and emancipation Juneteenth as a history of emancipation, delayed enforcement, memory, and continuing struggle Continuity and change in Black resistance strategies Skills: 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A, 2B, 2C, 3A, 3B, 3C Potential Partners: Grassroots Organizers Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100): byp100.org The Brotherhood Sister Sol (BroSis): brotherhood-sistersol.org Equality for Flatbush (E4F): equalityforflatbush.org Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM): freethelandmxgm.org Historical & Cultural Experts The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture: nypl.org/locations/schomburg Weeksville Heritage Center: weeksvillesociety.org Black Gotham Experience (BGX): blackgotham.com Civic Design & Tech Mentors The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP): welcometocup.org BetaNYC: beta.nyc

Unit Question: How was slavery constructed and sustained as an interconnected economic, political, and racial system, and how did enslaved people resist and transform that system? Overview: Students begin by examining compelling sources that reveal how trade, law, labor, violence, and racial ideology worked together to construct and sustain slavery. They then build knowledge through maps, data, firsthand accounts, and historical analysis, tracing the relationships among the Atlantic slave trade, capitalism, forced labor, race-making, cultural transformation, and resistance. Students apply their learning by creating and refining a systems model of the “architecture of enslavement” that shows both the structures of exploitation and the ways enslaved people resisted, preserved culture, and built community. They conclude by presenting and defending their models and reflecting on how their understanding of slavery has shifted from viewing it as a single institution to recognizing it as an interconnected system. What Students Will Make and Do: Collaborative product: An evidence-based systems map or visual model of the “architecture of enslavement.” Individual product: A written or oral argument responding to the prompt: Which structures were most important in constructing and sustaining racial slavery, and how did enslaved people challenge those structures? Key Content: Topics 2.1–2.13: The Atlantic slave trade and forced migration The Middle Passage and the human consequences of the trade Connections among slavery, trade, finance, consumption, and capitalism Plantation economies and other forced labor systems Laws and institutions that created and protected racial slavery Race as a social and historical construct The use of violence, surveillance, family separation, and punishment as systems of control African cultural continuity, adaptation, and transformation in the Americas Kinship, spirituality, language, music, foodways, and community formation Everyday resistance, escape, rebellion, abolition, and other forms of collective action The tension between historical structures and the choices and agency of enslaved people AP Skills: 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 3A, 3B, 3C

I want to design a performance task assessment for my 11th grade US history Ethnic Studies students to complete on what it means to be an American. I want this to be an oral history task where they have to design questions to ask someone over 30 to help define what it means to be an American in 2026. I want them to connect to the ideas we learned in when studying the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. I want them to make connections to the struggles they have learned about by other groups of people throughout the growth of the United States. I would like for them to end the project with a short documentary featuring the person they talked to and the connections they made. I would like to spend two weeks of class time one this.