My eye opening moment of the night was when I really began to think about how I teach slavery to my kids. It is such a difficult topic to teach because textbooks almost dehumanize slaves, but how emotional do you want this to be for a group of 7-year-olds, especially if you have a predominantly African American classroom? How do you teach them the facts of slavery, without distancing them from it or getting them too close and personal and traumatizing them? All night I kept thinking back on a book I read while getting my master’s degree: The Half has Never Been Told by Edward Baptist. This book attempts to tell the history of slavery through the eyes of the enslaved, and it is certainly not student friendly. It is a riveting and emotional book that anyone studying slavery should read, but it focuses a lot on the daily lives of slaves, including marriages and the like. Small excerpts might be usable in class to help the students connect to the material a little more, but I would do so with caution. I want to re-read this before I teach any unit on slavery so that I can better answer my students questions.
You ask a lot of good questions here. How young is too young? I know in the second grade classrooms I’m working in that they are talking about slavery a lot this month as part of Black History month readings and activities. I have to wonder how much the kids actually know. Who first introduced this idea to them? It is such a difficult topic. We’re going to tackle this again later in the semester. In the meantime, there is a terrific resource available to help with this from Teaching Tolerance.
Teaching Hard History: American Slavery (**Be sure to download the PDF.)
https://www.tolerance.org/frameworks/teaching-hard-history/american-slavery
Hi Marlea, Dr. Stohr has provided a great resource for you to consider. Teaching Tolerance is a go-to website for ways to each tough content.
Sometimes I feel that teachers place too much onus upon themselves to teach difficult topics. Why not allow students to make meaning for themselves? One way might be to show a 7 year student old photos of enslaved individuals doing a specific job like farm work. Ask students what they notice and what they wonder about. This will allow questions to bubble up organically and lead the discussion about what they feel is important to know about difficult topics…and how they feel about what they now know. I loved the part of Ms. Wickett’s video when she asked students to pair-share their feelings about slavery.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I will check it out.