Southeast Polk Community Schools: February Updates

This week's blog has resources for teaching during Black History Month as well as feedback from teachers who took the ISASP practice tests.

Black History Month

Below are resources compiled by the state Social Studies team (including Erin Sears from Southeast Polk!)

Teaching Black History Month

Resources compiled by Noreen Naseem Rodríguez, Erin Sears, Jenny Sinclair & Katy Swalwell

February is Black History Month, which offers educators an opportunity to highlight Black histories that are often missing from textbooks and curriculum. In this resource guide, you will find a range of resources to support the teaching of Black history in February and every other month of the academic year, because Black history is American history. If you have suggestions for resources we can add to this document, please let us know through this form and we will add them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where do I start???

What vocabulary/terminology should I use?

How can I strengthen my existing units on Black leaders and heroes?
(including links to Iowa history!)

Resources

DOs & DON’Ts

Children’s and Young Adult Literature

For elementary classrooms

For secondary classrooms

For building background knowledge

Social Media

Frequently Asked Questions

Where do I start?

Start with your own learning. Know that ALL students need to learn about Black history because as stated above, Black history IS American history. For many of us, if we learned about Black history in school at all, it was limited to basic biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks with cursory references to the Civil Rights Movement. As educators, we can and must do better. The resources referenced here are not an exhaustive list, but a place to start.

What vocabulary/terminology should I use?

Q: Do I say Black or African American?

A: We recommend using “Black” as an inclusive term to refer to anyone with ancestry in the African diaspora, including Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. While “African American” is used widely, it is not always an accurate description. Thanks to Dr. Jenice View for helping us better understand this distinction!

Q: How should I discuss slavery with students?

A: Words have power. When we identify an individual as a slave, we are not identifying them as a person but instead as property; if our society acknowledges that the enslavement of people was and is unjust, then in discussing individuals who were enslaved, we should also recognize the issue of power and control in our words. While most text and tradebooks use the traditional language of “slavery” and “slave,” the replacement terms of “enslavement” and “enslaved African” or “enslaved person” have become increasingly popular in historical museums and by historians. Be careful to avoid terms that minimize the horrors of enslavement, such as describing the abduction of Africans treated as chattel (personal property) to provide unpaid labor as “forced” or “involuntary migration.” Such terms are euphemisms that downplay the experiences of enslaved persons and also deny the ways that people who enslaved Africans experienced tremendous economic and personal benefit from enslavement.

How can I strengthen my existing units on Black leaders and heroes?

Explore the Civil Rights Movement explore with greater depth and nuance

In addition to exploring the lesser-known dimensions of famed figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., include often-overlooked activists such as:

Ida B. Wells (subject of the middle grades book Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told)

Fannie Lou Hamer (subject of the picture book Voice of Freedom, appropriate for elementary in excerpts and as in for secondary)

Ella Baker

Diane Nash

Septima Clark

Bayard Rustin (subject of the YA book We Are One and the documentary Brother Outsider)

Tommie Smith & John Carlos (1968 Olympic protest) (John Carlos is the subject of a YA book)

Organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (SNCC - pronounced “snick,” teaching activity here), Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Civil Rights Done Right: Teaching the Movement (Teaching Tolerance)

Stepping into Selma: Voting Rights History and Legacy Today from Zinn Education Project (free lesson plan)

Go beyond the Civil Rights Movement
The Black experience in the U.S. has often been deeply connected to struggles for justice, but Black contributions to history have gone beyond civil rights and shaped American life in countless ways (that often intersected with civil rights, of course)

Science

Music

Food

Athletics

Fashion (designers and styles)

Literature

Politics

Entertainment

Business & Inventions

Military

Teach Black Iowa History

(this list is just the tip of the iceberg!)

Check out the inductees in the Iowa African American Hall of Fame

Outside In: African American History in Iowa, 1838-2000 is an incredible resource for Black history in Iowa (click here for an overview)

The African American History Museum of Iowa has TONS of resources for teachers

Civil Rights Movement pioneers including Edna Griffin, Virginia Harper, Viola Gibson, Charles and Ann Toney, and many others (ISU teaches a class each June about this for LR credit, email swalwell@iastate.edu for more info)

Alexander Clark, fought to desegregate Iowa schools 90 years before Brown v. Board, organized the “colored” regiment fighting on Iowa’s behalf in the Civil War, and became the first Black diplomat for the United States (he was ambassador to Liberia)

Luther Smith, Tuskegee airman

The Bystander, the longest-running Black newspaper in the U.S.

George Woodson, co-founder of the Niagara Movement (which became the NAACP)

Gertrude Rush, who co-founded the National Bar Association the American Bar Associated wouldn’t admit Black members); “A Monumental Journey” commemorates it

A statue (“Shattering Silence”) on the grounds of the Iowa State Supreme Court commemorates the Case of Ralph

Willie Stephenson Glanton, Iowa’s first Black legislator and second Black woman lawyer

Labor activist and civil rights leader Anna Mae Weems

Charlotta Pyles, a formerly enslaved woman who became a leading abolitionist after moving to Iowa (her daughter fought to end school desegregation in Keokuk)

George Washington Carver, scientist (the book The Kid Who Changed the World features him alongside Henry A. Wallace and Norman Borlaug… beautiful!)

Bud Fowler, the first Black professional baseball player who played in Keokuk

George Edwin Taylor, the first Black person to run for President

Buxton, a coal-mining town that was one of the few integrated places in the U.S.

Oscar Micheaux, the first Black filmmaker and producer lived in Sioux City

Fort Des Moines trained the first Black military officers

Johnny Bright was a star football player for Drake; photographs of a white player punching him won a Pulitzer and led to the invention of the face mask

Nathaniel Morgan, one of Dubuque’s founding fathers who a white mob murdered (Dubuque was the first community Blacks lived in Iowa during the early 19th century)