Some of the best advice that I received during my first year of teaching was from my instructional manager. When I told her I wanted to teach about race in the classroom, she looked at me and stated, make sure that you give them something to do with the history. It is not simply enough for us to discuss race in the classroom. We must analyze, challenge, ask questions about race in the classroom so that we are able to really understand its meaning in our society. For me, this unit enables students to use historical-critical thinking skills to promote a deeper understanding of how race operates in our societies. A culminating activity I would have students complete for this unit would be to research an area or a particular law that they find interesting and apply the same strategies of deep contextualization that we used throughout the unit.
