Madeline M. Craig
An important student outcome from Ethnic Studies is that students have the opportunity to take social justice to action. “For many young people, learning to address real social justice tools of education is both academically and personally empowering and links education with a significant purpose” (42). Using their voice and confidently commanding the attention of a room through sharing their writing is a skill all leaders need. By the end of the unit, students will have experiences sharing one piece of writing to the entire class through the share-outs and have composed a finalized piece of writing to be shared.
Each student will spend three class periods of the final week workshopping and finalizing a piece of their choice. For this week, it can be beneficial to invite writers or authors in the community to visit students and aid in the revision process. Guests can also model and perform their own work to help inspire students to jump the final hurdle to share their work with the public. Inviting community members to partake in classroom instruction is an important piece of Ethnic Studies (43). For my 8th grade students at Clemente, high schoolers involved with creative writing at neighboring NHPS high schools will visit for this purpose.
There are numerous benefits for students to share their writing for a larger audience beyond the classroom. Not only does it build confidence and teach students “that their ideas and opinions are interesting and meaningful to others, and can be part of a larger, public conversation” but also “shows them they can do something real with what they have learned” (44). In some cases, this act of empowering students to express their voice and display their words to the public can be life changing - either putting them on a new path or even having their work published nationally.
Students can showcase their work in multiple ways, and instructors can give them as many choices or opportunities as they would prefer. The important piece is that students are provided opportunities for feedback and reception of their work on a larger scale beyond the eyes of their teacher and peers. A few options are as follows:
- Publishing an anthology of student work in a schoolwide newsletter or virtual website
- Creating a YouTube channel to share performances of student readings
- Submitting student work to essay competitions (such as the New York Times’ Youth Essay Competition the narrative prose pieces are selected from)
- Create a TikTok account to share short videos of student performances
- Schedule a public reading or performance for families, teachers, peers, and community members to attend
- Enter students into local Louder Than A Bomb slam poetry competitions or create a school slam poetry team to compete nationally