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One Monday
Rekia Jibrin teaches humanities at a San Francisco Bay Area high school for students at risk of not graduating. Earlier this year, a student from Rekia’s school was shot. It's not an unfamiliar experience in areas of the US where violence can be a daily reality that doesn't just disappear when the morning bell rings.
Youth Radio doesn’t normally produce commentaries written by adults like Rekia, who is 26, and spent many years as a youth worker before enrolling as a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley. When NPR invited us to gather educators’ perspectives for a month-long series on schooling, we thought it would be a powerful opportunity to hear directly from the people who know schools from the inside out. We specifically sought out young educators who might not feel too terribly removed from the experience of being students themselves. For more teachers’ essays from Youth Radio’s archive, check out: Race and Results A Teacher's Perspective
Click here to find the full script and audio for this story.
Teach Youth Radio
For this month's feature, you will be able to view these strategies and resources:
1. How teachers can align this Youth Radio story to National Standards in the classroom.
2. Suggestions for lesson plans that link the story's content to your classroom's themes and subject areas.
3. Suggestions for lesson plans that explore media literacy, using the story to re-read mainstream media.
4. Bios of the Youth Radio reporters who produced the story.
5. A list of resources and further research related to the story's themes.
6. Links to Youth Radio’s media production techniques as guides and inspiration for your students’ creative media-making projects.
1. NATIONAL STANDARDS: Standards Alignment
Subject: LANGUAGE ARTS
NL-ENG.K-12.1 READING FOR PERSPECTIVE
NL-ENG.K-12.3 EVALUATION STRATEGIES
NL-ENG.K-12.4 COMMUNICATION SKILLS
NL-ENG.K-12.5 COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
NL-ENG.K-12.6 APPLYING KNOWLEDGE
NL-ENG.K-12.7 EVALUATING DATA
NL-ENG.K-12.8 DEVELOPING RESEARCH SKILLS
NL-ENG.K-12.11 PARTICIPATING IN SOCIETY
NL-ENG.K-12.12 APPLYING LANGUAGE SKILLS
Subject: Economics
NSS-EC.9-12.3 ALLOCATION OF GOODS AND SERVICES
Subject: HEALTH
NPH-H.9-12.3 REDUCING HEALTH RISKS
NPH-H.9-12.4 INFLUENCES ON HEALTH
NPH-H.9-12.7 HEALTH ADVOCACY
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2. NEWS YOU CAN USE: Story content in your classroom, Suggestions for lesson plans
Pre-Listening Activity
Monday: The title of this News Break is "One Monday". What emotions do students generally attach to Mondays and why?
Language Arts:
Another's shoes:
After describing how she heard about the student in her school being shot over the weekend, Rekia says, "I abandon my copy project and walk into the school courtyard, re-imagining my day." Have your students put themselves in Rekia’s shoes. What do they think she’s imagining as a teacher? What might Rekia’s journal for the next day look like? Rekia goes further, "Teachers and administrators need to be honest about our limitations in meeting the unique learning needs of students who live in violence, who hope to escape lock up and despair. We absorb the trauma around us because we listen to our students. And in the process of listening, we assure them that they are seen." What are students' thoughts on these lines? Does it surprise your students to hear how teachers and administrators are, in Rekia’s experience, affected by violence? What have your students observed, about how their teachers respond to violence in the school and community? To what extent do your students see their teachers as human and vulnerable?
Funerals:
Rekia recounts, "Funerals have become a social event, my students tell me. They no longer go to malls to buy outfits for the next party. They tell me they socialize while buying funeral clothes they will wear for lost young friends and family." Do students agree or disagree with the notion that funerals have become a social event? Students can write a supporting or an oppositional editorial in response to this idea.
Giving voice:
Rekia gives a teacher perspective that is rare to hear on Youth Radio. Have students give voice to the voiceless characters in the News Break, expanding on the dialogue one might hear from students in the courtyard, in the classroom, on the bus. If the boys on the bus could read Rekia's thoughts, "Will they survive the shootings?" what might their internal dialogue be? What might they say to each other? To her? Have your students create a character Rekia might cross paths with over the course of the day she chronicles here, and ask your students to compose a scene that offers a glimpse into that character’s experience.
Journal writing:
Rekia’s diary-esque marking of time adds a sense of urgency to this piece. What are some other famous journals or diaries that students have read? Assign students to keep a journal like Rekia’s for one day during a given week, focusing on how a single event has ripple effects across the day and beyond.
Repeating for emphasis:
Often students are told not to repeat themselves in their essay writing. Here, Rekia breaks that rule by using intentional repetition, which gives her News Break a poetic feel. Have students find instances of this in her piece and discuss how this works in her writing. You might then have them experiment with this device in a free-write, and then share what they produce. When is repetition effective?
In silence:
In the first two journal entries, what are some of the language clues that Rekia uses to show that she is speechless on hearing that a student has been shot? Students can practice writing about a character using non-verbal communication.
Greetings:
In the last two entries, Rekia greets the bus driver and the safety officer. Rekia is from Nigeria and her native language is Hausa. In Hausa, typical greetings are more in-depth than in English, asking questions about another person's family, work, and health, with an expectation of reciprocity and profundity in the response. What responses does she receive from the driver and officer? To what extent do these reflect the kinds of interactions your students have on a day to day basis when they greet others, or are greeted? How honest are they when they respond to the question, “How are you?”
The bus:
The city bus, in this piece, is framed as public space. Passengers depend upon the bus to get where they need to go safely, and yet this space has been violated, as a student had been shot at the bus stop. How does this notion of violence in a public space contrast with violence in private spaces? How safe do your students feel in various public spaces in their neighborhoods? Using google maps, your students can produce a collaborative diagram of safe and unsafe public spaces they move through over the course of a typical week. Include on the map sites that offer resources and a “safe space” for young people. You might compare various maps like this located in different neighborhoods in the general vicinity of your school.
Economics:
School resources: Rekia says, "There's a line at the copy machine. It's jammed again…" This might seem like a small annoyance, but the line points to vastly more significant disparities in resources possessed by public schools within any given state. To engage students’ critical thinking about state resources, have them act as taxpayers. Label several plastic or glass jars for each government entity such as health care, education, prison, housing, employment, etc. Hand out fake money to students and allow them to put their money in the jars that they choose. Compare your class distribution of the wealth with the actual state distribution of tax dollars.
Health:
Grief and loss: Rekia says, "Funerals have become a social event, my students tell me. They no longer go to malls to buy outfits for the next party. They tell me they socialize while buying funeral clothes they will wear for lost young friends and family." What are some coping mechanisms for dealing with grief? What are some resources in your community for students to find help when dealing with loss or grief? What are some local groups where they can join efforts to prevent violence and advocate for policies that promote youth safety, health, and positive opportunity?
Living to live: Writing about the student who had been shot, Rekia poses the question, "Will he survive the shooting?" and the answer is yes. The student from her school did survive. Students can brainstorm suggestions for activities to do on the weekends and write them on post-its. Then on the board write low risk and high risk. Have students determine whether their activities fall under high or low risk and place their post-its accordingly. How can young people frame their lives with a purpose and make plans to live?
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3. CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY: Putting This Story in Context Picturing death:
Picturing death:
How is death portrayed in the media and popular culture? How often do people die in the movies that teens watch and the video games they play? Have students keep a journal and media log to document every death they observe over the course of a week, assigning diverse news and entertainment sources across the class, and then compare results. You might have students debate the effects of violent media on young audiences, carrying out research to cite at least three expert sources (and part of the discussion could involve who qualifies as an expert in this area). How does Rekia’s portrayal of violence and its aftermath compare with the other media your students consume, drawing on their media logs for data?
4. MEET THE REPORTER
Rekia Jibrin
Rekia Jibrin is teaching high school and pursuing her doctorate at University of California, Berkeley.
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5. RESOURCES AND RESEARCH
•
Silence The Violence
• Teen Health
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6. MEDIA PRODUCTION FOR LEARNING: Making Audio Narratives
Click here to link to Youth Radio's guidelines for conducting interviews, writing commentaries, and producing features.
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