Reflection: Lesson #2 Racism - Reflection Writing and Peer

Correction.
Name: Dominique Roy
Date and Time of Lesson: February 9th, 2015
Grade and Level of Students: Sec. 3 Enriched
Brief Description of Students: 30 public school students from a diverse
background, some of whom French is their second language, and English
their third.
We are engaging in a unit imbedded in social theory, particularly
Oppression and the multiple forms of oppression such as Racism, Sexism,
Homophobia, Classism, and Ableism. We are about four classes into this
unit, having generally covered what is oppression (its difference to
discrimination), what is anti-oppression, forms of privilege and what this
means, as well as one class on racism. Because of the nature of this topic,
I am lecturing very little, but instead providing resources in which they will
be engaged such as TEDtalks, documentaries, YouTube videos, articles,
and songs. They are writing a journal once a week, to be sent via email to
myself, in order to promote reflection on this subject outside of the
classroom. They are encouraged to show additional forms of media they
may come across in relation to these lessons.
This class ran fairly smoothly. The students were engaged in all the
activities at hand. They began with fifteen minutes of quiet reading of
Great Expectations (assigned by my co-operating teacher) and filling in a
character analysis sheet. I then explained the days activities where they
were to write a reflection on the Shadeism documentary they had viewed
the previous class and then peer-edit a draft before writing their final draft
which I would evaluate. We had a short discussion recapping the
documentary on Shadeism in order to begin their thought process. I wrote
some ideas and terms on the board for them to refer to throughout their

writing process. Before they began to write, I reiterated the format of the
text they were expected to follow (having already seen this format
multiple times) and wrote common grammar mistakes they had been
making in their online journals.
The Shadeism documentary proved to greatly capture the attention of
many of the students, particularly those coming from a variety of different
ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Shadeism is the discrimination based on
skin colour, but is typically an intraracial issue rather than interracial, it is
based on the degree of skin colour rather than the binary of black vs
white. Many students voiced agreement with this discrimination within
their own families, and just as was mentioned in the video, was
normalized in their environments and so they had not reflected upon the
implications of this attitude until watching the documentary. It was really
great seeing the students engage with this topic so personally, their ease
with openly discussing examples of which they had encountered this, and
their interest in wanting to examine its significance.
The writing task took much longer than I expected. We did not have
the opportunity to begin the peer-edits. The students displayed a need to
be thorough with their writing and spent the entire class doing so.
Fortunately, the peer-edits were easily pushed to the following class. I
wanted to make sure the students had the opportunity to watch the Verna
Myers TEDtalk on biases at the end of this class so that they could begin
thinking about their journal entries for the upcoming week.
I have noticed a pattern of mine, where I allow more then the originally
assigned time frame for assignments to be done in-class as well as to be
handed in if the work was for homework. In the future, I think I will be
stricter with in-class assignments, since the majority of the time, the
purpose for which I conduct these is to for the students to learn to write a
well-structured text in a short amount of time, the an exam would be
conducted.
After watching the Verna Myers TEDtalk on biases, I explained to the

students what was expected of them for their journal entry that week. I
wanted them to confront their own prejudices and pre-conceived
judgments they may hold of groups of people, and to begin reflecting on
the reasons for which they may hold this and in what ways they could
begin to confront them. The students were receptive to this idea and the
results of the journals reflected this positively.
Overall, The days activities went well despite unexpected time
management adjustments. I would conduct this lesson again in the future
to the same age group and any group above this age as well. I felt quite
at ease throughout, and was very pleased when reading the students
journals. This topic is not easy. Many adults find it difficult to admit to
their stereotypes, so I found it quite impressive how easily engaged the
students were with their writing assignments.