by Betsy Baertlein
February is Black History Month, and K-12 teachers often incorporate lessons about Black American history and famous Black Americans into their teaching this month. However, at the college and adult education level, it seems that Black History Month is often overlooked.
I teach adult immigrants mainly from African countries, and being seen as “Black” is often an adjustment for these students when they come to the U.S. In their home countries, having dark skin was not a marker of being in a marginalized minority group—it was just the norm. When they encounter the racialized situation in the U.S., they are often hungry to know more about the history behind the current situation, so it is important for them to learn about the history of slavery, emancipation, segregation, and the civil rights movement.
I realize that having these conversations can be challenging, especially for lower English proficiency students who may have trouble expressing their thoughts and questions in English. Despite this challenge, I have found some ways to incorporate Black American history into even my lower-level adult classes. Some ways that I’ve done this are:
- Use “Article-a-Day” sets from ReadWorks. ReadWorks has curated a special collection for Black History Month. The articles are intended for a K-12 audience, but I’ve found that my adult students enjoy their articles, too. They rate their articles by Lexile reading levels, so it is easy to find article sets that are appropriate for multiple levels of readers within the same class while still sticking to the same theme as a whole class. An easy way to open up conversations around these articles is to give students in-class reading time and walk around during that time, asking students what they’re reading about, what they’re learning, and what questions they have.
- Use trailers from movies about Black American history. In the past several years, there have been several popular biopics made about Black history in the U.S. For example, Hidden Figures, The Help, 12 Years a Slave, Marshall, and Selma are all fairly recent popular films featuring stories about Black American history. I often use a trailer from one of these movies (available on YouTube) to practice the skill of previewing with students. We watch the preview then discuss what we think the movie will be about based on the preview. There are many cultural and historical references that students may not understand in the previews, and explaining those references opens up the conversation about the history of racial discrimination in the U.S. Often students express interest in watching the whole film after watching the preview in class.
- Meet with a librarian at your college or public library to advocate for reading materials in their collection that are appropriate for adult ELLs and feature stories about Black Americans. Last year I met with two of the librarians at the community college that I teach at to help develop their collection for lower English proficiency adult students. I had noticed that my students often gravitated toward reading materials about Black Americans in my class, so I encouraged the librarians to make purchases that featured this topic. The “Activist Series” from Grass Roots Press has several titles written for low English proficiency adult learners that feature influential Black Americans, such as Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr. The library at my college decided to purchase some materials from this series, and it has been rewarding to see these books in the hands of my students.
Of course, there are many more ideas than the ones I’ve included on this list, and I hope this will be the beginning of a conversation about how we can incorporate more Black history into our classrooms, not just in February, but every month.
Betsy Baertlein teaches English to adult immigrants at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She is the current chair of the MIDTESOL Community College and Adult Education Interest Section.
Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/silvershinefirehawk/15838817663
