Chicago Public Schools students judge Mayor Emanuel’s Laquan McDonald speech
*Ray Salazar, Chicago High School English teacher and frequent NewsTaco contributor, took the event of the Laquan McDonald shooting and turned it into a writing and judgement lesson. He gives us his insight and a sample of what his (mostly Latino) students write. VL
By Ray Salazar, The White Rhino
I saw the Chicago Public Schools suggested lesson for the Laquan McDonald situation. But I didn’t see much academic merit to it. If we’re going to take on controversial issues in the classroom, we need to still ensure the learning experience builds students’ academic skills. Despite the fact that as teachers we’re immediately criticized for not explicitly articulating standards (the skills we’re teaching), the CPS lesson has no standards.
Too often we believe that young people can only superficially engage in real-world conversations. Or we believe that conversations have to be “touchy-feely” to be meaningful. I fight against both of these misconceptions in my high-school English classes. When given the opportunity in a structured and challenging intellectual experience, young people reveal how capable they are of making insightful judgments about issues thought to be above their heads.
I’ve learned through bringing in controversial issues into my classroom (like Obama’s executive decision about immigration or the Ferguson shooting) that the lesson must be grounded in some primary text—an original text that has not been distorted in any way. News reports about the event, for example, can serve as secondary texts to supplement the conversation. But in the CPS lesson, there was no primary text.
This article was originally published in The White Rhino .
[Photo courtesy of Chicago Now]
