In the words of Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator and philosopher, “Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world” (Freire 1987). As a seventh grade English and social studies teacher, I strive to facilitate learning opportunities in which students “read the world.” As an example, over the past few years, I have facilitated community walks with my students as part of our English and social studies curriculum. However, in the past, these community walks through our community have felt shallow and incomplete.

I write “our community” very intentionally because my students and I live in West Philadelphia. That said, we each experience West Philadelphia very differently due, in part, to our positionality and wide range of experiences. On one hand, some students have deep roots in West Philadelphia. Henry C. Lea Elementary was established in 1914 and there are some students whose family members have attended Lea for generations. On the other hand, some students are first-generation immigrants from countries including, but not limited to Senegal, Mauritania, Sudan, Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, China, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. Moreover, there are over 14 languages spoken across our school. Approximately 25% of my students are multilingual and speak languages including Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, Fulah, Soninke, Mandingo, and Spanish. 80% of my students identify as Black, 16% identify as Asian, and 4% identify as Latinx. 45% of students identify as male and 55% of students identify as female. According to the School District of Philadelphia School Profile, 100% of students are eligible for free breakfast and lunch. Several students are actively involved in the Rainbow Club at our school both as allies and students who identify as LGBTQ+. When I think about my identity as a white, middle class, cisgender female who lives and teaches in West Philadelphia, I know I undoubtedly experience West Philadelphia differently from my students. Therefore, how can I facilitate authentic learning opportunities in which students “read the world” of our West Philadelphia community when we approach “our community” with such different lenses?

Given the range of student perspectives in our classroom, I realized I was missing an opportunity to use community mapping to leverage the multifaceted perspectives in our classroom. During the seminar, “Cities through the Lens of Race, Class, and Gender” with Dr. Rickie Sanders, Geography and Urban Studies Professor from Temple University, my inquiry question crystalized: How can I facilitate meaningful learning experiences so that my students “read the world” of our Philadelphia community as geographers through an intersectional and asset-based lens?

Curriculum Design Influences

Ubuntu, a Zulu proverb, is often translated as “I am a person through other people. My humanity is tied to yours.” South African Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes Ubuntu as, “the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness” (The Clinton Foundation, 2012). With this proverb in mind, I hope to create a classroom space where my students are challenged to think about our interconnectedness locally. In short, I strive to create a curriculum that is connected to the West Philadelphia community because our humanity is inextricably tied together.

Henry C. Lea Elementary’s vision statement supports this interconnected, community-oriented approach. It reads: “Our school community is dedicated to building creative spaces where critical citizens are inspired and empowered to change the world. We believe all students can learn.” With this vision statement in mind, over the years I have developed a curriculum that centers changemakers. I refer to my students as changemakers and our classroom motto is “Changemakers learn to read and write so that together we can change the world.” Over the course of the school year, students study young changemakers from around the world, changemakers throughout history, and engage in service-learning as changemakers themselves. I rely on two overarching frameworks to guide my approach to curriculum development: Dr. Bree Picower’s (2012) Using Their Words: Six Elements of Social Justice Curriculum Design for the Elementary Classroom and Need In Deed’s My Voice framework.

First, in Using Their Words: Six Elements of Social Justice Curriculum Design for the Elementary Classroom, Picower outlines key elements of curriculum design in which “teachers lead students to value themselves, respect the diversity of the world around them, understand how diverse people have been treated differently and often unjustly, recognize that ordinary people have worked to address such injustice, and take action themselves” (Picower 2012).

Image 1: Sheryl Davis from The San Francisco Human Rights Commission created the graphic below which highlights the six elements of Picower’s framework Using Their Words: Six Elements of Social Justice Curriculum Design for the Elementary Classroom

(Picower, 2012).

The second overarching framework I use is from Need In Deed, a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia that is committed to “the transformative experience of service-learning that connects the classroom with the community” (Need In Deed, 2018). Need In Deed utilizes a service-learning framework titled My Voice in which students “explore community issues that they care about and to take action” (Need In Deed, 2018).

Image 2: The five steps in Need In Deed’s My Voice Framework

are outlined below (Need In Deed, 2018).

The Need for an Intersectional Approach

In the Need In Deed My Voice framework, the first stage is “Value Your Voice” in which “students recognize their gifts and talents and then decide on a broad issue for their service-learning project” (Need In Deed, 2018). In this stage, students are asked to reflect on questions like, “Who am I? Who are we as a class? What combination of gifts and talents makes me who I am?” (Need In Deed, 2018).

Given the wide range of student perspectives in our classroom, we have an incredible opportunity to have meaningful classroom conversations around these “Value Your Voice” questions. Each year, students start the school year creating change maker mission statements in which they write about their beliefs and values as changemakers. Then, students create and share identity charts with one another (Facing History and Ourselves, 2021). As part of this identity work, students learn about the term intersectionality by Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw and how identity markers such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, language, citizenship, ethnicity, religion, family structure, ableness/disability, age, body image/appearance, and education overlap and intersect with one another (Crenshaw, 2016). This process leads to conversations about when, where, and why we foreground certain aspects of our identity.

Note: If a teacher is planning on implementing this unit, I strongly recommend they teach about intersectionality and define each identity marker before starting this unit. If students have the opportunity to reflect and share about their personal identity before this unit begins, students will be better prepared for the discussions and reflections in this unit that ask students to consider how their positionality affects how they and others may interact with the community. In short, individual identity work lays the foundation for students’ inquiry into how their positionality shapes their interactions with community assets.

The Need for an Asset-Based Approach

Using the Picower and Need In Deed frameworks as a guide, my students have chosen to study a range of topics over the years including, but not limited to gun violence, climate change, racism, sexism, food insecurity, and bullying. I have seen firsthand how valuable this level of student choice and inquiry is for students in order to see themselves and others as changemakers in our community.

That said, I have found that over the years student-led conversations about our community often trend towards a deficit-based perspective. In other words, I have observed that when students are thinking about our community, they often ask themselves “What is missing? What do we not want?” instead of asking “What is already successful? What can we build upon?” While I want to continue to value student voice and choice in my curriculum, I realized my curriculum was missing an explicit asset-based approach.

For decades, scholars have argued for asset-based teaching approaches that center students’ lives, families, and communities in the curriculum. Ladson-Billings (1995) coined the term Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Gay and Hammond (2010) advocated for Culturally Responsive Teaching, Paris and Alim (2017) made the case for Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, and Muhammad (2020) created a framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. Over the years, I have worked to create a curriculum informed by these scholars, but this work is never complete. In this unit, I want to leverage my students’ interests in order to facilitate meaningful, student-driven research about the assets within our community.

For example, in the “Value Your Voice” stage within the Need In Deed framework, students are asked to consider, “What are the strengths of our community?” (Need In Deed, 2018). Picower expands upon this idea in the first element of her framework:

“Element One, self-love and knowledge, provides students with the historical

background knowledge to recognize the strengths and resiliency of their

communities…When students are supported to learn more about their own

history, they are better able to identify, deconstruct, and not internalize harmful

stereotypes about their identities. This allows students to operate from a place of

pride about their communities rather than fall victim to messages that claim that

their communities are the cause of their problems” (p. 2 & 5).

Therefore, the Picower and Need In Deed My Voice frameworks both reinforce this need for an explicit asset-based approach.

This Unit Within the Context of a School Year

My goal is that this unit facilitates opportunities for students to think about our West Philadelphia community from an explicit intersectional and asset-based perspective in order to deepen my application of the Picower and the Need In Deed frameworks.

That said, I envision this unit will take place during the second quarter of the school year. As a visual, I see each of my units over the course of the school year as concentric circles. In the innermost circle, students start their inquiry with themselves and their personal identity. The second innermost circle is learning about our classroom community and the third circle is an inquiry into our neighborhood community. In other words, students need to reflect on their personal identity and our class community before we begin our inquiry into our West Philadelphia community.

West Philadelphia as a Social Institution

In our first “Cities through the Lens of Race, Class, and Gender” seminar, Dr. Sanders introduced the five concepts of geography: location, region, distance, scale, and space. As a teacher, I often refer to my students as readers, writers, and historians, but during this class I realized I had never referred to my students as geographers before. Dr. Sanders’ lecture sparked an idea that I could design a unit in which students act like geographers and analyze our West Philadelphia community. Dr. Sanders emphasized that geographers often ask “How did this come to be?” so I began thinking how I could design a unit in which my students asked similar questions about West Philadelphia.

One of the first readings in our “Cities through the Lens of Race, Class, and Gender” course was from American urban historian, sociologist, and urban planner Lewis Mumford. In What is a City? published in Architectural Record in 1937 Mumford writes, “The city as a purely physical fact has been subject to numerous investigations. But what is the city as a social institution?” (p. 28). This line stood out to me because in the past I too had designed a curriculum that focused on the physical aspects of West Philadelphia and had overlooked the opportunity to have students analyze the community as a complex “social institution”. Mumford goes on to explain:

“The city in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus, an economic

organization, an institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic

symbol of collective unity…One may describe the city, in its social aspect, as a

special framework directed towards the creation of differentiated opportunities

for a common life and significant collective drama” (p. 29).

Mumford’s definition of a city spurred me to re-envision the city as a series of social networks. Furthermore, it encouraged me to wonder how I could facilitate opportunities for students to describe West Philadelphia as a “social institution”? Given the multifaceted perspectives of my students, what are the “differentiated opportunities” that each student sees within West Philadelphia? Each student is likely to identify different “social institutions” in West Philadelphia so these questions could lead our entire class to a more nuanced understanding of the assets present in West Philadelphia.

West Philadelphia in the Media

That said, I want this unit to go beyond theory and our classroom walls and situate this unit within reality. There is an ever-evolving discussion about West Philadelphia in the media and my students have varying degrees of interaction with these media narratives.

In our eighth class together, we discussed the work of Jamaican-born British sociologist and cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall. In the 1973 text titled, “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse” Hall defines encoding as the process by which a text is constructed with ideologies and decoding as the process in which the audience understands and interprets a text. Notably, Hall believed that all texts are polysemic. In other words, texts are read differently based on the audience’s background, experiences, and identity including, but not limited to race, class, and gender. Within the encoding and decoding model miscommunication is inevitable. In fact, Hall writes, “Communication between the production elites in broadcasting and their audiences is necessarily a form of ‘systematically distorted communication’ ” (p.1). In applying Hall’s theory to this unit, I wonder what students notice and wonder about the media’s portrayal of West Philadelphia within this “systematically distorted communication”?

West Philadelphia as a “Single Story”

In her famous TED Talk “The Danger of the Single Story” Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains that a single story is when we “show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” In this unit, students will watch Adichie’s TED Talk in order to provide students a framework for discussing media stereotypes of West Philadelphia. Adichie continues:

“All of these stories make me who I am. But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story…It is impossible  to talk about the single story without talking about power… How they are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of  another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. I’ve always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity.”

In using Adichie’s TED Talk as a framework, this unit will ask students “What is the media’s “single story” about West Philly?” and “What is missing from this ‘single story’ of West Philadelphia?” In Reading, Writing, and Rising Up, high school language arts teacher and Director of the Oregon Writing Project Linda Christensen writes, “Creating assignments that do the double duty of teaching students to read and write while also examining the ways race and class function in our society is absolutely fundamental today” (p. 72). In Reading, Writing, and Rising Up, Linda Christensen goes on to describe a writing assignment that “pushes students to analyze how their lives have been shaped by the ‘single stories’ told about them” (p. 72). Inspired by Linda Christensen’s work, I want my students to “talk back” to the “single stories” the media tells about our West Philadelphia community. Like Christensen, I see this unit as an opportunity for students to “talk back” to these media narratives.

West Philadelphia as an Asset

In the introduction to Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets, community organizers, community development leaders, and ABCD Institute Co-Directors John Kretzmann and John McKnight outline “two divergent paths” within community development: a traditional needs-driven and deficit-oriented path versus a capacity-focused and asset-oriented path. This second, asset-based community development path “starts with what is present in the community, the capacities of its residents and workers, the associational and institutional base of the area-not with what is absent, or with what is problematic, or with what the community needs” (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993, p. 5).

Although the audience for Kretzmann and McKnight’s work is undoubtedly not middle school students, I think it would be very powerful to have my middle school students add their perspective to the assets that exist in West Philadelphia. Using this framework, I can ask students, “What assets are present within West Philadelphia residents?” and “In your opinion, what associational and institutional assets exist in West Philadelphia?”

Image 3: Kretzmann and McKnight claim there are five key assets: individuals, associations, institutions, physical assets, and connections. The image to the left shows how these assets are categorized into three categories: Gifts of individuals, Citizens’ Associations, and Local Institutions (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993).

West Philadelphia through an Intersectional Lens

In Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s TEDTalk entitled “The urgency of intersectionality” Crenshaw explains how she “began to use the term ‘intersectionality’ to deal with the fact that many of our social justice problems like racism and sexism are often overlapping, creating multiple levels of social injustice” (Crenshaw, 2016). In previous years, I taught about the term intersectionality, but the majority of our classroom conversations were limited to assignments and discussions about personal identity.

However, as a student in Dr. Sanders’ “Cities through the Lens of Race, Class, and Gender” seminar, we discussed Dr. Crenshaw’s work through the lens of geography. In the third week, Dr. Sanders’ asked us to each “name three aspects of your identity; which do you foreground – where/when/why?” Of course, we all foreground various aspects of our identities depending on where we are, and yet I had never before considered layering intersectionality and location with students.

Given the diverse identities of my students, if I ask students to consider how their positionality affects how they interact in our community, there will be a wide range of responses. An understanding of intersectionality leads to asset-based community development from multiple perspectives. In short, each student is likely to identify different assets based, in part, on their positionality. As an example, a first-generation female Muslim student is more likely to identify their family’s masjid as a community asset while a Black male Christian student is more likely to identify their family’s church as an asset.

These differences in perspectives, leads to interesting questions such as “How does a student’s multifaceted identity affect assets they see in the community?” and “How does a student’s multifaceted identity shape the assets they engage with/do not engage with?” Furthermore, what do students think are the “obvious” assets known to the general public? What do students think are the “hidden” assets known only to select pockets in the community? How does each students’ identity shape the assets they identify and interact with regularly? Thus, the multifaceted perspectives of my students lead to identifying a wide range of community assets in West Philadelphia.

West Philadelphia as a Place of Activism

In “Intersectionality and planning at the margins: LGBTQ youth of color in New York” Clara Irazábal and Claudia Huerta (2015) use an intersectional lens to describe how a FIERCE, a “social justice advocacy group for LGBTQ youth of color…comprise[d] mainly Latino/as and African Americans between the ages of 13 –24 living in the New York Metro” advocate for the LGBTQ community through a student-led walking tour of the West Village (p. 720).  Throughout the walking tour, FIERCE student guides share a “FIERCE Fact…which was either a community development success story or related to an issue they were currently advocating for to fulfill a community need” (p. 722).

Irazábal and Huerta (2015) go onto explain:

“As LGBTQ YOC took turns during the tour to serve as guides, they conveyed to

participants a personalized account of the geography of the neighborhood. In relational, affective, temporal, and political terms, they explained to us what the buildings and spaces meant to them individually and collectively, and in relation to their past and present conditions, as well as future possibilities” (p. 724).

As a result, this reading helped me to think about how our class could adapt this idea to a West Philadelphia walking tour centered on community assets.

Irazábal & Huerta (2015) highlight how the FIERCE tour “aligned with

hooks’ (2003) ‘teaching to transgress’ and ‘pedagogy of hope’ concepts, which encourage the expansion of co-learning beyond school settings to include community organizations and other public arenas” (p. 724). Reading about the FIERCE student-led tour made me wonder how I could facilitate opportunities for students to also research resistance and resilience in West Philadelphia. In other words, many neighborhood assets exist today in spite of systems of oppression so resistance and resilience themselves are both assets. Therefore, documenting community assets is an opportunity to document community resistance and resilience. Furthermore, this focus on resilience and resistance weaves directly into our overarching focus on changemakers throughout the school year. In short, a focus on community assets is also a focus on changemakers in our community.

Lastly, thanks to the Irazábal & Huerta article, I began to wonder how my students’ experiences and insights about community assets could be communicated to a wider audience beyond our school. Although the constraints of a school day may limit students’ ability to lead walking tours throughout the week, I began to consider how students’ ideas could be shared on a digital platform such as a podcast.

Unit Objectives

This unit is designed to take place over the course of twenty days. The primary unit objectives are listed below. Note: Some days have more than one objective and some objectives span more than one day.

• Day 1: Students will be able to reflect on the word community in order to generate a multifaceted definition of the word as a class.
• Day 1: Students will be able to reflect on the word community from multiple perspectives in order to consider how the idea of community may change based on one’s identity.
• Day 2: Students will be able to define the word asset in order to create a list of community assets from their unique perspective.
• Day 2 & 3: Students will be able to generate interview questions for their classmates and family members about community assets in West Philadelphia.
• Day 2 & 3: Students will be able to interview their classmates and family members in order to identify community assets in West Philadelphia from multiple perspectives.
• Day 2 & 3: Students will be able to identify community assets from multiple perspectives in order to consider how these assets may change based on one’s identity.
• Day 4: Students will be able to analyze nonfiction text features from local media outlets and social media in order to identify the “single story” of West Philadelphia.
• Day 5: Students will be able to contrast their student-generated list of West Philadelphia assets with the media coverage in order to understand how the media coverage of West Philadelphia is an incomplete “single story”.
• Day 6 & 7: Students will be able to analyze historic and current West Philadelphia maps, photos, and walking tour brochures in order to analyze whose stories the primary sources reveal and obscure. (Note: The resources for this objective will be curated by a series of guest speakers.)
• Day 8 & 9: Students will be able to generate and ask interview questions to guest speakers (community leaders from neighborhood associations, small businesses, and school alumni) in order to learn about resistance and resilience in the community and how community assets have evolved over time.
• Day 10: Students will be able to analyze West Philadelphia firsthand during a community walk in order to make observations, create questions, and identify assets present in West Philadelphia.
• Day 11: Students will be able to present their community walk observations, questions, assets, and photographs to their classmates in order to notice similarities and differences across various areas of West Philadelphia.
• Day 12 & 13: Students will be able to identify and research a community asset of their choice.
• Day 14-18: Students will be able to follow the writing process (including multiple drafts, revising, and editing) in order to write a podcast script about the community asset of their choice.
• Day 19: Students will be able to record and publish their podcast episode in order to share what they have learned with the class and an audience beyond the classroom.
• Day 20: Students will be able to listen to one another’s podcast episodes and share the podcast with community members as part of a writing publication celebration.

1. Reflection on a Word: Patricia Carini (2009) describes reflecting on a word as a “quiet, solitary work, each person delving into her memory for phrases, words, and images evoked by the word, writing these down as they come to mind” (p. 82). In this spirit, students will reflect on the word “community”. Carini (2009) highlights that “the point of a reflection is not to winnow or define a word. The point is to uncover some of the richness of layered meaning the word embodies” (p. 82). After students share their initial responses, the teacher may prompt students to think about the word from a variety of perspectives. For example, the teacher may ask, “If someone has lived in the same neighborhood for 80 years, how might they describe the word community?” or “If someone has just moved to a new neighborhood, how might they describe the word community?” Teachers are encouraged to ask students to think about communities that are united by a common location, interest, or circumstance.
2. Peer & Family Interviews: Students will have opportunities throughout this unit to conduct peer interviews and family interviews. In both circumstances, the teacher will assign the interview topic (community assets) and the students will collaborate to create a list of interview questions. First, during the peer interview stage, students will interview one another and brainstorm a list of assets in West Philadelphia. At this stage, students have the opportunity to both share their perspective and listen to the perspective of their classmates. Second, students will interview a family member of their choice and document the community’s assets from the perspective of their family member. Students will then share their family interview findings with one another and search for themes and patterns among the findings.
3. Online Research: Students will search “West Philadelphia” in a variety of online media sources including, but not limited to the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Tribune, and West Philly Local. Students will use these sources to identify what “single story” is associated with West Philadelphia.
4. Media Analysis: Students will use resources from the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) to analyze media messages about West Philadelphia. Questions include, but are not limited to:
5. Who made this?
6. Why was it made?
7. How might different people interpret this message?
8. What is missing from this message?
9. Who might benefit from this message?
10. Who might be harmed by this message?

5. Graphic Organizers: Students will use graphic organizers throughout the unit. For example, students will record notes from their peer and family interviews in a graphic organizer. Additionally, students will record their online research observations and questions in a graphic organizer. Once students have completed their interviews and online research, students will contrast their student-generated list of assets with the media coverage using a third graphic organizer. Students will use these graphic organizers in order to consider how the “single story” of West Philadelphia can change based on one’s identity markers.
6. Small Group Community Walk: In small groups, students will walk around West Philadelphia with a chaperone. Each small group will be responsible for a different area of West Philadelphia (areas to the north, south, east, and west of the school). This way, the class will be able to cover a larger area of West Philadelphia than if the class was traveling together in one large group. Moreover, a small group enables the students and chaperones to have small group conversations during the community walk about their observations and questions. During the community walk, students will brainstorm questions using ideas adapted from the Historical Thinking Chart by the Stanford History Education Group.
7. Gallery Walk: After the community walk, each small group will compile their community walk observations, questions, and photographs onto a poster. Each small group will then hang their poster boards around the classroom “gallery style” so that students can disperse evenly around the room. Then, each small group will rotate around the classroom and they “travel” around West Philadelphia in order to analyze each poster.
8. Project Zero Thinking Routines: Students will have opportunities to use thinking routines throughout the unit. These thinking routines were developed by Project Zero, a research center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The thinking routines for this unit may include, but are not limited to:
9. Facts or Fiction: In this thinking routine, students will analyze nonfiction text

features from local media outlets and social media depicting West Philadelphia.

1. Parts, People, Interactions: Students will use this thinking routine to better

understand the complex nature of a single neighborhood and how a change to one

part of a neighborhood system affects the various parts and people within the neighborhood.

1. Creative Questions: This thinking routine will help students generate questions

for classmate interviews, family interviews, and guest speakers.

1. See, Think, Wonder: Students will use this thinking routine during their

community walk in order to make insightful observations and ask thoughtful questions.

1. Circle of Viewpoints: By leveraging this thinking routine, students will consider how the idea of community and community assets may change based on one’s viewpoint and/or identity markers.
2. Projecting Across Time: In this thinking routine, students will analyze primary

sources such as maps and consider how the past affects our present-day community assets and implications for the future.

1. Peel the Fruit: Students will use this thinking routine in order to document their learning and track their exploration throughout the unit.
2. I Used to Think…Now I Think…: Students will use this thinking routine as part

of their journal reflections at various stages during the unit in order to document how their thinking evolves throughout the unit.

9. Guest Speakers: Students will generate questions for guest speakers about the history of West Philadelphia. Guest speakers could include community leaders from neighborhood associations, historical associations, and school alumni. The student-generated questions will be shared with the guest speakers in advance so that the guest speakers are prepared to respond to student questions and can bring primary source materials for students. After each guest speaker, students will write thank you notes and apply their new understandings to further inquiry.
10. Journaling: Students will journal throughout the unit. The journal prompts will give students the opportunity to pause and reflect on their research (i.e. peer interviews, family interviews, guest speakers, community walk, online research) throughout the unit. The journal prompts will encourage students to activate prior knowledge, make connections, ask questions, or reflect on how their thinking has changed throughout the unit. Students can choose how they want to respond to the journal prompt (i.e. prose, poetry, lists, maps, or drawings). Journaling time will often be paired with the Think, Pair, Share teaching strategy in which students have time to write and then share their journal responses with a partner, small group, or the class, depending on the journal topic.
11. Voice and Choice: This is a key element in the Need in Deed My Voice Framework. Educators know that when students have a voice and choice in what they are learning, they become more deeply engaged in the learning process.
12. The Writing Process: Students will identify and research a community asset of their choice. Students will write a podcast script about their community asset following the writing process (prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing). Peer feedback and teacher feedback will also play an important role in the writing process.
13. Mentor Texts: Students will analyze mentor texts such as walking tour guides and walking tour podcast episodes. Students will use these mentor texts as inspiration and to better understand the writing moves these authors use in order to describe the community asset of their choice and engage their audience.
14. Modeling Writing: The teacher will model writing a podcast script as a scaffold to help students write their podcast scripts. Each day, the teacher models drafting, revising, or editing a specific part of their podcast script and uses a think-aloud to highlight a specific writing strategy. Then, the teacher encourages students to use the same writing strategy in their podcast scripts during writing workshop.
15. Writing Conferences: Students will meet with the teacher regularly for one-on-one writing conferences as they work on their podcast script. Writing conferences are an opportunity for the teacher to differentiate their writing feedback to meet the needs of each student and challenge each student as a writer.
16. Publication Celebration: Students will record and publish their podcast episodes at the end of the unit. This celebration is an opportunity for students to share their work with one another and community members beyond our classroom. This event will both celebrate student work and provide students time to reflect on what we have learned as a class from this unit.

Additionally, the following evaluative tools will be used to assess student progress throughout the unit.

1. Journaling
2. Student Self-Reflection Questions
3. Editing & Revision Checklists
4. Writing Portfolio
5. Rubrics & Student Self-Assessments
6. Student Presentations
7. Exit Tickets

This unit is designed to take place over the course of twenty days. The three lessons below are excerpts from the larger overarching unit.

Please scroll down to see another sample lesson.

Please scroll down to see another sample lesson.

Please scroll down to see the resources and appendix.

Bibliography

Below is a list of resources referenced throughout this curriculum unit.

Adichie, C. N. (2009, July). The Danger of the Single Story [Video]. TED Conferences.

https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_

story?language=en

Carini, P. F., & Himley, M. (2009). Jenny’s Story: Taking the Long View of the Child:

Prospect’s Philosophy in Action. Teachers College Press.

Christensen, L. (2017). Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice

and the Power of the Written Word. Rethinking Schools.

Crenshaw, K. (2016, October). The Urgency of Intersectionality [Video]. TED

Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_

intersectionality?language=en

Facing History & Ourselves. (2021). Gallery Walk.

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-strategies/gallery-walk

Facing History & Ourselves. (2021). Graffiti Boards.

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-strategies/graffiti-boards

Facing History & Ourselves. (2021). Identity Charts.

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-strategies/identity-charts

Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the Word and the World.

Bergin & Garvey.

Gay, G. (2010). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice.

Teachers College Press.

Hall, S. (1973). Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Centre for

Contemporary Cultural Studies University of Birmingham.

Harvard Graduate School of Education. (2016). Project Zero’s Thinking Routine Toolbox.

http://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. 

Routledge.

hooks, b. (2003). Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Routledge.

Irazábal, C., & Huerta, C. (2016). Intersectionality and planning at the margins: LGBTQ

youth of color in New York, Gender, Place & Culture, 23(5), 714-732. https://doi.org/10.7916/D8BZ65BM

Kretzmann, J., & McKnight, J. (1993). Building Communities from the Inside Out: A

Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. ACTA Publications.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally

Relevant Pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 34(3), 159-165.

Mumford, L. (1937). What is a City? In LeGates, R. T., & Stout, F. (Eds.) The City

Reader. (pp. 28-32). Routledge.

Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and

Historically Responsive Literacy. Scholastic Teaching Resources.

Need In Deed.(2018). My Voice. https://www.needindeed.org/my-voice/

Need In Deed. (2018). Mission and Values. https://www.needindeed.org/mission-values/

Paris, D., & Alim, H.S. (2017). Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and

Learning for Justice in a Changing World. Teachers College Press.

Picower, B. (2012). Using Their Words: Six Elements of Social Justice Curriculum

Design for the Elementary Classroom. International Journal of Multicultural

Education, 14(1), 1-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.18251/ijme.v14i1.484

Rogow, F., & Scheibe, C. (2007, April). Key Questions to Ask When Analyzing Media

Messages. National Association for Media Literacy Education. https://namle.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/NAMLE-Key-Qs.pdf

Stanford History Education Group. (2021). Historical Thinking Chart. Reading Like a

Historian. https://sheg.stanford.edu/history-lessons/historical-thinking-chart

Teaching Tolerance. (2018). Social Justice Standards: The Teaching Tolerance Anti-Bias

Framework. https://www.learningforjustice.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/TT-

Social-Justice-Standards-Anti-bias-framework-2020.pdf

The Clinton Foundation. (2021, July 14). The Spirit of Ubuntu.

https://stories.clintonfoundation.org/the-spirit-of-ubuntu-6f3814ab8596

The School District of Philadelphia. (2021, April 23). Student Enrollment and

Demographics. Henry C. Lea School Profile.https://schoolprofiles.philasd.org/lea/

overview

Additional Resources

In addition to the sources listed in the above bibliography, here are additional resources that may be useful for teachers and/or students during this unit.

Blumgart, J. (2021). West Philadelphia. Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.

https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/west-philadelphia-essay/

City of Philadelphia, Department of Records. (2021). PhillyHistory.org.

https://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/Search.aspx

Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network. (2021). PhilaGeoHistory Maps View.

https://www.philageohistory.org/tiles/viewer/

Philadelphia City Planning Commission. (2013, April). University Southwest District

Plan. Philadelphia2035. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Y_5CH37Y8zQUiikt7P

PNQ8obfz5R-I1/view

University Archives and Records Center of the University of Pennsylvania. (2021). West

Philadelphia: The History A Streetcar Suburb in the City, 1854-1907. West Philadelphia Community History Center. https://westphillyhistory.archives.

upenn.edu/history/chapter-2

The teacher may want to provide an additional scaffold if they think their students would benefit from brainstorming community asset ideas together as a class. For example, the teacher could ask the students to brainstorm the “Gifts of Individuals, Citizens’ Associations, and Local Institutions” associated with their school community before brainstorming community assets associated with West Philadelphia (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993). Below is a sample with a few student ideas that may come from a class brainstorming activity.

Appendix B

 Below is a copy of Kretzmann and McKnight’s image for community asset mapping showing “Gifts of Individuals, Citizens’ Associations, and Local Institutions” (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993). Teachers may want to use this image as a graphic organizer or adapt this image into a graphic organizer to best meet the needs of their students in order to help students brainstorm community assets.

Appendix C

Student: __________________   Chaperone: __________________  Homeroom: _____

Appendix D