This document outlines an agenda for a workshop on using personal narratives and stories from teachers and students of color to enrich humanities curriculum. It begins with introductions of the presenters and their schools/subjects. It then discusses challenges teachers of color may face regarding feeling their place and students' places are represented in the curriculum. The document outlines typical humanities subjects and shows examples of curriculum from 6th-8th grade focusing on self, others, and community. It shares poems demonstrating the importance of whose stories are told. Finally, it discusses exercises for attendees to reflect on windows and mirrors in curriculum and how to incorporate more perspectives.

1. Our Histories, Our Selves: Using PoC Stories to
Liberate, Co-Create, & Thrive in Humanities
Classrooms
Lesley Younge, Whittle School & Studios
Thu Nguyen, Sidwell Friends School

2. Introductions

3. Agenda
1. Who are we? Where do we teach? What do we teach?
2. Group work
3. How do we use personal narratives to enrich curriculum?
4. Group work and share out
5. Question and answer

4. A Teacher of Color walks into a
humanities classroom...
● What do I have to teach?
● Why do I have to teach it?
● Where do I fit in?
● Where do my students fit in?

5. What is
Humanities?
•English Language Arts
•History
•Ethics and Philosophy
•Current Events
•Global and Cultural Competency

6. What do we have to teach?

7. What skills are taught in Humanities?

9. 6th - 8th Grade Humanities
Self Others Community

10. 6th Grade
SELF
7th Grade
OTHERS
8th Grade
COMMUNITY
IDENTITY AND GLOBAL
CITIZENSHIP
● Personal and Social
Identities
● The Masks We Wear
● Transforming
Characters
● The Hero’s Journey
CONFLICT AND
COOPERATION
● Borders: To Protect or
Divide?
● Early American History
Through an Indigenous
Lens
● Roots and Legacies of
the Civil War
ANCIENT FOUNDATIONS
OF THE MODERN WORLD
● The Odyssey
● Food and Hospitality in
Ancient Greece
● Waterways and
Voyages

11. 6th grade at SFS: Global Issues
and Sustainable Solutions

12. Group discussion
a) What are the things you have
to teach?
b) What are the
lenses/perspectives through
which this curriculum is taught
in your school?
c) What are the missing
perspectives?

13. The American Story is Expansive and Inclusive
What’s yours?

14. Virginia

15. California

16. Louisiana

20. Our stories are essential
to the narrative.

21. I must invite my full and
authentic self into the
classroom if I want my
students to do the same.

22. Who am I?
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of
Further Possibilities
BY CHEN CHEN
To be a good
ex/current friend for R. To be one last
inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship
advice for L. To be advice
for my mother. To be a more comfortable
hospital bed for my mother. To be
no more hospital beds. To be, in my spare time,
America for my uncle, who wants to be China
for me. To be a country of trafficless roads
& a sports car for my aunt, who likes to go
fast. To be a cyclone
of laughter when my parents say
their new coworker is like that, they can tell
because he wears pink socks, see, you don’t, so
you can’t,
can’t be one of them.

23. To be the one
my parents raised me to be—
a season from the planet
of planet-sized storms.
To be a backpack of PB&J & every
thing I know, for my brothers, who are becoming
their own storms. To be, for me, nobody,
homebody, body in bed watching TV. To go 2D
& be a painting, an amateur’s hilltop & stars,
simple decoration for the new apartment
with you. To be close, J.,
to everything that is close to you—
blue blanket, red cup, green shoes
with pink laces.
To be the blue & the red.
The green, the hot pink.

24. Windows and mirrors in our curriculum
Personal Essay Option (1 page)
Write a personal essay that discusses
the windows and mirrors for you in the novel.
You
must discuss QUOTATIONS that show how Kim
Ha’s experiences are either windows or mirrors
for you. Maybe her experience with her family
reminds you of your own. Maybe her difficult
time in school does not reflect how you have
experienced school. In your final paragraph, you
must explain how seeing a window or mirror
taught you something about yourself.

25. What are the stories we all have in common?

26. 1) Discuss
a) How can you attach your
story to the given curriculum?
b) How can you attach someone
else’s story and perspective?
1) Share on the chart paper around
the room
a) Where do you see your story
or perspective in the
curriculums posted?
Group work and Storytelling

27. Questions, Comments, and
Further Sharing
nguyent@sidwell.edu
lyounge@whittleschool.org