Going Between the Lines and Beyond the Pages of Your School Books
RECLAIM Y/OUR STORIES
History/Background
In 2013, Rob Bonta, the first Filipino American elected to the CA state assembly, introduced AB 123, a bill that would require social science curriculum to include instruction on the contributions of Filipino Americans to the farm labor movement, a fact that is often left out of schoolbooks and classrooms, despite the fact that CA is home to one of the largest populations of Filipinos outside of the Philippines. AB 123 has reignited the Ethnic Studies movement and is the impetus for the Reclaim Y/OUR Stories project. This is a collaborative project between teachers and community activists, that seeks to challenge the dominant hegemonic narrative by bringing marginalized voices and communities into the center by engaging students in critical literacy, multidisciplinary storytelling and community organizing.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.11-12.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.11-12.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.
English Language Arts Standards
Reclaim Y/OUR Stories is an interdisciplinary literacy project that challenges you to interrogate your schoolbooks by asking: Whose voices and perspectives are left out? How does this exclusion disenfranchise individuals and communities? How can storytelling bring about social change by challenging the dominant narrative, thereby making the invisible, visible, and making the powerless, empowered?
Goals
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. By exploring the photographs, videos and stories on this site, students will identify a particular image or set of images that speak to them in a special way.
2. Students will compose short stories, personal essays, and multimedia pieces inspired or triggered by the media on this site.
3. Students will share their own stories and contribute to the broader collective narrative by making connections and links to the other stories posted on this site.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.7 Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.9 Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.
ELA History/Social Studies Standards