No, this post is not about the "game" of elections. This post is about an actual game that we played in class this week; boy did it stir up some anger (which was the point).
Let me step back. We ended our Quarter 1 unit, Chemistry and Conflict, with a really nice exhibition this week. We also took our first step into our Quarter 2 unit about slavery and civil rights. This unit is always the hardest. Yes, it is hard because it is complex, because terrible things happened to innocent people, and because it is truly an awful part of our country's genesis. But, the deeply hardest part is making sure all of the students can fathom what systematic oppression feels like. For example, I was lucky enough to grow up upper-middle class. My dad worked very hard so that I never wanted for anything. I attended great schools, lived in a big house in the mountains of Colorado, and always had fresh food in the house. I traveled out of the country, could join any sport I wished, and always got to walk around my neighborhood and see people that looked like me. So when it came time for me to learn about poverty (and I mean true poverty, not just the idea that some people are poor and we need to help them), I had a hard time understanding. I couldn't figure out why "they" just didn't work harder, go to better schools, get better jobs, stop complaining. It wasn't until a class in college that I realized what poverty meant and how poverty has been made part of our system, a way to keep some people down and others up. My teacher had to break it down into such basic terms, I truly think we played a game with M&Ms, for me to understand how hard it is to truly grow out of poverty because of the structure of our society . I had never experienced it, so I could not even guess what it might feel like. Until I tried to even grasp the concept, I was unable to fully benefit from our class discussions and lessons.
I am approaching this quarter with that same memory repeating in my head. How am I, a white woman, supposed to accurately teach slavery, civil rights, and the systematic oppression that follows? More importantly, how in the world am I going to get my students to understand that while the practice of slavery is abolished, we are far from equal?
I knew I could walk into class this week with a mind blowing passage from Ta Nehisi Coates' Between The World And Me. But I realized that if I did just that, the power of Coates' words and truth to his sentiments would be lost. This impactful piece of literature would have been minimized. That was not OK with me. So I knew that I needed to start simple, from the basics. I decided to play a game. A coworker (shout out to Natasha) sent me a game called the Starpower Activity that essentially sets up a system of oppression. I divided the class into equal groups and gave them a territory (a set of desks). They were each given an identity card which was a shape drawn onto a name tag. They were now to be referred to as that shape; "Squares, nice work!" The groups were then given 12 different resource cards in which they had to trade with other groups to gain the most points and most balanced territory. The group that won the trading round by having the most points and the most balance was allowed to make the rules for the next trade. When you "teacher lie" (an ethical lie that teachers tell to move students into one direction for the purpose of a lesson) and tell students that the winning group will get 20 extra credit points assigned to any grade of their choice, the rules tend to get a bit intense. Now, throughout all of this, I act as "The System". I notice the group that is winning and I give them benefits. They get extra resource cards for being "nice" or for "handling a trade kindly". It doesn't matter if the other group did as well; I am trying to show privilege. By the end of the game, one group is absolutely winning the game, has made tons of new rules to benefit their group, and all other groups strongly dislike the winning shape group.
"The circles are not better than us! Why do they keep getting the resource cards!"
"The circles made a rule about charity, but the charity doesn't even help! They still win every time!"
"Even when they give charity, The System rewards them for being nice! We should get those extra resources!"
Bam.
I created my own little world full of systematic oppression, shape-ism, and anger. I let them fight for a bit. I let them yell at me, telling me that I was playing favorites or that I was the most unfair teacher that they'd ever had. I stood there, and I smiled. After a few minutes of anger, the games were never finished before all of the uprising began, I spoke up and quieted the crowd. I asked them how they felt and they told me that I had set up a game that was unfair and benefitted only one shape. How were the other shapes supposed to even compete? I looked out to them and said, "Exactly." They were dumbfounded. I explained that there was no extra credit and that there was no winner, but that they were all part of a society that was systematically oppressed.
Their minds exploded.
They began connecting the game to our election, to slavery, to the indigenous populations, to gender issues, etc. They were making all of these connections about power and power structures in our country. Both classes had the "light bulb moment."
"The circles are like the white population and the rest of the shapes are like other races. That's why there are protests."
"The circles are like men and the rest of the shapes are like women. That's why they only got the right to vote in the 1900s."
You. Guys. Our kids were starting to realize that our country was not built on equality and, just because it is 2016 and we can literally order a pizza through a mini hand held computer by texting Dominoes does NOT mean that inequality is a thing of the past. They finally had that connection; people in our country are oppressed and just "working harder" or "going to a better school" is not even close to the solution.
I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS QUARTER. Now that we all had an equal access point to these basic ideas of systematic oppression, we can begin our unit for real on Monday by learning about what actually happened in the 4 centuries of the slave trade. We can begin our discussions around what happened after the slave trade ended. I know that this unit is going to be powerful.
I left the kids with the same thought I will leave you all with: our goal should be to feel comfortable with being uncomfortable. If we are uncomfortable we are learning, we are challenging, we are seeking truth. If we are comfortable, we are not trying to see or learn truth.
