De Donde Yo Soy: Cultivating Stories of Hope, Pride, and ...

This unit was created by Charles Sanderson, a high school Language Arts teacher in Woodburn, OR, as part of the 2021-2022 Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellowship program. It is designed for facilitation across nine lessons.

For more units created by Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellows in this cohort, click here.

Objectives:

• Students will begin by reflecting on members of their community who have positively impacted their lives or the lives of others, and will identify the attributes they believe young people need most in this moment.
• Students will analyze visual storytelling and understand how storytellers can cultivate hope, pride, and other attributes they believe young people need most in this moment.
• Students will interview a community member who cultivates hope, pride, and what young people need most.
• Students will create storyboards that amplify the sources of hope, pride, and other attributes young people need most.

Unit Overview:

This unit strives to recognize sources of hope and pride from around the world while cultivating the same in our local communities. Moreover, it aspires to listen to young people to discern what they need most in this moment.

This unit will analyze the work of visual storytellers who create hope and pride, building an understanding of how visual images and words can inspire audiences.

Students will also look to their own communities to find sources of inspiration, so they can create storyboard projects that highlight the people who cultivate the attributes young people need most.

Optional Extension: If students have access to video editing software, they could create a short documentary that highlights their subject. How to Edit Video on iPhone

Performance Task:

My People: My Strength | Storyboard Project

Students will create collages that juxtapose image and text to illuminate people in their community who cultivate hope, pride, and what young people need most. They will expand on their use of visual storytelling and interview techniques to juxtapose images and the voices of people who cultivate hope and pride in their community in the form of storyboards.

Nine-day unit plan, including daily slide presentations, graphic organizers, warm-ups, classroom activities, multimedia resources, and performance tasks for the unit.

Unit Resources:

Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards

Identity 1: I have a positive view of myself, including an awareness of and comfort with my membership in multiple groups in society.

Identity 4: I express pride and confidence in my identity without perceiving or treating anyone else as inferior.

Diversity 8: I respectfully express curiosity about the history and lived experiences of others and exchange ideas and beliefs in an open-minded way.

Diversity 9: I relate to and build connections with other people by showing them empathy, respect, and understanding, regardless of our similarities or differences.

Common Core State Standards

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.7

Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person’s life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.

Formative Assessment:

My People: My Strength | Photo Collage

Students create a collage showing the people in their community who represent hope, pride, and what young people need most. They write a short paragraph explaining their relationship to the people pictured, and what important qualities they cultivate.

Summative Assessment:

My People: My Strength | Storyboard Project

Students use visual storytelling and interview techniques to juxtapose images, narration, and quotes from people who cultivate hope and pride in their community. The result is a storyboard, which mirrors the process journalists/filmmakers use to plan the short documentaries students explore in this unit.

Explore examples of storyboards created by students in Charles Sanderson's class in spring 2022.