Everyday Youth Telling Their Own Stories

This unit was created by Rivanna Jihan, a high school Social Studies educator in Chicago, IL as part of the 2023-2024 Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellowship program. It includes 12 lessons and is designed for facilitation across three weeks of 50-minute class sessions.

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

Objectives:

Students will be able to…

• Utilize information from multiple sources, evaluate the speaker’s point of view, and draw conclusions about the impact of perspectives in retelling history and current events when initiating and participating in class discussions
• Investigate and analyze news stories on underreported local and global issues, identifying key main ideas and supporting details that point to the root causes of the issue, and examining potential local solutions
• Analyze visual storytelling as presented via photojournalism to understand the role of imagery in conveying messages
• Reflect on positionality in communities and the world, and reflect on their role in shaping the present and future to tell their own stories (and/or those of their community) through imagery and captioning of photojournalism
• Create photo essays related to community, articulating explanations and arguments for their position to diverse audiences 
• Identify the role of individuals and groups in the struggle for freedom, equality, and justice
• Evaluate methods utilized by individuals and small groups to promote change in their communities

Unit Overview:

In this unit, students begin by engaging in the work of Sherman “Dilla” Thomas in his “Everything Dope About America Comes From Chicago” series. Students will reflect on and discuss how perspective can change the way an event or issue is perceived.

Students will then examine the connection between underreported news stories and their own perceptions of themselves as young people, and their communities as spaces worth covering. They will choose one topic from a Choice Board that contains reporting both from the Pulitzer Center website and from local sources and will investigate the work done by youth locally and globally on their topic. Students will add these discoveries to their reflection on perspective and then examine the impact of perspective on their lives and communities.

Next, students will discover photojournalism through Pulitzer Center activities. The first activity focuses on how to be a photojournalist of underreported stories, and the second activity explores captioning by centering the Everyday Africa project.

Finally, students will examine their own communities and families. In this examination, they will identify their role within their family and/or community, and then decide what is worth documenting. They will end the unit by choosing a community issue or family member to highlight in a photo essay. Who or what they choose will be presented from their perspective as a young person in Chicago, including an analysis of how their perspective is important in understanding this issue or person. The purpose of the photo essay is to elevate a perspective or voice that has been historically marginalized or overlooked, including the reality that youth voices are, themselves, marginalized and overlooked. In this way, the students will highlight how “Everyday Chicago” really does show that “everything dope about America comes from Chicago” and from the youth who call this city home.

Performance Task:

Photo Essays: Everyday Chicago Youth Tell Their Stories

Students will create a short photo essay capturing a person or issue in their neighborhood/community. They will present that person or issue through a lens similar to Peter DiCampo’s “Everyday Africa” or Dilla Thomas’ “Everything Dope About America Comes from Chicago.” This project aims to elevate a historically marginalized voice and/or a local issue from the perspective of Chicago youth.

Assessment:

Formative Assessment:

Completion of guided readings, video guides, active participation in class discussions, and completion of supporting activities.

Summative Assessment:

Photo essays and Gallery Walk Reflections will be scored with the Photo Essay Rubric [.docx][.pdf]

Three-lesson unit plan for teachers, includes pacing, texts and multimedia resources, teacher-created resources, performance task instructions, and grading rubric for the unit. This unit was written to be taught over the course of 3 weeks or 12 50-minute lessons.

Common Core State Standards

SL.11-12.1 - Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions building on the ideas of others, and expressing clearly and persuasively. 

SL.11-12.3 - Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.

RH.11-12.1 - Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.

RH.11-12.2 - Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.

WHST.11-12.6 - Use technology to produce information.

Illinois Social Science Standards

IS.7.9-12 - Articulate explanations and arguments to a target audience in diverse settings.

CV.5.9-12 - Analyze the impact of diverse perspectives on the application of civic dispositions.

H.3.9-12 - Evaluate the methods utilized by people and institutions to promote change.

H.7.9-12 - Identify the role of individuals, groups, and institutions in people’s struggle for safety, freedom, equality, and justice.

Throughout the unit, students explored underreported global and local stories and studied photojournalism projects and skills. They engaged with two guest speakers focused on Chicago history and photography skills, preparing for their interactions by generating a series of questions.

Photo Essays from Every Day Chicago

Students created short photo essays capturing a person or issue in their neighborhood/community. They presented that person or issue through a lens similar to Peter DiCampo’s Everyday Africa or Dilla Thomas’ “Everything Dope About America Comes from Chicago.”