Publication Date: Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Our Town: Going deep
Our Town: Going deep
(January 05, 2005) by Don Kazak
The students in Linder Dermon's sophomore class are talking and horsing around. Dermon patiently gets their attention and settles them down.
She puts on a video and everyone focuses on the TV. It's a segment from a PBS documentary about the Civil Rights movement. This particular story is about Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African-American boy beaten to death in Mississippi in 1955 for whistling at a white woman.
The once rowdy and talkative kids are silent, transfixed by the unfolding story.
That was one of Dermon's classes at Gunn High School in October.
Across town, more recently, David Cohen's sophomore students at Palo Alto High School work on personal projects reflecting what they learned during a month-long class segment on "Becoming American."
The students read Gus Lee's book, "China Boy." They watched a video about the hardships Chinese immigrants went through while building the trans-continental railway in the 1860s. They exchanged e-mail with students learning the same material at an Ohio high school.
Now, Cohen's students are expressing what they learned through artwork, writing or collages of photos clipped from magazines.
"I learned that assimilation is a gradual thing, not a sudden thing," says Ben, whose parents are Chinese immigrants. "So it's not new to me like it is to others." Ben is working on a skillful pencil drawing of the head of Statue of Liberty. The Great Wall of China is in the foreground, leading to the large, impersonal buildings of a modern city.
Another student, Tyler, is making a list that seemingly makes no sense. "Stir-fried hamburger" is one of the items on the list. He is trying combinations of ethnic foods to illustrate the idea of assimilation. He plans to cook the food, too.
"I learned about crazy discrimination going on," he says.
What Derman and Cohen have in common is that they both use materials and techniques from a program called "Facing History and Ourselves." It's a national program with regional offices -- including in the Bay Area -- to help teachers deal with often painful events, such as the Holocaust and the many lesser consequences of hate and discrimination.
The program "goes deep" into those subjects, letting students confront what the topics mean to them in their present-day lives.
"This is the best professional development I've had in terms of the big picture, of why we're doing what we're doing," Cohen said. "It makes me more comfortable in dealing with tough issues, in challenging (students) about issues that are personally relevant."
"Children should be using their minds more and go deeper into issues," said Sandra Pearson, the recently retired Paly principal who is a fan of the program. "This is much of what Facing History is based on: Wrestling with important questions and moral dilemmas. We're not here just to memorize facts."
Class discussions sometimes bring out surprises. Gunn teacher Karen Oppenheim remembers one class where a student admitted he had a bias against Asians. Asian-American students "confronted him, tactfully," Oppenheim said.
Learning about difficult subjects can make students uncomfortable. "And we'll talk about that," she said.
"The curriculum touches students in a profound and personal way," said Barbara Spreng, president of the PTA Council and a Facing History regional board member. "It challenges them to think of who they want to be in the world."
Former school board President Susie Richardson is now a Facing History national board member.
"It was just clear to me that this was fabulous," she said.
The program has the support of current and former superintendents. Current Superintendent Mary Frances Callan already knew about Facing History before coming to Palo Alto. "I was very happy it was here," she said.
"Facing History is the best thing happening in education in California today," former Superintendent Jim Brown said when he visited Palo Alto last April.
Back in Cohen's class, two girls look through teen magazines like Seventeen for ads that promote racial stereotyping. They find quite a few.
"We'll make a collage about the effects of ads on teen culture," Erica says.
Weekly Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be emailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
Student projects from Bay Area Facing History and Ourselves classes will be part of a larger exhibit, "Choosing to Participate," on display Jan. 15 through March 20 at the San Francisco Main Library.
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