This lesson plan, intended for middle and high schoolers, is focused on school culture and how it can affect students attitudes towards learning and achievement. The lesson was produced by PBS and is centered around their POV documentary Brooklyn Castle. The film is about an inner-city, high-poverty school that cultivates a highly successful chess team; as a result of the school’s focus on this extra-curricular and its promotion of achievement at all levels, the school is an exemplary model of student academic success. By examining this school’s culture in comparison with their own, student can understand the ways that culture is transmitted through a population and how important it is for that culture to have a positive influence.
The lesson will begin with a discussion of the definition of culture, with particular emphasis on how culture is learned and shared. The class will then think about what the most influential transmitters of culture are in their own lives, and what messages about learning and academic success they receive from each of the sources they listed. After this, students will watch a series of clips from the film, during which they will be asked to consider the messages and transmitters in the school depicted, and how they are alike or different from their own lists. After each clip, the class will pause for discussions about whether they are surprised by the popularity of chess in Brooklyn Castle, how they feel about the interactions between students and teachers, what they noticed about how the school treats the chess team, and what they learned about how culture is transmitted. After, students will be asked to write a persuasive piece about whether or not they would like their school to be like the school in the film and why.
This lesson plan is valuable because it engages students directly with the culture that shapes their learning. By making students aware of these processes, this lesson can make students more active in them. In inner city schools, especially, it is common for students to equate high achievement with being less tough, “street-smart,” or“cool.” These stereotypes are harmful because they force students to choose between academic achievement and social success, and because they can perpetuate this myth to such an extent that it impacts a school’s performance as a whole. By having students look at the ways that culture is constructed, and getting them thinking about whether or not the cultures that impact them are beneficial, this type of lesson creates a more equal playing field for students of all backgrounds. A school community should promote the achievement of all of its students, and when students realize they are potentially being disadvantaged by one that does not, they can be more active in changing it.
It would be important for a teacher using this lesson plan to have given her students practice in thinking critically about their schools and communities. While this lesson stands alone fairly well, it may not work as well for students in schools vastly different from the one in the film (i.e. schools that are not located in a city or schools that are not faced with poverty) without a fair amount of context or practice in comparing and evaluating communities. In addition, it might be helpful for teachers to expand on this lesson by exploring other models of successful school culture, or even examples of harmful school cultures so that students do not see the school depicted as necessarily exceptional. Finally, to build on this lesson, teachers should give students the opportunity to think actively about how they can use what they've learned about culture to actively change the culture at their own school. This lesson is unique in that it can be modified to be extremely relevant to the students’ lives, and because it acknowledges culture in a context different from how it is typically depicted in social studies curricula (i.e. in conjunction with race/ethnicity). Overall, this lesson is a valuable resource because it has the potential for making students agents of change in their communities and because it breaks down the stereotypes that inhibit student achievement.
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