This project-based activity will have students think about the ways that society is divided by class and race as they create their own cities. The lesson plan was created by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance campaign with the goal of educating students about the ways that the health and well-being of low income communities, and especially low-income communities of color, are impacted by environmental racism and classism and of encouraging students to create a vision of a more just and equitable society. The lesson plan can be adapted for either upper elementary (3rd-5th grade) or middle school classrooms.
In this activity, students, in groups, will be given materials to create cities. Each city must include a number of required urban resources (including libraries, roadways, landfills, schools, different types of housing, etc.) and must be divided into three areas: one for “people who run the city,” one for “people who clean the city,” and one for “other workers.” Using tiles that represent the different elements and a paper bag as the city’s base, students must decide how to allocate the resources among the different areas. Day one of this activity has students laying out their cities while the teacher observes and takes notes about student conversations, decisions, and motivations. After they have finished, the teacher will have students rotate to look at the cities created by different groups and engage students in a discussion which gets them thinking about the the fairness of their resource distribution, the relative health and safety of people in the different areas, and whether or not their cities reflect cities in real life. At the conclusion of this discussion, the teacher will introduce students to the concepts of “environmental racism” and “environmental justice.” Day two of this activity will have students learning and thinking more in depth about issues of environmental equity in connection with the cities they planned. They will be shown clips and given readings about the disparities in community health between high and low-income communities, and will use that knowledge to propose ways that they could make their own cities more equitable.
This lesson plan addresses issues of both race and class, which are inextricably tied together. In having students confront and think about the way that cities are structured to maintain disadvantage for some and advantage for others, this project is engaging students in valuable critical thinking and prepares them to conceive of ways that these disparities can be reduced. This lesson is relevant to students , especially those in urban communities, because it addresses the ways that institutions impact their daily lives. The teacher, though, has a very important role in this activity. While this lesson is valuable, it does not stand alone. In order for it to be truly successful, the teacher must lay the groundwork beforehand about how race and class are linked, and how this link is often not acknowledged. In addition, the teacher must take on a number of different roles through the course of this lesson. On the first day, as students are building, the teacher is supposed to observe and record without judgement so that, afterwards, she or he can engage students in critical thinking about the basis of their own decisions. At this point, the teacher must facilitate discussion that does not blame students for their biases and prejudices, but instead has them confront the ways that those aspects of their thinking are harmful for the community. Finally, in the final stages of this lesson, the teacher must be a resource for students, providing them with useful facts and knowledge about the realities of city planning and its impact on communities’ health. It is important for teachers to modify this lesson to the skills and knowledge of their students, and to make sure that the lessons it teaches are not taught in isolation; ideally, race and class, and their connection, should be something that the teacher has been addressing throughout the year, so that students have some context.
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