My Secret for Engaging Students in a Black History ‘Jawn’ (Opinion)

I am writing this jawn, because I believe teaching any Black history jawn in the United States might be one of the hardest jawns asked of a teacher, especially in an age of political division over curriculum.

My teacher identity was developed in Philadelphia public charter schools, where some teachers and teacher leaders used the slang “jawn,” an all-purpose word that is substituted for different nouns. Teachers and students used it so much that I now do, too. It has also made its way into my pedagogical approach for teaching Black histories, through a disciplinary practice I call the “jawn of engagement.”

This model is intended to support K-12 educators to engage learners in Black histories. To do so, the teacher invites students to have a rigorous discussion about race prior to reading a Black historical source. This racial inquiry prepares students to then engage with that source in its full context. When developing this approach, I drew on professional development from education professors Abby Reisman and Lightning Jay and my own my roots in Philadelphia’s tradition of Black history education leadership.

First, the teacher asks students to make a prediction about a particular topic or historical event, share an opinion, or consider a scenario of how they would have behaved in each circumstance. Next, the teacher highlights trends in the students’ responses to start a class discussion before tackling a text or resource directly. After analyzing the source, the teacher finally guides the class back to their opening discussion.

Here are a few examples of how I have used the jawn of engagement with both high school students and the adult educators in my Teaching Black History microcredential course:

Example 1: Philadelphia Transit Strike Lesson
For this middle or high school local history unit, I show students a photograph titled “We Drive Tanks Why Not Trolleys,” which depicts five Black men carrying protest signs, before asking students to posit what caused the 1944 transit strike. After a deep dive into primary sources (including an excerpt of A. Philip Randolph’s 1941 “Call to the Negro America to March on Washington” and contemporaneous local newspaper clippings), students reflect on whether their predictions were accurate.

Example 2: Washington, Du Bois, and Garvey Lesson
Black historical contention, a tenet of Black history studies that explores the disagreements among Black folk, is often too narrowly framed between the educational philosophies of Booker T. Washington’s industrial and vocational approach and W.E.B. Du Bois’ outspoken demand for political equality. For this lesson, after introducing students to the famous debate between Washington and Du Bois, I introduce the Pan-African and Black nationalist perspective of Marcus Garvey. I tell my students, “Garvey is going to jump into the ring, and he is going to back up one of these men, while calling the other a lot of names. Who do you think he is going to support and why?” This framing primes students to engage with Marcus Garvey’s critiques of Du Bois for elitism and benefiting from colorism.

Example 3: Women’s SNCC Paper Lesson
Before covering an anonymous 1964 letter by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Black women that criticizes civil rights leaders for sexism, I show students a clip of Beyonce’s song “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” in which she samples an audio excerpt from a Malcolm X speech on the mistreatment of Black women. Mirroring the language of that Malcolm X speech, I ask students, “Which one do you think happens the most often to Black women and why?”

1. “Being disrespected”
2. “Being unprotected”
3. “Being neglected”

On the whiteboard, I record students’ examples of each, leading to a rich discussion about intersectionality of race and gender and the importance of Black women’s perspectives. Students are then able to make connections between their discussion and the treatment of Black women they identify in the primary-source letter.

Now in my second year teaching at the University at Buffalo’s K-12 Teaching Black History and Racial Literacy Center, I have heard from teachers in my course that this jawn of engagement helps them reimagine their use of primary sources.

It is my hope that during this Black History Month jawn, my jawn of engagement will encourage other educators to create their own strategies tailored to their local contexts. With a little imagination, you can spark your students’ intellectual curiosity to tackle Black histories with both rigor and vigor.