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Get on the Bus Education Guide
Get on the Bus, a one act play By Robin Jacobson and Milo Mowery
This Education Guide is offered as a supplement to the touring show.
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Get on the Bus: A Background and How to Use This Guide
This guide is a tool to use in support of the touring performance: Get on the Bus. It offers a deeper, broader view of the historic Freedom Rides and of the contemporary struggle around immigration rights. The movement for peace, justice, and equality through non-violent action was vital in the 1960s and remains relevant in approaching today’s challenges. Get on the Bus highlights some of the fears and challenges faced by children of undocumented immigrants as well as bringing to life historic civil rights events of the 1960s, using those events as a platform of inspiration for ways that we can affect positive change today. This guide contains short classroom activities and links to great online resources such as the PBS series American Experience: Freedom Riders and many publications on immigration and undocumented immigrants. We invite you to explore these concepts before and after the performance.
Two Strands, Three Age Groups This Guide uses two topical strands spread over three wide age ranges (K-3, 4-8, 6-12):
Immigration/Undocumented Immigration
The Freedom Rides/The Civil Rights Movement
1. IMMIGRATION & UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRATION Whether your family arrived several days ago or several hundred years ago, most people in the U.S. have an immigration story. For some students, their family’s immigration story – and all its challenges – is clouded in history. It is something to unravel and provides a great opportunity for inquiry rooted in both primary and secondary sources. For others, the experience is raw and immediate, often creating anxiety or confusion. The question of undocumented immigration, adds an additional layer of emotional tension and legal complexity. While the root causes of this type of immigration are fueled by global economics, political instability and other reasons, from a child's point of view it is a deeply personal experience. The deeply volatile debate over current U.S. immigration policy creates a highly charged context for all students to explore this topic that touches almost every American family’s story.
2. FREEDOM RIDES & THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT At the onset of the 1960s, Southern states continued to disregard the Supreme Court decision which had ruled segregation in interstate travel as unconstitutional. Civil rights activists sought out a strategy that would highlight this issue and expand the desegregation struggle from larger cities to the rural interior of the South. Black and white activists organized integrated delegations to ride buses across the region. They were met with everything
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from taunts to violent crowds and mass arrests. The young nonviolent protestors riding the buses were not the only players: Southern power-brokers like Alabama’s governor John Patterson squared off with Attorney General Robert Kennedy in a struggle between state and federal authority. Though he was somewhat distant initially, Dr. Martin Luther King eventually became more involved with the Freedom Rides, particularly in terms of media coverage. The rides were successful in dismantling segregation in public transit, but they also proved to be iconic in television coverage of the movement, and served as a galvanizing experience for young leaders like (eventual) Congressman John Lewis, who would go on to be instrumental allies in major civil rights events for years to come.
The Music Music was important to the Freedom Riders; it rallied their spirits and helped them stay focused. The music of the Civil Rights Movement often adapted African American spirituals or music of other social movements, by adding new lyrics to existing melodies. The Freedom Riders revised the song “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum,” associated with Depression-era workers’ organizing, and created “Hallelujah, I’m a Travelin.” In that same spirit, Get on the Bus utilizes the same song with existing and new lyrics.
Why Get On the Bus? Why combine a chapter of the Civil Rights Movement with the contemporary issue of immigration, particularly with regard to undocumented minors? There are several reasons: Since 2004 in particular, activists rallying for Comprehensive Immigration Reform have adopted a number of strategies that parallel the Civil Rights Movement. Notably, undocumented youth have played pivotal roles in rallies, bus rides, in civil disobedience at immigration deportation centers, and other actions. Both movements address the limitations of civil rights and privileges for marginalized populations in the United States, who feel that their contributions merit greater inclusion. Both movements highlight an on-going, re-occurring debate in the nation’s story: the tension between policies of equal rights and, alternatively, multi-tiered systems where one population enjoys more rights while another faces more regulation. Indeed, it’s worthwhile to note that former Freedom Rider Representative John Lewis has been extremely vocal about immigration reform. A central intent of the production is to open up this rich conversation for today’s students, in which core American values, as expressed in the Civil Rights Movement, are in “real-time,” rather than delegated to history books. Similarly, the project challenges students to consider the points of commonality and difference between our nation’s diverse communities – and the issues they face.
*** We are all on this journey together, and we invite your students to think about how they can keep the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement alive by speaking out when they see unfairness or inequality. Get on the Bus calls us to make the history that we want to be a part of and to remember Dr. King’s powerful words: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
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Table of Contents
I. Introduction: How to Use This Guide Page 2
II. Resources and Activities K – 3rd Grade Page 5
III. Resources and Activities 4th – 8th Grade Page 8
IV. Resources and Activities 8th – 12th Grade Page 10
V. Acknowledgements Page 11
VI. Bibliography Page 12
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Kindergarten – 3rd Grade Activities
Immigration
1.) Read Aloud: From North to South: Del Norte al Sur René Colato Laínez, Illustrations by Joe Cepeda Children’s Book Press (an Imprint of Lee & Low), 2010 One of the few picture books that offers an age-appropriate and deeply intimate view of a family split by immigration policies. Award-winning author (and elementary teacher) Laínez introduces us to José, who loves to help Mamá in the garden. But one day she does not come home from work. She has been deported for not having the correct documentation. Now José looks forward to visiting his mom in Tijuana with Papá, but he also has a lot of questions for an unresolved future. Download the free Teacher Guide, complete with pre and post reading questions and vocabulary. (Source: Lee & Low Books)
2.) Reflection for Teachers Professor and former elementary school teacher Sandra Osorio reflects on her own childhood experiences and making room to listen to children’s own stories and thoughts on immigration and deportation in the Fall 2015 edition of Rethinking Schools.
The Civil Rights Movement
1.) Read Aloud: Freedom Summer Deborah Wiles, Illustrations by Jerome Lagarrigue Alladin (Simon & Schuster), 2002/2005
2.) Read Aloud: The Other Side Jaqueline Woodson, Illustrations E.B. Lewis G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2001 While many resources on the Civil Rights Movement focus on heroes and holidays, both these titles explore the world of segregation and the tumultuous transformations of the 1960st from a child’s point of view. This highly personal context makes them a great resource for young children to conceptualize the frustration of the Jim Crow world and the possibility of change wound up in the Civil Rights Movement. Freedom Summer takes place in Mississippi in 1964 and tells the story of Joe and John Henry, two close friends who share interests and activities, but not race. Always having longed to swim together they run to the pool once news breaks that it is to be integrated; only to find that the owners have opted to fill it with concrete rather than desegregate it.
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In The Other Side, Clover is instructed by her mother not to cross the fence that divides her African American neighborhood from a nearby white neighborhood. Clover encounters the carefree Annie, a white girl on the other side. Eventually the two devise a way to build a friendship that crosses the divide. Discussion Questions for Freedom Summer and The Other Side:
1.) How are the two children in the story alike? How are they different? 2.) What does the world around them say about these two kids spending time together? 3.) How do the two kids find ways to build their friendship anyway? 4.) How about you and your friends? How are you similar and different? 5.) How would it feel if you were told you couldn’t play with your friend because s/he is different
than you? 6.) What would you want to do about it?
Follow Up Activities
Draw a picture or write about something you like to do with a special friend. Show how you are different and how you are alike.
As a class create a poster that includes everyone in the class. Brainstorm ways that members of your class work to build friendships among all the different people in your class. List these actions on the poster and/or include pictures of each action.
Additional discussion questions and activities for both stories are at Read Write Think. Additional resources for Freedom Summer can be found at Teach Peace Now. The Other Side is part of a critical discussion unit for lower grades, also at Read Write Think.
Get on the Bus- Education Guide Page 7 For more information contact
Activity: Fairness and Social Action Grade Level: K – 3rd
Core Content Area: language arts, social studies
Themes: Fairness, equality
Materials: Activity - paper, markers/crayons, pencils, binding materials
Extension - biographical research materials
Young children begin to develop a strong sense of what “equality” through the lens of “fairness” – or things being even. The concept of “equity” is more elusive. Activity: Have children write, dictate or draw a picture of a time when things didn’t feel fair. Share in group discussion. Brainstorm positive responses to some of the situations. Make a list. Post the list in the classroom as a point of reference when a situation seems unfair to students. Extension: Following conversation, students do a second picture, dictation or written reflection on action steps they can take in their unfair situation.
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4th – 8th Grade Activities
Immigration
1.) Lesson Plan: Digging at the Roots of Your Family Tree
In this activity drawing on material from the PBS series, Latino Americans, students reflect on their own family’s arrival to the U.S. by filling in a family tree of as many generations as possible. Students research and fill in as much information as possible on the names and birthplaces of themselves, their parents, grandparents and so on. Next, they plot the names and birthplaces on a world map. More important than establishing the exact detail of their family tree is the process of understanding the migration/settlement story of those that came before them. Students complete reflective questions that compare and contrast their family’s story of arrival with the rich arrival stories of characters from the documentary. Two extensions are available.
2.) Read Aloud: América Is Her Name
Luís J. Rodríguez, Illustrations by Carlos Vazquez
Curbstone Press, 1997
América lives in the rough Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, but her story neither begins nor ends there. Her daily life involves navigations around language barriers, poverty and racism. When one of her teachers calls her “illegal” she wonders how a person who is Mixtec (a culture that pre-dates European colonization) could be illegal in the Americas. Eventually she discovers the power of writing poetry as a way to address life’s challenges.
Find discussion questions and follow-up activities at Reading to Kids.
3.) Lesson Plan: Stereotypes vs. Statistics (4th-8th Grade)
There are many preconceptions and stereotypes about Latinos and how they have come to the United States. In this activity, students will examine some of the myths and compare these to actual demographic data. In this lesson from the PBS series, Latino Americans, a reflective pre-activity is followed by analysis of statistical graphs from the Pew Research Center.
Get on the Bus- Education Guide Page 9 For more information contact
The Freedom Rides
The Freedom Rides of 1961, largely shaped through activist youth, proved to be a crucial chapter in the story of Civil Rights. This series of 9 video/lessons from the award-winning history program American Experience, examine the Freedom Rides from the perspectives of young activists and witnesses, as well as the historical and political context of the Freedom Rides, and the inspiration for nonviolent action during the Civil Rights Movement. American Experience: Freedom Riders lessons at PBS LearningMedia.
Freedom Riders: The Governor
Freedom Riders: The Student Leader
Freedom Riders: Fresh Troops
Freedom Riders: The Inspiration
Freedom Riders: Freedom Riders Challenge Segregation
Freedom Riders: The Young Witness
Freedom Riders: The Tactic
Freedom Riders: Freedom Riders Create Change
Freedom Riders: The Exchange Student
Get on the Bus- Education Guide Page 10 For more information contact
6th - 12th Grade Activities Immigration 1.) Video & Lesson: Gustavo’s Story: Undocumented Status How does can undocumented status impact your academic and social life? Students meet contemporary Georgia teen, Gustavo Madrigal, who is undocumented. After learning about his story, students further investigate factors impacting undocumented youth and then create public awareness and social media content to educate others on the issues, using the Lesson Plan. 2.) Lesson Plan: Stereotypes vs. Statistics (9th – 12th Grade) There are many preconceptions and stereotypes about Latinos and how they have come to the United States. In this activity, students will examine some of the myths and compare these to actual demographic data. A reflective pre-activity is followed by analysis of statistical graphs from the Pew Research Center. 3.) Lesson Plan: Digging at the Roots of Your Family Tree
In this activity drawing on material from the PBS series, Latino Americans, students reflect on their own family’s arrival to the U.S. by filling in a family tree of as many generations as possible. Students research and fill in as much information as possible on the names and birthplaces of themselves, their parents, grandparents and so on. Next, they plot the names and birthplaces on a world map. More important than establishing the exact detail of their family tree is the process of understanding the migration/settlement story of those that came before them. Students complete reflective questions that compare and contrast their family’s story of arrival with the rich arrival stories of characters from the documentary. Two extensions are available.
The Freedom Rides
The Freedom Rides of 1961, largely shaped through activist youth, proved to be a crucial chapter in the story of Civil Rights. This series of 9 video/lessons from the award-winning history program American Experience, examine the Freedom Rides from the perspectives of young activists and witnesses, as well as the historical and political context of the Freedom Rides, and the inspiration for nonviolent action during the Civil Rights Movement. American Experience: Freedom Riders lessons at PBS LearningMedia.
Freedom Riders: The Governor
Freedom Riders: The Student Leader
Freedom Riders: Fresh Troops
Freedom Riders: The Inspiration
Freedom Riders: Freedom Riders Challenge Segregation
Freedom Riders: The Young Witness
Freedom Riders: The Tactic
Freedom Riders: Freedom Riders Create Change
Freedom Riders: The Exchange Student
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Acknowledgements Get on the Bus is a Broadway Center production and originally toured in January/February 2016. Original production credits are as follows:
Written Robin Jacobson and Milo Mowery
Directed by Katie Lappier, Broadway Center Associate Director of Education
Sound Score and Music by Gabriel McPherson
Rehearsal Advisor: Cristina Martinez-Montano, University of Washington Tacoma student majoring in Social Welfare, mentor in LEAP program
Produced by Katie Lappier, Associate Director of Education
Presented with the leadership of David Fischer, Broadway Center Executive Director
Original performing ensemble included Gabriella Aleman, LaNita Hudson, Deanna Martinez and Jordan Michael Whidbey the tour will reach over youth, teachers and families at 17 schools and 3 community events over 3 weeks
Production staff, Marsha Walner and Royce Baer
Education Guide content by Antonio Gómez, with Katie Lappier and Marsha Walner
The Get on the Bus Education Guide is available at the Broadway Center Education website at www.broadwaycenter.org under the education tab.
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Resources & References CHILDREN’S BOOKS
América Is Her Name Luís J. Rodríguez Recommended: 4 - 6 Coming to America: The Story of Immigration By Betsy Maestro Recommended: PreK-3 From North to South: Del norte al sur René Colato Laínez Recommended: K – 5 Freedom Summer Deborah Wiles Recommended: K – 6 Hannah Is My Name Belle Yang Recommended: K-5 Here I Am Patti Kim Recommended: K-5 I’m New Here Anne Sibley O’Brien (available at Tacoma Public Library) Recommended: K-4 Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation Edwidge Danticat Recommended: K-4 The Other Side Jaqueline Woodson Recommended: K – 6
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WEB RESOURCES PBS LearningMedia
www.pbslearningmedia.org Rethinking Schools
www.rethinkingschools.org American Experience: Freedom Riders
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/ Read, Write, Think
www.readwritethink.org Immigration Resources for Teachers
http://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/publications/yl/2202/2202027.pdf
Lee & Low Books
www.leeandlow.com
