No More “Us” and “Them”: Lessons and Activities to Promote Peer Respect. 2012. Written by Lesley Roessing. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 126 pages.
Genre: Teacher resource book
Focus: Encouraging diversity and multicultural sensitivity among middle school students (but fully adaptable for other age groups)
Special features: Exceptional bibliography of resources, numerous charts for in-class use
Summary
The beauty of diversity. The power of diversity. You’ll feel it when you read No More “Us” and “Them.” Lesley Roessing’s remarkable little book takes us into a world where mutual respect is transformed from a vague goal into touchable, do-able reality. At the beginning of the year, students are strangers, wary of one another, and viewing differences as assorted manifestations of that dreaded label “weird.” By the end of the year, they have become a community, unearthing commonalities they didn’t know existed, celebrating the very differences they once mistrusted or maligned, and recognizing the many ways in which diversity strengthens a group. This all sounds a little magical, granted. It’s anything but. In fact, it takes a lot of determination, hard work, organizational design, and heart to open students’ eyes so wide that they see their peers, the world, and indeed themselves differently. Teacher and author Lesley Roessing is more than up to the task. She understands how middle school students think and learn, and she charts a path other teachers can follow. Wait, though—will there be time for that in this age of standards and ongoing testing? Yes, actually. This isn’t a new curriculum. This is a way of teaching that integrates beautifully with existing curriculum, and helps middle school educators make the best use possible of current literature, discussions that teach and promote thinking skills, collaborative projects, and more. As you read Lesley’s story and devour her recommendations, you will think, this could be my story, too. I could do this. I can almost guarantee you’ll want to try. Because just think what students could accomplish if they left middle school curious and unafraid, looking forward to what new experiences, travels, and friendships could teach them.
Features to Notice
1. A foundational philosophy—and a stand against bullying. Roessing’s book opens with a strong Introduction. If you’re like many readers, you’ll be tempted to skip it so that you can get right to the heart of things. Don’t skip this intro. It lays the foundation for everything that follows—and remember, this book is short. You can easily read it in an evening, and that’s good because you may want to read it more than once. The Introduction explains the concept of “otherizing,” a word that now appears in the Urban Dictionary, and refers to the process of separating ourselves from those we perceive as different in some way—any way at all will do. Otherizing is important because it’s often the basis for bullying, a common problem in middle school (and at all levels, for that matter). According to the American Society for the Positive Care of Children, almost a third of all children between the ages of 12 and 18 admit to being bullied, and nearly two thirds have witnessed an incident. In some locations, as many as ten percent of students fear being bullied so much that they skip school to avoid it, and reports of headaches, stomach aches, loss of appetite, anxiety, aggression, and depression are common. So—how do we stop bullying? According to Roessing, we have several options. We can create a sense of community. We can encourage students themselves, when they witness bullying, to simply say, “Stop it.” Surprisingly, this simple act often brings an end to the bullying in as little as ten seconds. And we can stretch students’ sense of “us.” In other words, we help them to see that the group of “insiders” is not tiny and exclusive, as they’d thought, but expansive and inclusive, ultimately enfolding everyone—including them.
2. Practicality, activities, things to do Monday. Within the same Introduction, Roessing lays out her goal for the book: “This book endeavors to outline ideas for strategies and activities that can be integrated into existing curricula and in lessons that meet curricular standards” (xxii). Indeed. The book opens with ideas for helping students get to know one another better right on Day 1. It comes full circle by the end, closing with a complementary activity to help students see how far they’ve come. In between, Roessing shares a multitude of activities designed to build students’ awareness and increase their comfort in working with one another. You’ll notice that activities are not restricted to the language arts class. Math, science, PE, art, social studies, and history teachers are all encouraged to become involved. Those who like detail will appreciate the many lists and charts that make it easy to see just how to put a lesson together.
3. Getting started. As Lesley herself says, “A community is built cumulatively, one activity at a time” (xxiii). That said, guiding students in their “progression from seeing sameness to valuing diversity” seems like a big, bold task, to say the least. Where does a teacher begin? Roessing reminds us that we usually feel more comfortable around people with whom we have things in common. The problem is, we don’t always see those commonalities because they’re not obvious. We have to draw them out. Roessing begins with simple activities like sharing names and interests. Careful readers will notice that students do more than just list things they like to do. In small groups, they discuss sports, food, hobbies, people, school subjects they love or do not love, and more. Name signs stay on desks, so people can address one another in a personal, proper way. They get a sense that what they’re learning about their peers is important. It’s information to remember and to build on. Other introductory activities increase students’ knowledge of who is good at soccer or math, who can make homemade pasta or bread, who has visited New York, raises dogs, or can change a tire. Students learn things about one another they have never known. The introductory activities culminate with completion of “I Am” and “We Are” poetry, in which students share hopes, fears, anxieties, dreams, whatever they’re willing to put out there. Verbs can be changed, but the basic poetry format goes something like this (greatly shortened from Roessing’s original):
I am . . . an eighth grade student brand new to this school.
I wonder . . . if I’ll survive this year.
I hear . . . a voice in my head saying, “You’ll never pass math.”
I see . . . someone I’d like to make friends with, if only I weren’t so shy.
I want . . .
I pretend . . .
I worry . . .
I cry . . .
I understand . . .
I dream . . .
I try . . .
I am . . . Sara, an extraordinary eighth grader.
When students finish their poems, they engage in choral reading, reading selected lines they feel comfortable sharing. “Without actually pointing it out,” Roessing tells us, “the class can detect how much richer the poem is when most students have something different to say” (9). The journey has begun.
4. Building on similarities. The next few weeks are all about discovering more similarities. Roessing wisely calls on Homeroom teachers to provide, if possible, time for discussion of common interests—favorite films, games, foods, hobbies, classes, books, places to visit. Students can even play short card games or board games if the Homeroom period is long enough to permit it. In language arts classes, students compose poems for two voices, sharing personal thoughts about what they love or look forward to most (See pages 16-21 for elaborate examples of this). In math class, they create graphs to show such things as the percentage of students who prefer pepperoni pizza over mushroom or other toppings. In science class, students do a “what if” exercise, in which they imagine themselves as one element on the periodic table. Iron? Hydrogen? Or—they might imagine themselves as one planet in the universe. Mars? Venus? Jupiter? In a foreign language class, Roessing suggests exploring the origins of names, noticing for example that Sean, Evan, Ian, Juan, Hans, Giovanni, and Jean (along with many others) are all variants of “John.”
In social studies, students explore origins, giving them an opportunity to examine one another’s heritage. Lesley shares a poem titled “Back in the ‘Hood,” where “hood” refers both to her first neighborhood and to childhood itself. Her own example and those of two students—too long to reprint here—are stunning. Here’s my own—inspired by Lesley’s activity—just the first three stanzas:
I am from tag and tug-of-war,
Hide-and-seek with a babysitter I didn’t know was 80,
Building forts from construction scraps,
Skating on frozen ponds lit only by moonlight.
I am from birch trees plucked from swamps,
Fresh mowed grass and fragrant lilacs,
Running through sprinklers to cool off on hot days,
Late night movies and hot buttered popcorn.
I am from paddling canoes over northern lakes,
Cutting sturdy Christmas trees with numb fingers,
Riding horses over fields that knew no fences,
Licking homemade fudge from a wooden spoon . . .
Enough . . . This review isn’t about me. I’m including this smidgeon of poetry to make a point. Lesley’s exercises are simply irresistible. That, to me, is one of the overwhelming strengths of the book. As you read through her suggestions, and see the sample poems for two voices or the ’hood poems, you’ll find yourself—if you’re like me—drawn in, engaged, composing lines in your head even as you read. You’ll find yourself imagining the fun you will have doing these activities with your students, and sharing snapshots from your own world as you do so. By the way, Roessing suggests allowing ample time for this exploration of similarities: “Throughout the first months of the year, all classes can incorporate a few experiences that allow students to discover their similarities and, therefore, work together that much more effectively and collaboratively” (33).
5. A new metaphor. America, we’ve been told, is a melting pot. But is that the best metaphor for Twenty-First Century thinking? Roessing suggests that Oscar Handlin’s metaphor of America as an orchestra (from “America: A World of Difference,” 1986) may be more fitting. Chapter 3 explores this concept in some depth, showing ways of engaging students in the “orchestra” discussion by having them envision the composition of an orchestra and relating that vision to America’s population. An orchestra comprises numerous instruments, but together they make music that none could replicate alone. Many other metaphors are possible, too—America as a puzzle, bouillabaisse, painting, collage, crayon box, garden, and so on. Your students might come up with their own ideas, as well as their own notions of how they fit into the larger picture. Seeing America as a garden, one student imagined herself as a bee, another as a butterfly, another as a shrub sheltering the flowers from the sun. As Roessing so fittingly points out, America has grown remarkably in complexity since the melting pot metaphor first took hold: Our great grandparents may have shared one nationality, ethnicity, and religion, but we, their descendants, are typically of multiple nationalities, ethnicities, and religions (37).
6. Whole-class collaboration. Within a few weeks, students have introduced themselves to one another in several ways, and they’re getting to know one another—but to strengthen the bond, Roessing sets up ways for them to work together. Any complex whole-class project will work here, but the one she recommends is the Home Front Fair because it involves engaging multiple intelligences. Think about it. Students know one another the way you might know new neighbors who moved in a few weeks ago and share your passion for gardening and bridge. But maybe you don’t yet know whether they are musical, kinesthetic, visual and spatial, linguistic, or naturalists. Are they like Maya Angelou, Warren Buffet, Frank Lloyd Wright, Norah Jones, Steve Jobs—or Jane Goodall? Time to find out. The complexity of this project defies summation in a few words, but let me give you a few favorite highlights, and I’ll ask you to imagine the various things students learn from their participation—and the many, many standards that are addressed as they do so:
- The teacher provides a brief overview of how America contributed to World War II on the Home Front.
- With the teacher’s help, students explore the theory of multiple intelligences, based on Howard Gardner’s research.
- Students (using self-reflection and the Teele Inventory) determine their own strengths among possible kinds of intelligence. (For many, it is stunningly eye opening to discover strengths they never recognized in themselves when they looked on “intelligence” as a mysterious one-dimensional force.)
- To allow application of all intelligences, students construct a model Home Front in three parts: a USO canteen, a live radio broadcast, and a general store (all of which would have contributed in some way to America’s war effort in the early 1940s).
- The students form three groups, and assign roles based on their identified intelligences. For example, the board of directors might involve persons with interpersonal intelligence. Those with linguistic skills might write scripts or advertisements for the radio. The musically inclined would perform. Those with visual-spatial skills could be designers for the general store, while those with the math skills would manage the books.
- Over the next few weeks, students research their component of the Fair, preparing for a presentation to the larger community. This research involves multiple interviews along with reading. As Roessing states, “Everything created, worn, said, and done should be based on research and cited on note cards” so that it can be verified (44).The beauty of a complex project like this one is that it offers students opportunities to meet standards requirements across a broad spectrum of skills—research, group collaboration, knowledge of history, reading and writing, speaking and listening, technology, and more. In addition, students also learn that working as a team magnifies learning at every stage. And finally, as parents and other relatives visit the fair, provide interviews, or offer artifacts for display, the bond between school and community is strengthened immeasurably.
7. “Making stone soup.” Most of us have heard some version of the universal folk tale in which hungry visitors to a village beg for food, and finding none, proceed to boil stones in water to make stone soup. Gradually, each member of the village contributes something small—a carrot here, an onion there—until the stone soup turns into real soup. “When each person has something to add, no matter how little, it makes the end product superior” (p. 50). The Stone Soup tale is the basis for small-group collaboration, a concept embraced in many classrooms, and now in many workplaces as well, where employees are often assigned to teams for purposes of completing a project. The idea is not that everyone does a little of everything, but rather—like the stone soup villagers—that each person makes a significant contribution based what he or she does best.
Roessing outlines several options for small-group collaboration, including (my favorite) the design of a town, city, village, or hamlet of any type. Students determine the town’s size and location, map it, and lay out basics: industries, commercial enterprises, schools, hospitals, roadways, recreation centers, and so forth. Each student then assumes the role of a prominent member of the town, and creates an original short story with that member as a protagonist. Combining their individual stories, they build a book, with each student not only serving as a contributing author, but also taking on a specialized writing task—document designer, illustrator, dialogue coach, reviser, editor.
Other small group collaborative projects involve the creation of newspapers, podcasts, radio shows, and so forth. Small-group collaboration intensifies the mutual respect and interdependence that is established through whole-class collaboration. Students find that teamwork builds learning. Yes, there are times not to work together—during testing, for example. Students quickly learn to respect that. But teaming is not cheating. On the contrary, it is a simultaneously efficient and demanding approach to learning, in which everyone must contribute by speaking, listening, sharing knowledge, and coaching. No sitting on the sidelines. Desks in rows can encourage aloneness and silence. Desks in circles cannot.
8. The class where “Everyone is an expert.” Do you know your own students’ special areas of expertise? If you’re like most teachers, you can probably say yes regarding some of your students—but probably not all. Chapter 5 provides several fascinating ways to uncover students’ specialties. Oh, and as a teacher, you get to participate, too.
One first step is to fill out a personal survey, asking what you know a lot about with respect to things like—
- Hobbies and activities
- Books
- Movies and television
- Travel and places to visit
- Jobs
- Sports
- Foods
- Fitness
- Animals
. . . and more. Together, you and your students can brainstorm additions to this list. As Roessing has discovered, areas of expertise are unpredictable, to say the least: “In one classroom, a student showed ferrets in competitions; another was a skateboarding champion. The quiet girl in the back of the room had a black belt in karate, and two students had snakes as pets and now someone with whom to discuss the trials and tribulations of snake feeding” (62).
Expertise is sometimes highly focused. Roessing has discovered that students in a writing class like to know the go-to person for advice on something as precise as comma placement, effective use of a spell-check program, proofreading, crafting attention-getting leads, coming up with vivid details, or scanning the Web. In math class, there might be an expert in long division, square root calculation, graph interpretation, or a hundred other things. Parallel areas of expertise exists regarding any content area, and knowing them gives immeasurable self-esteem to the identified experts, while providing a built-in reason for others to seek them out.
9. Every Day Is Multicultural Day. Many schools have a Multicultural Day or Multicultural Week, when the customs, foods, clothing, and attributes of various cultures are celebrated. Roessing suggests, however, that by restricting celebration to just one day or week, instead of making it an ongoing part of the curriculum, we tend—however inadvertently—to emphasize the “otherness” of the very cultures we choose to focus on. She also points out that such celebrations often highlight differences rather than commonalities: We eat this; they eat that. She suggests that instead of having students bring in random foods from several cultures, it might be “more advantageous to have students make or bring in foods from different cultures that are similar and investigate the reason for the differences” (68). She cites Norah Dooley’s picture book series: Everybody Cooks Rice, Everybody Bakes Bread, Everybody Brings Noodles, and Everybody Serves Soup (all referenced in the accompanying bibliography).
Multicultural literature is a natural entree into a broader world. You will love (I did) Roessing’s proposed “diversity chart,” which helps students track the divergent literature they read by noting not only differences in race or ethnicity, but also diversity with respect to socioeconomic status, religion, exceptionality, geography, age, and more.
It’s no surprise that multicultural studies are not only for language arts. It’s vital for students to recognize the contributions made by various cultures to math, science, art, theater, music, sports, history, and other areas. As Roessing points out, “Young students tend to think that whatever they study originated in the United States and, unless they study the specific race or ethnicity of the inventor, by default he, or she, is a member of the predominant culture” (70). She goes on to cite just a few examples that probably not many students would correctly match up: coffee from Yemen, the calendar from Egypt, gunpowder, printing, and stirrups from China, dentistry from India.
Did you know that there are over 1,500 variants of the Cinderella tale from around the world? Roessing takes advantage of this dazzling fact by having students, in groups, read several variations of their choice and compare and contrast them using a wide range of criteria. Roessing’s detailed plan will guide you through this multi-faceted lesson that can culminate in something as simple as an oral presentation—or as complex as a scripted play involving stage and costume design. At the very least, students have a chance to see how certain motifs—strong heroine, impossible task, a social occasion (and the opportunity it provides!), wretched villains—are handled across various cultures.
In case you’re thinking that looking up 1,500 Cinderella variants will be a heady task, fear not. Roessing has done most of the work for you. They’re listed in a handy appendix that even categorizes them geographically, and includes some modern U.S. variations you may recognize, such as Prince Cinders by Babette Cole and Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson.
In this same wonderful chapter, you’ll find infinitely helpful guides to script writing and costume/prop design—just in case stage production is the favorite presentation mode for some of your students.
10. Many ways to read. Once upon a time, teachers assigned books and students read them. Everyone read the same book and answered the same questions—all posed by the teacher, who presumably knew the right questions to ask. Reading has changed significantly.
Though students still read some books as a class, they also read in small groups or with partners, often choosing books from a list. In addition, they read articles, short stories, poems, essays. And many come up with questions they believe are significant, and answer them by writing essays and stories of their own. Older students read or listen to picture books, recognizing that increasingly, selections from this genre are aimed at their age group. Discussions of issues like bullying or body image may spill over into health classes, while biographies may be discussed in history or math, and books detailing the struggles of disenfranchised groups may become part of the social studies curriculum.
The short but wonderful Chapter 8, titled “Reading for Respect,” shows how all these approaches can be integrated within one classroom—or across the curriculum. Consider how much understanding is gained when five members of a book club read different books on bullying, then discuss how various authors treat this subject. The richness of such discussion is impressive, and the resulting presentation to the class as a whole is infinitely more interesting for other students than hearing about one book in isolation.
If you haven’t tried working with book clubs, this chapter will offer some guidance to get you started, and best of all, Roessing also provides an incredibly complete bibliography of resources emphasizing the issues and topics covered in the book—“tolerance, alienation, fitting in, bullying, acceptance, body image, self-respect, multiculturalism, building community, and respecting diversity” (105). Resources are categorized: picture books, short stories, essays and poetry, novels, memoirs, nonfiction self-help, periodicals, and books about games. It’s an impressive, easy-to-use list.
11. Ending the year—and coming full circle. Lesley Roessing describes a classroom scene in which a student comes across a photograph of a young woman wearing a series of neck rings to stretch her neck. “That’s different,” the student remarks (67), and it is her use of the word different that is so striking. By the close of the year, teachers are more likely to hear words like different, interesting, unusual or unique—in place of the pejorative weird. The former are words that convey respect. As we grow more respectful of others, we notice differences in a way that piques our curiosity and inspires us to learn more—instead of tempting us to ridicule what seems foreign or unexpected. How fitting that Roessing suggests closing this year of learning with activities that focus on respect.
The first is a favorite of mine, one I have done with both students and adults, always with remarkable and sometimes surprising results. Students choose an artifact from home that has special meaning for them and tell the story that goes with this artifact—its importance, origin, or meaning in their lives. Stories are translated into written form, and many are illustrated or even augmented by video. Though many students choose artifacts from ancestors or other cultures, some choose something as simple and basic as a stuffed animal or baby blanket. And here’s what’s interesting. Such trust has been built within this community that an object like a baby blanket is treated with the same respect as a rare sculpture. What matters is the student—and that student’s choice. Which brings us to the second closure activity . . .
The Ubuntu Project is indeed special, and I haven’t space here to even begin to do it justice. (As the saying goes, you must read the book.) According to a justice from the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Ubuntu “recognizes a person’s status as a human being, entitled to unconditional respect, dignity, value and acceptance from the members of the community such person happens to be part of” (p. 119). This definition gives us a beginning, but the concept of Ubuntu really defies translation. It is a fluid combination of respect, reverence, humaneness, and cultural appreciation.
The project, fittingly, asks students to read several pieces that support this philosophy, then provide their own personal interpretations of Ubuntu. They may do this through music, song, drama, poetry, painting, sculpture, or any medium other than writing. The emphasis is on creativity—and risk. They are to take a chance, step away from safety, and trust that their community of learners will receive their interpretation with understanding.
Students also finish their year with a “We Are” poem that echoes the “I Am” poem written so long ago before they began this journey of abandoning otherizing and embracing respect. In addition, together they complete a capstone project, some work of art to leave at the school—a mosaic, mural, collage, etc. By this time, they have a lot to say.
Closing thoughts . . . I cannot recommend this book enough. I found it inspiring. Though tiny, it is filled with wisdom and insights on life, on teaching well, on making the most of meaningful literature, and on creating a culture based on respect within any classroom. What I could not help noticing is the way in which the activities presented here change not only external behavior, but the internal feelings of the players. I don’t want to say the students became different people because I don’t believe that’s true. Rather, I think they become what is possible, their best selves, unleashing the compassion, understanding, and humanity that was always there. I encourage you to spend time with this book. You’ll want to make Ubuntu part of your classroom, too.
About the author . . .
Lesley Roessing was a middle school teacher for over twenty years. She is now Senior Lecturer in the College of Education and Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project at Armstrong State University in Savannah and serves as Editor of Connections, the GCTE journal. Lesley has written four books for teachers: The Write to Read: Response Journals that Increase Comprehension, No More “Us” and “Them”: Classroom Lessons and Activities that Promote Peer Respect, Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed—The Sentences They Saved, and Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically and Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core as well as articles for NCTE, ALAN, AMLE, and NWP. She works with K-12 pre-service and in-service teachers.
Coming up on Gurus . . .
Coming up next, Jeff will be offering his insights regarding a book titled In the Best Interest of Students: Staying True to What Works in the ELA Classroom by Kelly Gallagher.
As you may have noticed, we’re featuring nonfiction writing this fall, and Vicki will be posting several reviews of incredible new nonfiction books for students throughout the fall.
As always, thanks for stopping by, and please continue to let your friends know about us, too. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter. And remember . . . to set up your very own writing workshop or a fun classroom demo involving your own students, call us at 503-579-3034. Give every child a voice.
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