Making Connections: The Indian Independence Movement, Civil Rights Movement and the Black Lives Matter Movement
A story from Day Three of Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools.
By Laura Fuchs (high school teacher)
On Tuesday, students were able to make connections between our world history content and Black Lives Matter movement today.
We are currently studying the Indian Independence Movement and Partition. This allowed us to relate the Civil Rights Movement's peaceful methods to Gandhi's Salt March and history. From there students were able to evaluate the principles of the Black Lives Matter movement and compare those to the writings of Gandhi.
On Wednesday, students continued reading about the Indian Independence Movement and then compared and contrasted the methods used in India to the myriad of Civil Rights Movement leaders we have had in the United States. Students read the Resistance 101 biographies and then went around the room interviewing each other to learn about people who have made a change in our history. After that they related it back to the content they have been learning about with India.
These lessons helped the students see the connections between what happens in other countries and what happens right here in Washington, D.C.
I really enjoyed making these connections and was inspired to do it thanks to BLM at Schools Week of Action. In the past I would have had the students make informal connections, but this really inspired me to fully incorporate it in to our units and spend half the period on each topic.