new teacher profiles
Taking the initiative
Jan 31, 2008 3:48 PM
New Teacher’s award-winning curriculum explores slavery in the U.S.
Anayah Barney engages students Barrington Black (right) and Riccardo Roman in her classroom at Bushwick Community HS.
When Anayah Barney began teaching her high school students about the history of American slavery, she knew she had her work cut out for her.
“They asked me what the president of the United States had to say about slavery back then! That’s when I knew they had no understanding that slavery was an economic and political system,” the English and special education teacher said.
So what’s a new teacher to do?
Design her own curriculum, of course. An award-winning curriculum, as it turned out. Exciting, in-depth, alive.
Barney, who works at Bushwick Community HS in Brooklyn, created the curriculum last year when she was a brand new teacher at ACORN HS for Social Justice.
Have curriculum, will travel. Now she’s teaching the two-month-long standards-based unit at Bushwick. “Exploring the Narrative of an Enslaved America,” rich with activities, vocabulary and critical thinking, examines the role of literacy in Frederick Douglass’ fight to gain freedom.
It all began when Barney took a Teachers Network course on adolescent literacy.
“As part of the course we had to develop a unit and I used what I learned to develop the practical elements of the course. You’re asked to submit a unit or lesson plan for possible publication on the Web site,” said Barney, who in addition to teaching is the head of her school’s special ed department, handles all the Individualized Education Program coordination and is designing a reading intervention program.
Not only was the curriculum published on the site, it was one of three award-winning lesson plans cited at Teacher Network’s annual grants and awards ceremony on Nov. 20 in the category of “By New Teachers, For New Teachers.” [See page 28 for coverage of the event.]
“I wanted to make sure that my students had a deeper historical understanding of chattel slavery in their country, and what that meant, that the word chattel distinguishes it from other forms of slavery in that the slavery of African people and of the transatlantic slave trade denigrated human beings to property,” she said.
The curriculum starts with students reading the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” for its historical value, then analyzing the role of education as a tool of freedom for Douglass.
“When I came to the end of the curriculum last year at ACORN, it culminated with a field trip to the Chester County Historical Society in Pennsylvania, where the students did interactive work on understanding slavery local to the area, seeing where slaves were kept and places where events happened,” she said. “They read primary source documents from formerly enslaved Africans who ran the Underground Railroad and got to see a local church that was a stop on the Underground Railroad.”
The intrepid Barney had another thing in mind in addition to designing creative ways to teach literacy and history to mixed-ability students when she developed her curriculum.
“A lot of my African-American students felt ashamed that they had slaves as ancestors, all because they didn’t really understand it,” she said, adding that without an understanding of the sanctioned entrenched scourge that was slavery they might feel they were descended from people who were too weak to refuse being enslaved.
“Shame was an issue,” she said. “There’s a distancing. Except for saying that slavery happened, people distance themselves from it. I wanted my students to know that they should learn about their history and that they shouldn’t be ashamed of it.”
Judging by Barney’s own history, teaching seems to be as much a form of social activism as it is a fulfilling career that engages her love of working with kids. Before becoming a Teaching Fellow, the Chicago native was the director of a tutoring center in Brooklyn, then worked as a fund-raiser for a non-profit housing group.
The wish to publish her curriculum online for other teachers to share is vintage Barney. She’s a devoted member of a tight-knit staff at a small, successful school for hard-to-reach kids where true collaboration and information sharing are the coin of the realm. According to UFT Special Representative Anthony Sclafani, the staff at Bushwick Community HS has a strong sense of thinking out of the box and pulling hard together to make a radical difference in society via public education.
For a look at Barney’s out-of-the-box curriculum. No doubt Anayah Barney would be honored if any teacher anywhere used all or part of her curriculum
“If you want to push the envelope just do it,” she said. “Of course I’m speaking from the context of a school that supports me in doing what I want, but wherever you teach you have to remember why you’re in the profession, and the impact you can have, and let that be your fuel.”
