May Day!

Hello, All!

As a reminder, here are the essential questions that will inform this blog post:

• How do we learn in community? 
• How do we balance the desire to share work with a desire to resist passive resource sharing/collection? 
• How can we support educators and school leaders to frame and facilitate culturally responsive, rigorous curriculum?

Yesterday, April 24, marked 10 years since the devastating Rana Factory Collapse in Bangladesh. 

Next Monday, May 1, is May Day, a day that commemorates the struggles and gains made by workers and the labor movement.

Here are some questions you might ask your students, which can be adapted for all ages and subjects, using Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s Culturally & Historically Responsive Education Framework:

IDENTITY

• What types of work and workers do you encounter in your daily life? (examples: the jobs your family members hold, the workers you interact with at stores, at school, etc.) 
• Who is a “worker”?

SKILLS

• What do the ways different publications talk about labor tell us?
• What skills do “skilled” or “unskilled” workers have? 
• Can you write from the perspective of different workers?

INTELLECT

• When you think of “work,” what comes to mind?
• Do you imagine physical labor only? 
• What is the history of labor in our country? 
• How does the story told in the Lange photograph differ from the conditions farmworkers faced during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic?
•  When you think of "skilled" and "unskilled" labor, who comes to mind in each? What assumptions do we make? What is the relationship between our ideas of "skill" and class?

CRITICALITY 

• What is the goal of work? How does this differ from other cultures or national contexts? 
• What kind of work is invisible? Why do you think it is hard to see?
• Who is an “essential worker”? Who decided this?
• What current worker movements are happening in our world, our country, our state? 
• How do identities like gender, race, and class, inform what we saw as valuable work?
• What do you know about organized labor, like unions? Who has been excluded from unions?
• Are teachers at our school in a union? What about administrators? What about support staff? 
• What labor made your most recent meal possible? Your most recent outfit? Your day’s activities? 

JOY 

• How have working people built community and support amidst challenges?
• What examples of honor or pride in one’s work do you see?
• Do you ever feel happiness, joy, or “flow,” when doing work? What/when?

Further resources, shared by educator/organizer Maya Suzuki Daniels :  

• May Day 2020 Roundup
• Working Class in Cinema
• IWD Lesson Resources