This unit is for a 12th grade International Issues Senior Seminar elective at a mid-sized public high school in New Haven, Connecticut. Most students in this class are enrolled in the Law & Politics Pathway where they took Contemporary Law in 10th grade and Constitutional Law in 11th grade. As a result of this course of study and their experience with student-centered, anti-racist and transformative pedagogy in these classes, they are ready for the continued embedding and examination of critical race theory in their learning. In addition, they expect continued engagement through discussion and performance-based assessment. As a result of the international focus, the focus on current events, and the multiple opportunities for student choice, students are motivated to participate, research, and discuss topics related to capitalism, patriarchy, racism & imperialism, climate crisis, and war. However, as a result of the intensity, trauma, and violence associated with these critical issues, it is crucial to also center and celebrate the resistance movements that consistently respond to toxic oppression and recreate lasting worlds of justice, healing, and peace. This unit focuses on dominant narratives and counternarratives to support students’ analysis of critical issues and subsequent envisioning of another possible world.

This unit is designed for middle-school students in the Content Area of Visual Art focusing on Identity Politics, Voice, Critical Race Theory, Activism and Social Justice. The unit is accessible for modification and inclusion of all grade levels. Anti-Bias and Anti-Racist training interwoven with Social-Emotional Identification and Self-Care gives students skills and guidance to navigate humanity in the twenty-first century. The objective of the unit is for students to gain critical awareness of the self in the past, present, and future. Students will be able to project and assist in their vocality and aspirations for the self and the collective. Students will explore critical race theory and identity politics in relation to the self and their visual art practice. Through research and application, students will consolidate, frame, and expand their visual thinking to be full of self-determination and self-respect.1 Through critical analysis, students will activate their critical conscience and create a voice that is written, spoken, and established through visual representation. This visual art practice will give students a voice for change and act as a facilitator to sustain all paths of liberation.

This unit centers around two pedagogical ideas within the context of the secondary English classroom. The first is that by sharpening skills of critical analysis, students can use those skills across multiple disciplines and in their lives outside of school. The second is that students need more opportunities to respond to texts through the creation of their own texts. Drawing from work that I do in my own classroom, the structure of this YNHTI Seminar led by Dr. Ferguson, and changes happening in college-level composition courses like the First Year Writing course at UCONN, this unit asks students to apply skills of critical analysis to three visual texts by Clotilde Jimenez and then respond to those texts by composing a creative text of their own. Intended to be a unit done with students in the beginning stages of the school year, this unit will provide a foundation for visual literacy skills that can be put to use in other arenas of study both in the English classroom and in other classes throughout the rest of the academic year. For this unit, the three visual texts are all by the artist Clotilde Jimenez, an artist who works primarily in mixed media collage.