I know we don't have school today, but why?

I don't have a lot of free time in my teaching day, but I was determined to fit in some Martin Luther King Jr. history. Throughout graduate school, I read about the need to open up children's eyes to debate and the unfairness of the world; to give them the ability to think for themselves. But as I have been teaching, one rarely finds time to talk about the "important stuff".

I began by reading a really powerful book, My Uncle Martin's words for America, written from the perspective of Dr. King's niece. I naively assumed my students would be familiar with Dr. King, but although most knew we were off school on Monday, few actually knew why. It was really amazing to get kids talking about how "unfair" and "rude" it was to segregate. I had students speaking up, saying that if MLK Jr. hadn't changed things, certain kids wouldn't even be in our class.

I expanded the topic of civil rights to not only African Americans, but to all cultures, genders and ultimately people. I repeated the famous Martin Luther King Jr. quote, "An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" and we had an enlightening conversation about what it meant. It was so great seeing how riled up my kids got about the injustices of America.

To continue this topic, I am finishing my book tomorrow and am having the students pick one of three writing prompts (taken from the following blog:  The 2nd grade surpise), a letter to MLK Jr., "If you could ask MLK Jr. something, what would it be?" and "If I could change the World, I would...". I am excited to read their responses.