Inquiry Design Model (IDM) Blueprint

Compelling
Is Diversity and Equality Possible in America?
Question
Students will be able to explain how the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment has often been cited to support the advancement of equality.
Compare how the Court has at times allowed the restriction of the rights of minority groups and at other times has protected those rights.
Standards and Provisions of the Bill of Rights are continually being interpreted to balance the power of government and the civil liberties of individuals.
Practices Tension between governmental power and individual rights has characterized American political development.
Ideals of American representative democracy are translated into reality in various ways.
Constitutional separation of powers was designed to protect liberty by dividing power and preventing both majority and minority tyranny.

Define what makes one group more privileged than another.

Staging the Try to define privilege on a sheet of paper; crate a selfie to benchmark answer.
Question Discuss definitions of students by focusing on what we like.
Compile a list of indicators of privilege in our community.
Complete a privilege chalk where students chalk in their level of privilege on a worksheet in class.

Supporting Supporting Supporting

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3

Do feelings towards racial inequality depend on where How was racial disparity coded into our
Is this exclusive to the black community?
and how you live? government?

Formative Formative Formative

Performance Task Performance Task Performance Task

1. Students identify where we may find

poverty in our community, and analyze
physical benchmarks of poverty.
2. Students hypothesize source of poverty,
work to describe in terms of clustered or
randomly distributed over a physical space.
3. Students examine four separate maps to
determine if physical location of poverty,
economic immobility, and minority
populations have historical roots.
4. Students evaluate trends in the data to
determine if there is a correlation between
location of minority populations today and
historical causes.
5. Students analyze role of Dillons rule and
incorporation of towns in this trend after
listening to Here and Now excerpt.
6. Students synthesize at least one barrier
within our community that reinforces
racial disparity in our community.
Featured Sources
7. Students will be given a series of
documents and asked to sort them into
thematic piles of their own choosing. As a
group, the students have to explain why
they sorted as they did and what trends 11. Students will redefine privilege in class.
they see in the information. 12. Students will evaluate sources of black
8. Students have to identify reasons why inequality.
and why not to improve racial disparity 13. Students will try to correlate these
through out time, and then analyze to see problems to the issues of other
if any of these reasons can be seen in communities, including white
todays debates. communities.
9. Students are to evaluate which parts of 14. Students will begin crafting interview
the Constitution and other laws frustrate questions for their informed action.
or facilitate improving racial disparity.
10. Students are to research another form
of racial, gender, or other kind of
disparity within America.
Featured Sources Featured Sources

Grant, Lee, and Swan, 2014

 Mean Average Temperature, US Map The Declaration of Independence
Concentration of Slave Populations, 1850 Excerpt from the Dredd Scott decision
Malaria in America, 1882-1935 Excerpts from various southern states
Industry & Agriculture in the North and supporting slavery
South, 1860 Excerpt from George Wallace's
African American Migration, 1915-1970 "Segregation Now" speech
Students will share resources they
Mapping the Green Book Excerpt from MLK's Letter from a
bring in.
Baltimore Red Line Map, 1937 Birmingham Jail
Teacher toolkit from StoryCorps The
Richmond Red Lining Interactive Website Malcolm Xs Ballot or the Bullet
Great Thanksgiving Listen
City-Data The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
Smithsonians African American History
Here and Now: Incorporated Cities The Black or Mississippi Codes
Museum
A Brief History of Jim Crow. Excerpt from Frederick Douglass's What
to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
Letter from WWII Servicemen
magazine Yank
Overview of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Review of the Civil Rights Act

Each inquiry ends with journal questions students are recording throughout the experience. The journals address the
Argument compelling question through multiple facets. Students will end the unit with the student-community member interview,
which is informed action.
Summative
Performance Task Additional resources are included below to add interest to the unit as necessary to the unit. Opposing views, including
an interview with the attorney responsible for Fisher v UT Austin are included to round out the discussion. Students are
Extension
given the option to post their interviews onto the StoryCorp website, to be cataloged at the American Folklife Project at
the Library of Congress.

Informed action for this project involves a degree of choice. Students are given options to work together in small teams or by themselves
to explore race and class issues in our community, state, and nation. Options all feature a research-based component, a written
Taking Informed
reflection, some kind of extended activity outside of class, and a short reflection. They may choose from an independent reading, an
Action
interview, a documentary short, an original work of art, or a visit to the Smithsonian African American Museum. They are to share this in
class, and involve others in their work.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (optional viewing)
Selma (optional viewing)
Ava DuVernays 13th on Netflix (optional viewing)
PBSs Many Rivers to Cross (optional viewing)
The Atlantics Enduring Myth of Black Criminality, Is the Criminal Justice System Broken?, and Mass Incarceration
Visualized.
William H. Freehlings The Road to Disunion: Seccessionists at Bay and Secessionists Triumphant (1990)
TaNehesi Coates Between the World and Me (2015)
J.D. Vances Hillbilly Elegy (2016)
Nancy Isenbergs White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)
Adam Cohens Imbeciles The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck (2016)
Bryan Stevensons Just Mercy (2014)
Additional Resources
Michelle Alexanders The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010)
Matthew Desmonds Evicted (2016)
Richard Reeves Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, and Why Thats A Problem (2017)
Britt Bennetts I Do Not Know What To Do With Well Meaning White People
John Blakes Its Time to Talk About Black Privilege
More Perfects The Imperfect Plaintiff (specifically the interview of Edward Blum)
Lori Lakin Hutchersons What I Told My White Friend.
Sh*t White Girls Say
Assault on Justice
Dr. King helps Zellner Escape
The Human Toll of Americas Public Defender Crisis
How Highways Wrecked American Cities

Grant, Lee, and Swan, 2014