Summary of Project and Impact

The project ​The Power of Awareness ​is a project that is needed within my school because

it not only educates students, teachers, and other individuals, but it highly encourages awareness

for all stakeholders from the issue. The awareness of the project is not only from an English

perspective but from a historical point of view as well. The historical aspect of the project is

essential because students are able to learn about the history of racial discrimination, focusing on

the specific time period of the 1960s. The 1960s is a significant time period for this project

because it is the year that Harper Lee wrote ​To Kill a Mockingbird. ​It is through the character’s

point of view that events during the 1960s are portrayed. Students are able to learn the prejudices

and racial discrimination against specific groups of people such as African-Americans, from an

English novel, ​To Kill a Mockingbird.

One of the many goals of this project is to have students express their thoughts,

questions, comments, or concerns about the events that took place during the 1960s and

throughout the novel. This project encourages students to have discussions amongst their peers

and socialize about the places that students may have seen similar injustices or how the

information relates to their current life. Most importantly, students will have the opportunity to

think about possible solutions towards racial discrimination and prejudices towards specific

groups of people or individuals. Brainstorm ideas that can solve these types of problems and how

they can approach these situations if they ever come across them in school or outside of it. In

addition, a few learning activities in which students will participate during the proposed project

are the following: view digital images, make predictions, fill out a Vocabulary Map and

Synthesizing chart, express their opinions with their peers, create and deliver a Poster Board

presentation. Overall, the project impacts student learning and student engagement because
students are able to build upon their background knowledge and make predictions about the

images that they see before learning about what was actually happening in the images. Students

are also able to have discussions with their classmates about what they are learning and where

they’ve seen racial discrimination and prejudices occur in today’s community.

Student Impact

All students out of a classroom with twenty-two students should be directly impacted by

this project. Even though an expansion of the next two to three years, students will be able to

view the history of groups of individuals that were affected by false accusations because of their

ethnic group or other possible reasoning. Moreover, the project impacts learning because it

begins with images that demonstrate how certain individuals such as the “whites” would treat the

African-Americans during the 1960s. Students are later doing their own independent research in

order to broaden their knowledge on the research they discover. The project will impact

engagement and connection to content because students will connect and gather information that

relates to similar events that occurred in the novel ​To Kill a Mockingbird ​and the essential

question. Students will remain motivated throughout the project because they will have the

chance to look for their own research and explain with their peers how the information they

discovered connects with today’s society/community.

Teacher Impact

As a teacher, the potential impact that this project will have on me is that it will be as much of a

learning experience for my students as it will be for myself. I am hopeful that this project will

allow me to see what my students know about racial discrimination and prejudices through their
discussions, writing, and final presentation as a group. I will also be able to learn more about

what their thoughts are about certain topics and how they personally plan on combating certain

issues into possible solutions for their communities. Other teachers may be impacted by this

project because there are several aspects of this topic and project that can educate and inform

individuals about these issues. Specifically, history teachers may scrutinize similar or different

aspects of the project and focus on other elements from a separate point of view. The role of a

facilitator in this project will be to guide my students as much as possible so that they can learn

on their own. However, I will be present if any students have questions or feel confused about

the process of the project. I will make sure to make a note of how much my students are learning

by assessing them at the end of the activities, making sure to go over any questions that they may

have. As for the future, this project will definitely serve as a learning experience so that I can

improve and make any adjustments for future students.

Community Impact

Within this project, possible school to community connections that may be formed are

having an awareness of what it can mean to be discriminative towards certain groups of people

based on their race, gender, or age. In school and in the community of students, there are

students/people of different races, gender, and ages; students need to be able to understand

differences within their community and learn from one another. Other schools or districts may

benefit from this project because there may be a wide variety of student ethnic groups in school

or there may be less of an ethnic group in others. Nonetheless, students will be able to learn

about the different sources when they do their own independent research and share with their
peers what they learned. Most of the discussions that they have in class can also have outside of

the classroom.