Unit Summary
Jazz Jennings is a well-known transgender activist. Born biologically male, Jazz socially transitioned to female at the age of five with the support of her family. In 2006, when Jazz was just six years old, her family shared their story in an interview with Barbara Walters on 20/20, which opened up a national conversation around the existence and experiences of transgender youth. Since then, Jazz has remained in the public eye, sharing her life and promoting transgender rights through many forms of media, including a picture book for young children, numerous interviews, a reality TV show, and a memoir.
Jazz’s memoir, Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen, introduces students to this charismatic young woman whom Time Magazine has named as one of “The 25 Most Influential Teens” and Huffington Post one of the “14 Most Fearless Teens.” Students will be drawn in by Jazz’s conversational tone, her matter-of-fact descriptions of personal details of her life as a young transgender person, the challenges and discrimination she has faced, and her inspirational message about accepting yourself and standing up for others. This unit introduces students to the unique and universal challenges faced by one transgender girl. Additionally, students will read several nonfiction articles about issues facing transgender and other LGBTQ people, including participation in youth sports, bullying, and violence. They will also watch a number of videos. In addition to developing students’ understanding of complex contemporary issues, these articles provide students the opportunity to think critically about author’s purpose and point of view, as well as thinking about the way that two different texts/videos present the same information, supplementing and/or challenging one another.
Being Jazz is an essential part of the curriculum because it is the only English unit in our middle school curriculum to address contemporary questions about gender identity. Students will have a window into the experience of a person who was born into the wrong body and the controversies that surround the transgender movement. According to a recent Human Rights Campaign survey, LGBTQ students “report being harassed at school—both verbally and physically—at twice the rate of non-LGBT youth.” With more frequent bullying, LGBTQ students are also more likely to have lower educational outcomes (“Creating an LGBT-inclusive School Climate” by Teaching Tolerance). This Being Jazz unit is an effort to create a supportive and safe school environment by representing LGBTQ students in the curriculum to affirm their identities and foster awareness for all students.
In the first writing task of this unit, students will perform independent research for the first time this year, specifically on the topic of a trailblazing athlete. They will look for sources online, determine whether these sources seem trustworthy, and learn how to complete appropriate citations. (They will include specific facts about the athlete, including domain-specific vocabulary (related to the athlete’s specific sport, etc). The second task is a short one and builds directly on the previous day’s reading lesson. Public discourse around bullying has been growing in recent years, and students will certainly have opinions on the topic, either from their own experiences or exposure in the media. Although students have written “argumentative” essays in which they make an analytical claim related to a text, his is the first opportunity for students to practice their persuasive writing skills. They will use the skills they have developed in analyzing the way that Jazz Jennings illustrates ideas in her text and incorporate facts, statistics, and anecdotes into their writing. The final task in this unit introduces students to the genre of memoir. Through analysis of specific stories and incidents in Being Jazz, students will begin to think about the way authors use structure to create logical story structures (W.6.3.A), complete with details and dialogue (W.6.3.B; W.6.3.D), and create resolution for readers (W.6.3.E). This is an opportunity for students to think about their own lives and their own capacity to make change in the world through their stories. This task has a number of opportunities built in for peer-to-peer feedback (W.6.5) and to strengthen students’ skills with confident presentation (SL.6.4).