Making Change: Speeches, Essays, and Articles (2020)

Notes

• In today’s class, students will read about and then provide a brief presentation introducing a specific teenage activist.  Each student should be assigned a different activist to read and present about. If you only have a short amount of time, provide students with information about their activist (see suggested resources) or have them do quick online research.
• First, have students introduce the class to their activist.
• Next, have students walk around the room “meeting” other activists. In each meeting, students should try to determine how their activists might learn from one another or even work together. What commonalities do they have? Do the issues they are standing up for intersect in any way? What can they learn from the actions the other activist has taken? 
• Remind students that in every social movement we have studied, we have seen that movements are successful only when many people join together. 
• Some connections will be clearer than others, and obviously not all social movements overlap in meaningful ways. Still, by the end of the class, students should write down at least two “partnerships” they think would benefit their activist and why that partnership would be beneficial to both. 
• If time allows, have several pairs of students come up and present to the class about why they think their activists’ work overlaps and why they could benefit from working together.