Wakanda may not be a real place but thanks to the new Black Panther movie, Africa’s important history is being taught to kids around the globe.
The unprecedented popularity of Black Panther has spurred some international educators to wonder how to channel the excitement into their classrooms.
Enter the Wakanda curriculum… a meticulously crafted and standards-aligned resource, ready to help meaningfully continue conversations after the credits roll.
Tess Raser, a 6th-grade teacher at the Dulles School of Excellence on Chicago’s South Side, created the “Wakanda Curriculum,” an in-depth lesson plan designed to help students “engage more critically and thoughtfully with the film,” Blavity reported.
Raser, 28, was moved by the Marvel film and its representation of Black folks after viewing it. This pride, along with her conversations with kids about the movie, drove her to create the curriculum for students in grades five through eight. It also works for high school students, she said.
“I created the curriculum for a couple of reasons,” Raser explained to Blavity in a detailed interview.
“For starters, I loved the movie but left with critiques as well, and spent most of the weekend engaging in conversations in regards to those critiques and my friends’ analysis of the film and its characters. I was excited thinking about my students having those conversations as well.”
Broken up into two sections, pre and post-viewing, the curriculum opens with two lessons vital to understanding the films undertones — “The Legacy of Colonialism in the African Continent” and “The Legacy of Slavery in the United States.”
After learning about the definition of colonialism, students dive into the Transatlantic slave trade, “Colonialism’s long-lasting effects,” and “Slavery’s legacy today.” These are just building blocks meant to get students to understand how slavery and colonialism facilitated “Global Anti-Blackness,” before they start discussing “African Cultural Representation in Black Panther.”
The curriculum comes equipped with various classroom activities meant to illustrate the wiles of colonialism on “a very basic and less violent level”
On Tuesday, Raser began teaching the curriculum, which also acts as a handy guide to help parents talk with their kids about the groundbreaking film.
“I think representation is essential, and so on a superficial level, the film aesthetically — an almost all dark-skinned Black cast, utilizing costumes, hairstyles, references from across the diaspora — is powerful.
Then, I began to think about black feminism in the film, the complexities of the characters and how relatable they are. There’s so much.”
The curriculum has been well-received by students, she added, including many kids who have really taken to the exciting world of Wakanda.
Get the entire FREE curriculum by clicking here to visit Google Docs.
by 