Every year I teach Desiree’s Baby. It’s my favorite short story to teach students; the look of shock on their faces at the end… it’s awesome.
The first year I taught it, I was shocked at how little the kids knew about race. A lot of my students know what race FEELS like: they know what it feels like when someone underestimates them because of the color of their skin, they know what it feels like to see people praise a person who villainizes them, they know what it feels like to grow up having a different experience than the ones they see in the shows they watch. But a lot of them don’t KNOW race: the history, the science, the misconceptions.
Enter my favorite Webquest thanks to PBS!
Race: The Power of Illusion is an interactive website that explains almost everything you could ever want to know about the idea of race. And it was just what I needed to get my point across in as little time as possible.
I needed the students to understand that race is just a construct, and that a person’s skin color does not denote their race. So I created a guided questioning worksheet that is sectioned off based on the sections that are available on the website.
A good chunk of kids were so fascinated that they browsed other parts of the site outside of their required tasks.
It worked as a great 2 day webquest activity. If you’re interested in the worksheet I created to go with the site, click here.
