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Adapting "Danger of a Single Story" in a New School and Setting

Christopher Barber

Greetings, all!

After a lot of paperwork over the summer and some exciting (read: stressful!) moving I am now writing this post from my new apartment in the Nansha District of Guangzhou, China! I've been fortunate enough to take a position teaching Social Studies I and II (9th and 10th grades, respectively) at Nansha College Preparatory Academy, where Chinese students continue their secondary studies in a standards-based and English-immersive environment. This, of course, presents many challenges related to language proficiency, particularly at the beginning of the year (students return next week!).

I've long been a fan of Chimamanda Adichie's Danger of a Single Story talk and have found it to be particularly effective for students to embrace some core concepts of historical thinking. The challenge I find myself facing this year is that it is far too much: at nearly 19 minutes long it isn't really feasible to have the freshman year students watch it and expect them to comprehend much; overall, most will be very new to English and still be in need of much strong scaffolding.

So, with that limitation in mind, I turn to the OER Community: what alternatives or supplements have you used that still accomplish the same ends as Danger of a Single Story with less language fluency demands? Has anyone else been in a similar position before?

   

  • Hi  , congratulations on the new position! It sounds like an amazing opportunity!

    It's funny you should bring this activity up today because I just finished showing the TED Talk to my 3 classes of 9th grade World History students. I agree that the length of the video and the complexity of some of the topics can be challenging for students, especially 9th graders new to English. 

    Since I show the video so early in the year, I use it as a bit of a diagnostic tool--I am able to get a sense of their frustration tolerance with a complex text right off the bat and I let them struggle a little to see what they can do independently before helping. I gave students this handout to guide them through the activity today. The opening question was helpful for activating prior familiarity with the concept. A lot of students used courtrooms and fights as examples of a situations where a single story would be especially dangerous. I then showed the video straight through without stopping and asked them to record examples Adichie uses throughout her talk. I used to stop frequently to explain but now I think that may have impeded students' understanding of the talk as a whole--for my purposes, I don't really need them to understand everything she talks about right now. We'll return to the video and its main ideas throughout the entire year. For the chart, they worked in partners first and then we went through it together. We had interesting conversations about the distinctions between identity and stereotypes. 

    For your students, maybe showing portions of the video could be helpful. I especially like Adichie's anecdote about her American roommate and her trip to Mexico. Either of those examples could be dug into pretty deeply and would lead students to a pretty solid understanding of the danger of a single story. Additionally, the TED website has transcripts in a bunch of different languages so your students could also read portions in English and another language as needed.

  • in reply to Erin Cunningham

     That's a good call on the TED website; I'd completely forgotten they offer multi-lingual transcripts and it does look like they have Simplified Chinese on there (which will save our EAL and TA team considerable translation time!). I also like your handout so I'll bring it up in our planning meeting later today. Thanks for the ideas!

  • Congratulations  !  I intend for this response to be helpful but I may be making assumptions that are way off base.  I imagine your students may have a single story to explain you or maybe you don't have a full understanding of them.  You could do something like two truths and a lie.  Maybe do the same with parts of her video, the section about her roommate comes to mind.  What troubles come when we make assumptions about each other?   Maybe students could consider what parts of their story might interest or surprise you.  Or you could share that type of info. about yourself or your colleagues and make a similar point.  I am really hopeful you share what happens.  

  • Congrats on the new position  ! That's super exciting. 

    I'm also a fan of the text/video - and often find myself in a similar position each year because my students often speak Spanish, Chinese and Arabic as their first languages. A lot is lost especially as the talk drags on a bit. 

    I echo what Erin mentioned - it's very early in the year so it's also a good litmus test for how students manage with complex text and ideas. And at least in my experience, since it's the beginning of the year, they're less likely to rebel and roll their eyes. Laughing 

    Here were my scaffolding questions if they're helpful: 

    The Danger of the Single Story: 

    1. Why did it matter that Fide’s brother had made a beautiful patterned basket? How did that affect Adichie’s understanding of the story of Fide’s family? (4:04)
    2. What expectations did Adichie’s roommate have about Nigeria and Africa more broadly? According to Adichie, what gave her roommate these expectations? How does it relate to Adichie’s previous point about the story of Fide’s family? (6:26)
    3. What did Adichie witness during her trip to Guadalajara that surprised her? Why was it surprising to her? What did this make her realize? (9:29)
    4. What, according to Adichie, is the problem with stereotypes? (14:24)

    And then closer... 

    Summary:  Think and Reflect

    • What is the danger of the single story?
    • Is there a single story about yourself, your family, or your culture that you believe should be told differently? 

    I think the next big question is something I've struggled with throughout the years which is how to go next level and keep the Danger of the Single Story theme alive throughout the course of the year. I'd like it to be as pressing and relevant in March as it is in September... 

  • I agree with all of the suggestions and to add another tool, if you are using Google Slides, you can insert video CLIPS form YouTube.  

    I like using thinking prompts & scaffolding questions, like  mentioned.  

    When inserting the video, you can select starting & ending points.   Here is a link to an example of how I trim down through Google Slides.

    https://bit.ly/InsertVideoGoogleSlides

    Total run time <  ~10 minutes

    clip slide 3 : 0:11 - 2:58
    clip slide 6 : 2:58 - 4:11
    clip slide 9 : 6:05 - 7:18
    clip slide 13 : 9:37 - 11:56
    clip slide 15 : 17:38 - 18:34

  • in reply to Petra Borchert

    No luck with Google Slides, unfortunately, because China bans Google (the school wifi uses a VPN but I've learned not to assume it'll work 100% of the time). It may work with PowerPoint, though. I'll play around with it.

  • in reply to Eric Schulz

    The most likely outcome is that we end up not doing the video at all this year, unfortunately, but I'll certainly update once I know for sure in either case!

  • in reply to Adam Esrig

    Good stuff here and I'll certainly bring it up tomorrow during our common planning time! Thanks!

  • in reply to Christopher Barber

    Oh! I had not put two & two together.  You did mention that you are in China. I know that PowerPoint has a similar feature, but needs a bit more fiddling with if pulling from YouTube --- but again government restrictions to consider. 

  • in reply to Erin Cunningham

    I am using the handout.  Love it.  

    These are the examples of a single story I have identified but I know the working isn't right.  Can you all be my AI and help me improve it?  

    1.  Childhood- English books represent all people
    2. Middle Class/Poverty. Poor people lack talent
    3. University/Africans Carey African is a catastrophe.
    4. African Authenticity. Africans are not like Americans
    5. Mexico?Immigrants. All immigrants are in trouble
    6. Characters-All people from the country have the same flaws as characters in books about that country.
    7. All writers had bad childhoods