FILM & CURRICULUM: 'When The Levees Broke' Curriculum

[Ryan Goble]

If you haven't put the five hours aside to watch Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke it is must see viewing.

What is even better is that the folks at Teachers College put together a massive curriculum for the film:

From www.teachingthelevees.org:

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Talking about race and class in America has never been easy. The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina provides an opportunity to renew the American conversation on this subject—a challenging agenda for our society today. “It’s very hard to pierce through the public consciousness and to do a sustained public education campaign in the absence of some great conflict,” President Clinton observed when launching his Panel on Race. Hurricane Katrina pierced public consciousness in ways that, however painful and disturbing, provide an opening for dialogues central to democratic citizenship. This curriculum, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and created by educators from Teachers College, Columbia University, takes the HBO Documentary Film Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, as both impetus, touchstone and text for democratic dialogues in schools, colleges, and community organizations. The images and voices in Lee’s film, some from news coverage of the hurricane, may be hard to reconcile with many Americans’ ideas of their nation. These voices and images compel us to ask: “What kind of country are we? What kind of country do we want to be?”

The national experience of Hurricane Katrina was, like that of September 11th, a visceral one. Round-the-clock news coverage kept an unbelieving American public tied to television sets. All that we have learned about this tragedy since it occurred has confirmed what many Americans concluded after watching live coverage of the storm: the meteorological event, however terrible, was not the heart of the story. TV viewers in the US (and elsewhere) saw the inability of US public officials and organizations to recognize and take responsibility for an impending disaster; revelations of previously ignored American calamities; and an unconscionable failure to provide victims of the storm’s fury with real remedies for their plight.

Coming to terms with the panoply of reasons for this failure will easily take a generation. What can be done now, however, is to seize the opportunity afforded by Lee’s film to encourage teachers, professors, and community leaders to use this celebrated artist’s work as a platform to initiate conversations and creative projects about difficult issues. Focused on the situation of individuals who, by dint of race and class, found themselves most vulnerable to the storm’s wrath, and to the failure of local, state and federal governments to protect them from the disaster’s worst effects, When the Levees Broke tells a story that is at risk of fading from public consciousness. Over the last year, the spin doctors have been at work to exonerate those in high office, even sometimes blaming those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, who suffered most. A curriculum based on Lee’s film will remind Americans that the lessons to be taken from Katrina must be based on analysis of the facts and must include the voices of innocent victims.

Teachers College
Teachers College, Columbia University, draws on the expertise of faculty from its academic programs in social studies education, history, and adult learning for the content of this curriculum. Teachers College Press is producing and marketing the curriculum package. The EdLab at Teachers College is creating digital resources to be used by educators, students, community leaders, social activists, and others. This will include media content, supplementary materials, venues for community sharing, and online professional development.

So you can get really cool blog updates on the project here:
http://www.teachingthelevees.org/index.php
With links like "An interesting graphic on Katrina recovery from the New York Times"

And you can download the whole curriculum here.

Enjoy,

Ryan