What a week of real learning looks like.

Whose History Is Told? Power, Voice, and Historical Narratives

A learning unit in a typical classroom lasts about a week, but can go on longer or shorter depending on its necessity to a curriculum and time restrictions. To exemplify this, here is a description of what a typical weeklong-unit would look like in one of our school's history classrooms.

This 10th grade history class is in the middle of a unit titled: "Whose History is Told? Power, Voice, and Historical Narratives." It is a unit that asks students to engage in disciplinary literacy practices specific to history — sourcing, contextualization, corroboration, and argumentation — while also critically examining how power shapes whose stories are preserved and whose are marginalized. Grounded in the work of Paulo Freire, students are positioned not as passive recipients of knowledge, but as critical readers of the world, interrogating texts and systems of power. At the same time, the unit reflects Gloria Ladson-Billings and Django Paris by centering students' cultural identities and sustaining their ways of knowing as legitimate tools for academic inquiry.

Across a typical week, the structure of the classroom is intentionally sequenced to support depth over coverage. Early in the week, students build shared understanding through whole-class dialogue and guided analysis. Midweek, they apply these skills in small-group inquiry, working with increasingly complex sets of sources. By the end of the week, students move into individual synthesis, where they construct and communicate their own interpretations with targeted support. Each phase builds on the last, and each includes opportunities for formative assessment, feedback, and revision.

Classroom Layout

The classroom was intentionally designed to be flexible and applicable across disciplines rather than modeled after a traditional, lecture-based history classroom. Instead of prioritizing passive reception of information:

Clustered tables support collaborative meaning-making, aligning with disciplinary literacy practices. An open central space allows for simulations, movement-based activities, and whole-class discussions that extend learning beyond static instruction. Teacher's conferencing table, desk, and Co-Teacher desk are all positioned to the side rather than the front to decentralize authority and highlight the importance of student-centered learning.

A classroom library and computer area provide access to diverse materials — such as adapted research articles, infographics, videos, and transcripts — to support multiple literacies and equitable access to content. At the front, a flexible space serves as a student work wall, displaying evolving drafts, research questions, and data, and can also function as an area for submitting or distributing materials. A small connecting RISE/Support Room is shared between two classrooms.

This design operates within a larger school structure of approximately 400 students, with about 100 students per grade level, organized into smaller class groups of 20–25 students, allowing for both community and individualized attention.

Monday — Introduction to the Lesson

Rather than beginning with a lecture, the week opens up on Monday with students entering and responding to a prompt projected on the board:

"Think about a story you learned about history — either in school, at home, or in your community. Who was centered in that story? Who was missing? Why do you think that is?"

Students are given structured time to respond in writing, which serves both as an entry point into the unit as well as a diagnostic and formative assessment — allowing the teacher to gauge how students currently understand historical narratives, perspective, and bias. Students may respond in different ways (paragraph form, notes, or a mix of languages) reflecting the classroom's recognition of literacy as flexible and culturally situated (Paris, 2012).

Following this, the class transitions into a whole-group discussion, typically arranged in a circle to support dialogue. The teacher facilitates by posing open-ended questions and pressing for evidence-based reasoning, but the intellectual work remains with students. This structure reflects Freire's conception of education as a practice of freedom, where knowledge is co-constructed rather than transmitted (Freire, 1970). The goal of the discussion is not to arrive at a final answer, but to surface a range of ideas and begin establishing a shared inquiry into the unit's essential questions.

As the lesson continues, students are introduced to a set of texts that anchor the discussion in disciplinary literacy practices. These texts typically include a traditional historical account paired with a contrasting or historically marginalized perspective. The class engages in guided, whole-class annotation, focusing on sourcing, contextualization, and language analysis. This reflects research on disciplinary literacy, which emphasizes that students must learn to read, write, and think in ways that are specific to each discipline (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008).

This portion of the lesson is intentionally scaffolded. The teacher models how to read these texts critically, making the thinking process visible, while also providing supports such as vocabulary clarification, sentence frames, and guiding questions. These scaffolds align with Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, supporting students in accessing complex texts with appropriate guidance (Vygotsky, 1978). Monday concludes once students have begun analyzing the texts and identifying differences in perspective, though their interpretations remain preliminary. The teacher may collect annotated texts or use a quick exit reflection as a formative assessment to inform the next day's instruction.

Tuesday — Introduction to the Lesson Continued

On Tuesday, the class returns directly to this work. Students revisit the same texts and continue the discussion, now with more time to deepen their analysis and refine their thinking. The teacher may begin by highlighting patterns or questions that emerged from Monday's formative assessments, however student thinking is ultimately what guides the direction of the lesson — an approach aligned with responsive teaching practices (Black & Wiliam, 1998).

As discussion develops, students work toward constructing a shared understanding of how historical narratives are shaped. This often takes the form of a collaboratively developed claim, built and revised through class dialogue. The teacher records this thinking publicly on the board, helping organize ideas while ensuring that the conclusions emerge from student contributions. This collective knowledge-building reflects the principles of culturally relevant pedagogy, where student voice and participation are central (Ladson-Billings, 1995).

Tuesday concludes with the class developing a working collective understanding — something that is strong enough to guide further inquiry, but still open to revision.

Wednesday — The Meat and Potatoes of the Unit

On Wednesday, the instructional focus begins to shift from collective, whole-group meaning-making into collaborative inquiry. Students work in their clusters as small groups and are introduced to a new set of sources connected to a specific historical issue. These sources are intentionally varied — and may include primary documents, policy excerpts, maps, data, and narrative accounts, requiring students to engage multiple forms of literacy. This approach reflects the understanding that literacy practices are multiple and context-dependent (Moje, 2008).

The goal of Wednesday's class is for students to begin analyzing these sources and developing their own initial interpretations. Groups use guiding questions and structured routines to support their work, such as identifying the perspective of each source and noting patterns across documents. These collaborative structures draw on the idea that learning is socially constructed through interaction with others (Vygotsky, 1978).

Group roles are often utilized to support equitable participation, ensuring that all students are actively engaged in the intellectual work. At the same time, these roles remain flexible, allowing students to move between responsibilities as needed. This structure reflects a commitment to both collaboration and agency, aligning with culturally relevant pedagogies that value student voice and participation (Ladson-Billings, 1995).

The teacher will be offering their support throughout this process — circulating and using ongoing formative assessments (think-pair-share; fist-to-five; polls) to monitor understanding and provide targeted support. This includes questioning, prompting, and scaffolding, all of which help move students toward deeper understanding while maintaining high expectations for all learners (Black & Wiliam, 1998).

By the conclusion of Wednesday, the classroom groups will be more comfortable with the material and students will have developed (or be far along in the development of) their understanding of their sources. Students may have identified key patterns or tensions, begun forming tentative claims, or generated questions that remain unresolved — these ideas should be documented in shared notes or public organizers (hanging them in a particular section of the classroom; writing on a particular section of the board) to serve as a bridge into the following day.

Thursday — Meat and Potatoes Continued

Thursday is a continuation of the small-group practices and procedures that began the previous day: students return to their groups with the explicit goal of refining and solidifying their interpretations. Building on the exploratory work from Wednesday, they work toward constructing a clear, evidence-based claim that responds to the essential questions initially posed on Monday and supports the claims they began to build on Tuesday regarding how historical narratives are built. This process requires students to revisit their sources, evaluate the strength of their evidence, and reconcile any contradictions they encountered.

As a result, the continued support offered by the staff also becomes more refined and focused. Taking the time to discuss with each student one-on-one for as they circulate, they utilize small assessments such as targeted questioning and feedback to identify where groups may need additional support or extension. Some groups may require scaffolding in organizing their ideas, while others may be pushed to deepen their analysis or consider broader implications.

As the period progresses, student thinking should become increasingly independent, but also increasingly public. Groups will prepare to share their individual claims and the supporting evidence they gathered through a structured format of their choosing (a gallery walk, a brief presentation, a 'political cartoon' or drawing, etc.). During this process, students will engage with one another's work — reading, responding, and asking questions. This serves as both a learning experience and a formative assessment opportunity, allowing students to encounter multiple perspectives while also refining their own thinking. Their sharing also supports a classroom culture in which ideas are treated as collective resources rather than individual products, aligning with Freire's emphasis on dialogue and shared inquiry (Freire, 1970).

The day concludes with students having constructed, articulated, and shared their group-based interpretations while also having been exposed to a range of perspectives across the classroom. They are positioned to move into individual synthesis with a richer, and more nuanced understanding of the topic.

Friday — Individual Synthesis and Reflection

Friday — the structure of the classroom shifts once again. This time, however, towards individual meaning-making and reflection. Circling back to the beginning of the unit, students are presented with a new prompt upon arriving that is meant to extend and challenge the weeks learning:

"Whose voices are still missing from the histories we study? How can we bring those voices into the conversation?"

Students are given time to interpret the prompt and can begin constructing their own responses that draw on the texts, discussions, and collaborative work from throughout the week. This task requires synthesizing multiple sources of knowledge — their whole-class dialogue, small-group inquiry, and their own developing ideas — into a coherent and grounded claim.

Most importantly — students are offered choices in how they express their claims. Some may choose to respond in traditional written form, while others may engage in multimodal compositions such as visual representations, spoken word pieces, or digital formats. This flexibility reflects an expanded definition of literacy that values multiple modes of communication and aligns with culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012).

The entire task — constructing their own responses — functions innately as a formative or summative assessment, providing insight into how students are integrating the unit's central ideas and disciplinary practices. The emphasis is not solely on correctness, but on the development of critical thinking, argumentation, and the ability to engage with complex questions of power and representation.

During this time, the teacher engages in one-on-one conferences with students in order to respond directly to each student's thinking. In these interactions, the teacher may ask clarifying questions, provide feedback on the use of evidence, or support students in refining their arguments. These conferences are also an opportunity to build relationships and to recognize students' strengths, aligning with asset-based approaches to teaching and learning (Ladson-Billings, 1995).

While conferences are taking place, other students remain engaged in independent work, peer feedback, or continued revision. The classroom operates as a flexible space where students manage their time and learning, supported by clear expectations and routines.

The week and unit concludes with students having produced an individual response that reflects their understanding of the unit's central ideas. These responses are not treated as final endpoints, but as part of an ongoing process of learning, reflection, and revision.

Literacy as Social, Critical, and Culturally Sustaining

Across the span of a typical week, whole-class, small-group, and individualized pedagogies are intentionally sequenced to build toward deeper understanding. Literacy is embedded throughout each phase, requiring students to read complex texts, engage in dialogue, analyze multiple perspectives, and construct evidence-based arguments. In this way, the classroom enacts a vision of literacy as social, critical, and culturally sustaining — preparing students not only to understand history, but to question and reshape the narratives that define it (Freire, 1970; Paris, 2012; Ladson-Billings, 1995).