Our Imaginative Symposium

Students decided they wanted to play with language, words, and ideas through a symposium.  These are the questions that came out of our graffiti and music sessions: Why did MLK want to help people?  Why was it important to MLK to have people work together?  What inspired MLK to be a heroic bystander?  Do you ever have dreams that can change the world?  What are they?  How can you be a hero?  Why are heroes put in jail?  How can we make connections between words in MLK's speeches?  Where do prejudice and racism come from?  Would you be willing to fight racism as a bystander?  Why were blacks enslaved and not whites?  Why are heroes assassinated?

Students created rules for this simulated and imaginative symposium:
Each person gets to speak.  Raise your hand to respond.  Four people should discuss and debate one topic at a time.  Figure out a way to "get along" the entire time.  Debating should be playful and fun.

Here is an example of one of our debates:

Maliyah-"Where do prejudice and racism come from?  It comes from whites not ever seeing a black so they put them to work."

Erieyon-"It came from whites never saw a black before so they want them to be treated differently."

Maliyah-"I think this because the whites had them to do everything for them."

Erieyon-"I think that because they whipped them and they know they don't want to be whipped."

Together-"So we came up with they put the slaves to work because they had never seen their kind before."