blue magnolia nutella whales

I want to explore how learning differences and people on the autism spectrum who struggle to read and make sense of body language in particular, but other social cues as well, can learn about racial/class/ inequality issues given their difficulty in interpreting social norms. People’s understanding of feelings and actions are obviously cultured and influenced by the dominant power, but their ideas are also affected by their ability to even see or perceive those dominant notions of how they should act. I would be curious to see if there is more potential, in some ways, to educate these children on emotional literacy, because they start with less knowledge and awareness about how they should behave and express their emotions. How can they be taught about emotional literacy?

            I had not considered how teaching emotional literacy maintains social hierarchies. I appreciated how Boler connected emotional literacy to vocabulary and that it is important that children are given words to describe their complex and conflicting feelings. Yet, at the same time, what words should be taught? How can children creatively and accurately express their emotions without preserving social institutions by using existing words that reinforce individualism?

For my inquiry project, I want to create or think about lessons plans for a high school classroom using The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley. As I am using these two texts in my senior thesis project, I'm most interested in think about the ways these two text pair together to invite students to question the nature of religion. Baldwin and Malcolm X experience religion very differently from one another despite the fact that both discuss similar realities of racial oppression and the black and white binary in the US. I'm excited to see the extent to which discussing religion in the classroom is possible while being neither coercive or manipulative of student's beliefs.