August 31, 2016

Yuko Yoshida

Final project Lesson plan

Grade level	9 to 12th grade students with IEP Mandated Speech and Language Services
Unit Title	News about Me
Unit Essential Question	-    What is solitary confinement? -    What can you tell about the impact of solitary confinement? -    What are the 5 wh of solitary confinement” o  What is it? o  What is the purpose of it? o  Where does it take place? o  When does it happen?   o  How does it punish a human being? o  Why do we have it?
Topic	Solitary confinement
Time Frame	One period
Session Goal /Objectives	1)    Student will evaluate the impact of “solitary confinement” by citing at least 3 evidence from a written text (transcript of a video clip) presented 2)    Students will use at least 3 new adjectives to describe their feelings after examining what the solitary confinement did to Kalief Browder -    This lesson could address different IEP goals, such as vocabulary, participation in discussion, grammar, making inferences, etc
Rationale /Motivation	Topic is related to: -       the student population of my High School, 99% Hispanic and black -       the students as Kalief Browder was a high school student the Bronx, and the school district of 7 (South Bronx) where I work is known to be one of the most challenging school districts regarding high rates in poverty, incarceration, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, homelessness, and gang activities, etc -       the current news and incidents of “police brutality” and “the school-to-prison pipeline” Activity facilitates: -       critical thinking skills in (a) differentiating evidence from personal reactions/assumptions, (b) interpreting and evaluating information on social media, -       in-depth understanding allowing students to explore their feelings as well as others’, leading to developing empathy, by using various feeling words in the context of the intimate news
CCLS	-    SLGL09-10: Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; summarize points of agreements and disagreement, and when warranted, qualify or justify their own views and understanding and make new connection in light of the evidence and reasoning presented -    SLGL10-11: Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; synthesize comments, claims, and evidence made on all sides of an issue; resolve contradiction when possible; and determine what additional information or research is required to deepen the investigation or complete the task
Materials	-    DN! Video clip “Traumatized by 3 years at Rikers Without Charge Ex-Teen Prisoner Kalief Browder Commutes Suicide,” last 10 minutes of June 8, 2015    [http://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/8/traumatized_by_3_years_at_rikers] -    Transcript of the section -    Illustrations of solitary confinement by Valentine Gallardo    [http://www.vice.com/read/why-solitary-confinement-in-america-is-finally-changing-930] -    Worksheet -    List of feeling words by intensity (handout)
Media Literacy Strategy	Interview -          Amy, Juan vs.  Jennifer Gonnerman, a reporter and writer for New Yorkers magazine -          Amy, Juan vs. Kalief -          Jennifer vs. Kalief
Anticipatory Set / Prior Knowledge /Do Now	1) Show the illustration and discuss what it represents -    What do you see? -    What is the man doing?  What is he writing? -    How does the man in the box look like feeling? 2) Provide brief facts of solitary confinement [what, for whom, when, where, why, and how] -    Have you heard of the term before?  Does anyone know anything about it? o  It is a form of imprisonment that isolates an inmate from any human contact o  How do you think you would feel to be confined in the tiny tiny box, with nothing, no window…?
Procedure Explicit Instruction  Active Engagement	1)   Anticipatory set – discuss solitary confinement using one of the illustrations of Valentine Gallardo and a few facts (5 mins) 2)   Briefly introduce what they are going to watch (5 mins) -    Read the first paragraph of the transcription -- do not start discussing about the news yet 3)   Show the DN! Video clip (10 mins) 4)   Discuss what the news was about (10 mins) -    Distribute the transcript (as a supplement for auditory memory) -    Let’s talk about what happened to Kalief -    What can you tell about “the impact of solitary confinement” from this news?  Have students justify their answers by using the transcript followed by modeling o  Key words: “adolescent / age,” “reform in Rikers,” “officers’ abuse,” “attempted suicide,” “committed suicide several months after being released from Rikers,” I just wanted to talk to somebody,” “being on medication and therapy for several months,” . . .      -    What does Kalief’s death mean to us? o  Kalief was out of jail o  He would have felt free and was doing well in school o  Jennifer’s comment, “… But I guess trauma was too much.” 6)  Distribute worksheet (10 mins) -    Explain the list of feeling words and the different intensity of each category -    Compose sentences describing student’s own feelings after learning about the solitary confinement and Kalief’s tragedy o  Kalief could have well been your neighbor (he may have) o  If you were his friend, would you think he would have told you how he was feeling… during when he was remarkably doing well in college?  Why, why not? o  List of feeling words o  Show the second illustration of solitary confinement à students can also draw a picture of what it means to him/her
Assessment	-    Objective #1: Student will evaluate the impact of “solitary confinement” by citing at least 3 evidence -    Objective #2: Students will use at least 3 new adjectives to describe their feelings after examining what the solitary confinement did to Kalief Brower?
Follow up ideas	-    Solitary confinement con’t o More  in details and other cases, activism, justice system o  Adolescent brain development – what solitary confinement does to the brain, especially the work in-progress brain of adolescents, and tie the findings with Kalief Brower o Students do research and report on one case using media news and graphic organizers o Students interview family members or neighbors about solitary confinement 1) ask them a list of prepared questions, 2) educate them how it impacts their mental health/brain, especially adolescents, and report the results to the following session

  

Material 1 Speech-Language Therapy Ms. Yoshida      Name:  ________________________                        Date: _______________ Solitary Confinement      Cite at least 3 evidence that describe what solitary confinement is. Direct quote from the transcript Your justification      Imagine how Kalief was feeling during and after his solitary confinement.  Select at least 3 words from the list and      describe his feelings.      3 words: _____________________   ______________________   _______________________      ________________________________________________________________________________________      ________________________________________________________________________________________      ________________________________________________________________________________________      ________________________________________________________________________________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Activity for follow up lessons…      What is solitary confinement? Solitary confinement is a _____________________________________________________________.      What is the purpose of it? The purpose of solitary confinement is to ________________________________________________.           Where does it take place? __________________________________________________________________________________      When does it happen to whom? __________________________________________________________________________________      How is it carried out? __________________________________________________________________________________      How would a person feel in that situation?   ________________________________________________________________________________          Why do we have solitary confinement? __________________________________________________________________________________

Material 2 Speech-Language Therapy Ms. Yoshida Illustrations by Valentine Gallardo “Down in the Hole: Why Solitary Confinement in America Needs to Stop” From the column 'America Incarcerated' http://www.vice.com/read/why-solitary-confinement-in-america-is-finally-changing-930

Material 3 Speech-Language Therapy Ms. Yoshida [Intro ] We end today’s show with the tragic news that Kalief Browder has committed suicide. He was a young New York student who spent three years in Rikers Island jail without being convicted of a crime. On Saturday, Kalief took his own life at his home in the Bronx. He was 22 years old. In 2010, when he was just 16, he was sent to Rikers Island without trial on suspicion of stealing a backpack. Earlier this year, The New Yorker obtained explosive video showing the violence to which Kalief was subjected to there. Surveillance camera footage shows him being abused on two separate occasions. In one clip from 2012, the teenager is seen inside Rikers’ Central Punitive Segregation Unit, better known as the Bing. As a guard escorts Kalief to the showers, Kalief appears to speak, and then the guard suddenly violently hurls him to the floor, although he’s already handcuffed. In a separate video clip from 2010, Kalief is attacked by almost a dozen other teenage inmates after he punches a gang member who spat in his face. The other inmates pile onto Kalief and pummel him until guards finally intervene. Kalief’s case led to calls for reforming New York’s criminal justice system. ======================================================================================== http://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/8/traumatized_by_3_years_at_rikers Traumatized by 3 Years at Rikers Without Charge, Ex-Teen Prisoner Kalief Browder Commits Suicide JUNE 08, 2015 / TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: On the night of his arrest years ago, Kalief Browder was walking home from a party with his friends in the Bronx, May 15, 2010, when he was stopped by police based on a tip that he had robbed someone weeks earlier. He told HuffPost Live what happened next. KALIEF BROWDER: They had searched me, and the guy actually said—at first he said I robbed him. I didn’t have anything on me. And that’s when— MARC LAMONT HILL: When you say "nothing," you mean no weapon and none of his property. KALIEF BROWDER: No weapon, no money, anything he said that I allegedly robbed him for. So the guy actually changed up his story and said that I actually tried to rob him. But then another police officer came, and they said that I robbed him two weeks prior. And then they said, "We’re going to take you to the precinct, and most likely we’re going to let you go home." But then, I never went home. AMY GOODMAN: That’s right, Kalief Browder did not return home for 33 months, almost three years, even though he was never tried or convicted. For nearly 800 days of that time, he was held in solitary confinement. He maintained his innocence, requested a trial, but was only offered plea deals while the trial was repeatedly delayed. Near the end of his time in jail, the judge offered to sentence him to time served if he entered a guilty plea, and told him he could face 15 years in prison if he was convicted. He refused to accept the plea deal, was only released when the case was dismissed. We’re joined once again by Jennifer Gonnerman, reporter, author, contributing editor at New Yorker magazine. She was the first to report Kalief’s suicide in her obituary for The New Yorker magazine on Sunday. She first recounted Kalief Browder’s story last year in her article, "Before the Law: A boy was accused of taking a backpack. The courts took the next three years of his life."  Welcome back to Democracy Now! Is it fair to say that the courts and the prison system actually took his life? JENNIFER GONNERMAN: You know, I don’t know what was going through Kalief’s mind in those last few minutes, but it’s without a doubt that he was completely traumatized by those three years that you talked about, when he was trapped on Rikers Island, despite never having been convicted of a crime, brutalized by officers and fellow inmates alike, as your viewers saw in that video footage that you guys showed. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, he had attempted suicide while in jail numerous times, as well, and after coming out. Could you talk about that whole experience and process, and what he told you about that? JENNIFER GONNERMAN: Certainly. He spent about two years in solitary confinement on Rikers Island and attempted to end his life several times while he was there, and described some of those incidents for me. And I wrote about some of it in The New Yorker. And then, after he was released—he was released in 2013. Several months later, he again made another very serious suicide attempt and spent about a week in a psychiatric hospital. And yet, he tried every day to kind of beat back the nightmares and sort of transcend what he had lived through and make up for all this lost time. And he was—you know, in recent months, he was enrolled in college at Bronx Community College, and he was doing well. I spoke to somebody there yesterday. He had a 3.5 GPA for this semester, which is extraordinary. I mean, he lost his junior year and his senior year of high school while he was locked up. So, sort of every day he was sort of grappling with sort of trying to, you know, move past what he had endured. But I guess trauma was too much. AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn back to Kalief Browder in his own words. In this December 2013 interview with HuffPost Live’s Marc Lamont Hill, Browder talked about his suicide attempts at Rikers and his efforts to get psychiatric help. KALIEF BROWDER: I would say I committed suicide about five to six—five or six times. MARC LAMONT HILL: OK, you attempted suicide five to six times. KALIEF BROWDER: Yes. MARC LAMONT HILL: All while still in prison? KALIEF BROWDER: Yes. MARC LAMONT HILL: Wow. KALIEF BROWDER: And I tried to resort to telling the correction officers that I wanted to see a psychiatrist or counselor, something. I was telling them I needed mental help, because I wasn’t feeling right. All the stress from my case, everything was just getting to me, and I just—I just couldn’t take it, and I just needed somebody to talk to. I needed to just let—I just needed to be—I just needed to talk and be stress-free. But the correction officers, they didn’t want to hear me out. Nobody wanted to listen. AMY GOODMAN: That is Kalief Browder. Now, again, he went to jail when he was 16 years old, never was tried. He was—the judge said he could get out if he just pled out, and he said, "No, I’m not guilty." JENNIFER GONNERMAN: And that moment actually happened—he had been locked up for, you know, about over two-and-a-half years at that moment. So he had gone through all this incredible trauma and was given a chance to walk out the door, and almost anybody would take that opportunity, just put in the guilty plea to anything just to get home. He refused. He said, "I did nothing wrong." And he just wanted that trial. AMY GOODMAN: He hung himself on Saturday? JENNIFER GONNERMAN: Mm-hmm, yeah. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: If there’s any positive sense of—that can come out of this, it’s the reforms that have resulted, not only from his experience, but from your chronicling of his experience. Could you talk about what the city of New York has tried to do in recent months to reform, especially how it handles juveniles in its jail system? JENNIFER GONNERMAN: You know, there’s been a number of reforms, or attempts at reforms, in recent months. At the end of last year, the mayor eliminated solitary confinement for juvenile offenders on Rikers Island. AMY GOODMAN: Because of Kalief? JENNIFER GONNERMAN: I think that was part of it. That wasn’t the only contributing factor. I mean, The New York Times has been doing very aggressive coverage about the outrages on Rikers Island. But Mayor Bill de Blasio did cite Kalief’s case a couple months ago when he talked about a new initiative to try to speed up court cases, especially in the Bronx, but across the city. And that sort of excessive court delays that have been going on, that was part of the reason he spent so much time in jail there, trying to address that. Now, whether these reforms are going to lead to lasting change, I don’t know. I mean, we can only sort of hope that, you know, that his death is not in vain and that real systematic change happens. AMY GOODMAN: As we just briefly said what happened to him in jail, aside from just being jailed at all, these videos that came out, that we had you on for when they came out, very unusual to get a video from inside—a guard taking him down, the other prisoners beating him up. JENNIFER GONNERMAN: Right. I mean, it almost defies belief. You know, he had told me, from the first moment I met him, stories about being abused on Rikers Island. And I never doubted him for a moment, but I think, as an outsider, it’s almost impossible to believe what he lived through. And when you see it on those videos—I mean, it was disturbing to watch those videos several months ago when we put them online, but to watch them now, in the wake of what happened, I mean, it’s almost—it’s just unbelievable. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you reviewed the videos with him before deciding whether to publish them or post them or not. JENNIFER GONNERMAN: Right. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What was—could you talk about his reactions, seeing or reliving it through the video, as well, what happened to him? JENNIFER GONNERMAN: Yeah, yeah. You know, from the first moment I met him, he said, "Jen, you have to get that video from September 23rd, 2012, when this officer sort of threw me to the ground and assaulted me." And I thought, "How am I going to get that video?" And then I thought, "How does he know the exact date?" You know? And he remembered. He had an incredible recall for details and dates and for what had happened to him. And he knew that this assault had happened right on camera. And I sat next to him, and he watched it a few months ago. And, you know, on the one hand, it’s like incredibly disturbing to watch, and on the other hand, he was gratified that finally people were going to know exactly what happened to him. And it was just—you know, the whole thing is just so disturbing. It’s almost beyond words. AMY GOODMAN: Was he suing the New York City system? JENNIFER GONNERMAN: Yeah, he has been for, you know, almost two years, had a lawsuit against New York City, against the Department of Corrections, the district attorney for his case, hoping to get some justice. And like his criminal case, his civil case has been dragging on and on. And he’s been through many days of depositions, which essentially means sitting in a room with city lawyers and being grilled about exactly what happened, including being grilled about his suicide attempts on Rikers Island. AMY GOODMAN: So he is survived by his mom. And could you talk about his family? You spent this weekend, a number of hours, there. JENNIFER GONNERMAN: His family is very— AMY GOODMAN: His mother is who found him. JENNIFER GONNERMAN: Right. His family is very private and didn’t want to be public or talk publicly about what happened, but, as you can imagine, is completely—appeared to me completely devastated and confused and angry, as you would imagine, by this tragedy. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And was he under treatment for depression, or was he on—had prescription drugs as a result of his numerous suicide attempts? JENNIFER GONNERMAN: Yeah, no, he was—he was getting some treatment and was on medication at the time, and had been for many months. AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jennifer Gonnerman, your work in introducing the world to Kalief is so important, and I’m so sad that we have lost him now at the age of 22. Jennifer Gonnerman is staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. She was the first to report Kalief Browder’s suicide in her obituary for him in The New Yorker on Sunday. She previously recounted Kalief’s story in the article headlined "Before the Law: A boy was accused of taking a backpack. The courts took the next three years of his life." And we’ll link to that story.

Material 4 Speech-Language Therapy Ms. Yoshida Levels of Intensity Happiness Sadness Fear Uncertainty Anger Strength / Potency Weaknesses / Inadequacy Strong Excited Thrilled Delighted Overjoyed Ecstatic Jubilant Despairing Hopeless Depressed Crushed Miserable Abandoned Defeated Desolate Panicked Terrified Afraid Frightened Scared Overwhelmed Bewildered Disoriented Mistrustful Confused Outraged Hostile Furious Angry Harsh Mean Vindictive Powerful Authoritative Forceful Potent Ashamed Powerless Vulnerable Cowardly Exhausted Impotent Moderate Up Good Happy Optimistic Enthusiastic Joyful Turned on Dejected Rejected Dismayed Disillusioned Lonely Bad Unhappy Pessimistic Sad Hurt Lost Worried Shaky Tense Anxious Threatened Agitated Doubtful Mixed-up Insecure Skeptical Puzzled Aggravated Irritated Offended Mad Frustrated Resentful Sore Upset Impatient Obstinate Tough Important Confident Fearless Energetic Brave Courageous Daring Assured Adequate Self-confident Skillful Embarrassed Useless Demoralized Helpless Worn out Inept Incapable Incompetent Inadequate Shaken Weak Pleased Glad Content Relaxed Satisfied Calm Down Discouraged Disappointed Blue Alone Left out Jittery Jumpy Nervous Uncomfortable Uptight Uneasy Defensive Apprehensive Hesitant Edgy Unsure Surprised Uncertain Undecided Bothered Perturbed Annoyed Grouchy Hassled Bothered Disagreeable Determined Firm Able Strong Inspired Eager Frail Meek  (humble; overly submissive) Unable Weak  Source from Dr. Donna Riter, UFT Speech chapter PD, 10/24/15