In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, eighth grade social studies devoted a class period to unpacking Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” drawing meaningful parallels to themes in our current unit on the rise of Nazi Germany. Students engaged in dialectical journaling, a creative strategy that invites them to analyze King’s letter alongside other primary sources by putting them in conversation with one another. The journal is organized into five columns with distinct prompts, beginning with a close analysis of a key passage in which King argues that immoral laws, such as those enforced in Nazi Germany, must be resisted, even when disobedience is considered illegal. The final column requires peer collaboration, as students pass their journals to neighbors who read their responses and comment on how others’ thinking deepened or complicated their understanding of this text, the greater Civil Rights movement, and/or our unit on Nazi Germany.
– Emma Alexander, grade 8 social studies teacher
