More than a Dream

Project Themes and Skills:

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s philosophy

-Emphasis

-Symmetry

-Reading Comprehension

-Graphic Design

-Portrait Drawing

-Proportion

Grade(s):

Third and Fourth (adaptable)

Materials:

-12x18" paper

-Pencils, erasers

-Sharpies

-Printed reference fonts

-Rulers

-Markers, Colored Pencils (optional)

-Half portrait of Dr. King

Photo:

Yes, she missed a few vowels, but she's in third grade. We all make mistakes.

In this project, students were tasked with the job to be graphic designers of the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Throughout the project, I used these kid-friendly resources to introduce Dr. King:

To begin, we read "Martin's Big Words" (read aloud available for free on YouTube). I like this text for several reasons. It is a quick biography, but incorporates several famous Dr. King quotes.

Each class was given two quotes to choose from. We analyzed each quote to decipher meaning. Students then underlined two words from the quote that they thought were most important. Their task was to fill a page by repeating the quote and place emphasis on the important words as if they were a graphic designer. I gave them different fonts to look at, some of them used them to trace. Students had rulers to work on the neatness of rows of text.

After we designed our background, we studied types of balance and symmetry. I used a document camera and projector to talk them through drawing the other half of Dr. King's face. We learned how to use our pencil to measure proportion in a drawing, and practiced using shading to show form.

Finally, we cut out the portrait and added it to our backgrounds. See bottom image.

Throughout the project, I opened myself up to any questions they had establishing the classroom as a safe space. Nearly all of my students are African American and Latino. I am Caucasian. And a few students had the hard questions like "Why was Dr. King killed?" and "Why did white people hate black people?"

And I would give them real answers like:

"Dr. King was outspoken about the injustices he saw with unfair laws. Many people believed in him and worked with him to make the world a better place, but many others did not want him to share his ideas. Since, King was seen as a leader, he was a target of those who wanted to silence him. Even though he was killed, the fight for civil rights did not end."

and

"America was founded on an unequal principle-that enslaved people did not count as real people who should be protected by the laws and government. Sometimes change is difficult to accept, even if it means going from a wrong way of living to a right way of living. White people saw the Civil Rights Movement not as equality for all, but that they would lose rights if others gained them. That fear spurred hatred and violence."

At the National Civil Rights Museum, I worked with a team in developing a Family Guide for museum visitors. The guide's goals are to help families, especially with young children, discuss challenging content they encounter in the museum (and history of the United States). This tool will help if you are unsure of how to speak to young students about difficult topics such as race and violence. You can download it here.