Bubbles

Inspiration

When I was 16, I came home and told my father, Fredrick Douglas Bazemore, who was one of the first integrated members of his high school class, why he had a picture of Malcom X. He told me what values Malcolm stood for and his connection to civil rights. I corrected him and told him that Malcolm was a bad man, and that I knew this because school had taught me this.

Fast forward 8 years later, I became a teacher in a school system, tasked to teach students. In September of 2015, I started to teach the same text books I had in low social economic status neighborhoods and my kids were failing. At the end of the year, most did terribly on their state test.

A year later, I did something different. I taught the truth through socially and culturally relevant content. At the end of the year, I closed the equity gaps by 2 years, but that was in 3rd grade, which was great, but it led to students getting caught up to being on grade level.

But I wondered, what would happen if I started this at the beginning of a child's educational journey, in kindergarten. I started at the beginning of the year teaching social justice in my kindergarten classroom: the results?

My students started on a pre-k level and ended on a mid-2nd grade level. I closed inequity gaps within my school in a matter of one year, just by teaching culturally relevant, multicultural content throughout science, math, reading, social studies, and writing.

I replicated this methodology in my 3rd grade tutoring sessions, my GED classes for student drop outs, my SAT prep classes, and soon to replicate this at the Mooreland YMCA in Oak Cliff. The results have all been the same: significant data gains.

In an attempts to make this methodology more mainstream, I give you Bubble, an online curriculum that spans k-5 that exposes and prepares today's generation with diverse educational experiences, knowledge, and opportunities.

What it does

To most people, traditional curriculums are also filtered within their own false claim bubbles leading children and adults to a misleading and misguided history and trajectory. Through Bubble, we aim to expose children to the truth, give them the cultural competence they need to be successful, and prepare them for the classroom and beyond.

How I built it

We built Bubble using a WiX website, since we are not a tech savy group. We use external and internal links to explain how we would like the site to be built.

Challenges I ran into

There are multiple challenges we ran into like navigating how to put all of our thoughts into a website, team members getting sick last minute, and a knowledge gap in tech.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud of building a baseline website that we worked on cohesively. I think it showcases an example of what we are talking about and illustrates one example of how our curriculum can look and be implemented.

What I learned

I learned that I need to expand my knowledge and skill set in website building and tech skillsets. I'd also like to learn more about how best to delegate tasks during a hackathon. I think we found our synergy after a while but it took a little while to get the hang of.

What's next for Bubbles

I'm a TFA corps member and I'm going to enter Bubbles into the Teach for America Social Innovation Award tomorrow. I'm also going to continue build out this curriculum and put parts of it on Teachers Pay Teachers. Eventually, I would like to use this curriculum when I build a elementary school in Dallas in 2021.

Built With

• wix