A Timely Sequence

The Reckoning: Teaching About the #MeToo Moment and Sexual Harassment With Resources From The New York Times by Natalie Proulx, Christopher Pepper, and Katherine Schulten
The New York Times, January 25, 2018

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Following the barrage of stories related to the #MeToo movement, Learning Network educators Natalie Proulx, Christopher Pepper, and Katherine Schulten team up to offer this rich, dynamic sequence of potential lesson plans for our classrooms. From topic introduction strategies to learning reflection prompts, the sequence is impressively comprehensive and designed to be driven by student readiness and inquiry. Replete with hyperlinked resources, Proulx, Pepper, and Schulten’s unit on sexual harassment offers articles, definitions, videos, frameworks, and discussion questions. Inviting scholarly discourse throughout, they account for a wide variety of learning styles, proposing a jigsaw activity, a graphic organizer, and an interactive timeline, to name a few approaches. Often differentiating by interest, the curricular sequence moves through building background knowledge on sexual harassment, understanding its impact, debating the question of whether or not #MeToo is going too far, considering teenagers’ experiences, and responding to learning through creative means. The lessons lead students through their own considerations of this topic, inviting them to wrestle with some of the complexities and nuances involved, as they read and discuss multiple perspectives, including opposing perspectives. Journalists, authors, and researchers have been urging us to teach #MeToo, and this Learning Network unit brings us thoughtfully-curated materials we can use or draw from right away, as we guide students, ultimately, to learn what they think and what, if anything, they want to do about it.