- Good evening and welcome to an exciting evening.

We are so glad that you've joined us tonight.

If you are here for teaching Ben Franklin Authentically you are in the right place.

I am Lauren McDowell, the education services manager for PBS North Carolina.

And we are excited to dive into an incredible night of learning.

And this is just part of a series, actually.

This is gonna be a three-part series.

You'll receive credit each night.

But on the third night you will receive an incredible kit.

If you attend all three sessions, you will receive a classroom extension kit to extend everything we're gonna hear tonight from Miss Jones.

So a few housekeeping pieces before I introduce our incredible presenter tonight.

We're in Zoom.

We wish we were in person.

But in this world of Zoom, I see everyone's muted.

We like to make sure that we, I will be muting myself, allowing Miss Jones to have the mic.

But she's excited tonight to really interact and engage.

So she'll invite you at times to unmute, she'll invite you at times to click your virtual hand to raise.

So we will just be conscientious of each other, and respectful of what Miss Jones has to share.

And so at the end of tonight, you'll receive an exit slip.

She has prepared a really cool exit slip for you, which is a virtual survey.

And in that survey you will have the opportunity to receive your certificate.

So complete that you'll give us some feedback, share a bit about what you learned, and then you'll receive that certificate.

After that, we wanna see you again next week for the second part, and then again the following week for the third part.

And then that's when you'll be able to receive your classroom extension kit by mail.

So without further ado, I wanna take a moment to shine a light on an incredible presenter tonight.

She is a high school teacher in Chapel Hill, not only a teacher, but actually the Teacher of the Year for Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools.

She's also the 2023-2024 Sullivan Chair for Excellence in high school English and social studies education.

And she is the co-regional director for the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust.

We have an incredible night ahead of us, and an incredible leader.

So without further ado, I wanna pass the mic to you, Miss Jones.

- Good evening everyone.

Thanks so much, Lauren.

Thanks Dana, and thank all of you for joining us tonight.

I just wanna start off by reiterating a bit of what Lauren said.

I am a classroom teacher.

I'm a high school educator.

I am an English teacher this year, currently teaching English 10 among various levels.

And I also am an avid coordinator in my school.

But the big part is I'm a classroom teacher.

And we all have come off of a year of virtual learning, and we understand how easy it is for learners and engagement to be a bit different in virtual spaces.

But I'm certainly gonna do everything within my power to provide opportunities for you to engage with me, for you to engage with each other.

I saw a couple of people pop on and they were on camera.

I as a presenter, just as a human being, love seeing faces.

So if it fits within your abilities, or your schedule and life, I understand we're all at home right now.

I would love it if I could see you.

It's just nice to know there's other people, [laughs] and to get a response too.

Thank you so much, so much.

It's so nice to see you.

I'm super excited about the work we're gonna engage in today.

As Lauren said, I am our facilitator, but I do want to give the utmost credit to the curriculum author Dr. Shaniqua Powell.

She is a professor at Oklahoma State University in Oklahoma, and she is the one who designed this really helpful curriculum.

She researched best practices.

She was thoughtful in her pedagogy.

And I have the privilege of guiding you all through it, and bringing my experience in the English classroom along with tools, tricks, and tips that I use for teaching history authentically in my classroom.

Even as an English teacher, although our focus is often on the text themselves, history and its complexities play a direct role in how I teach my class.

In fact, today as I was preparing, a couple of quotes kind of popped in my head that I wanted to share with you all tonight.

One of my favorite resources that I'm sure many of you all use for various reasons is Facing History in Ourselves.

And one of their key quotes is this statement that "People make choices and choices make history."

Tonight we are gonna be looking at the choices and the decisions of Benjamin Franklin that created a legacy for good and for otherwise that we live in every day.

Another quotation that kind of guides my attitude toward history, particularly its presentation to young people, is from another voice that I value highly, that of James Baldwin.

And James Baldwin writes, "The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us.

We are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all we do."

And there's no greater example of that than the life and the legacy of Benjamin Franklin, moving forward.

There are five goals for today's workshop.

The first is for us to, and our main focus is for us to gain ideas on how we might be able to use the fabulous new documentary by Ken Burns on Benjamin Franklin in our classrooms to embrace the challenge of teaching hard history, particularly as it relates to Ben Franklin.

In our work, we're also gonna do a couple of other things.

We're gonna access our own content and expand our knowledge of Benjamin Franklin, and his role in the foundations of our nation.

We're going to read, and analyze, and respond to a number of primary texts and film clips.

We're gonna do that with some amazing graphic organizers and other tools created by Dr. Powell, and some that I use in my classroom.

And lastly, we're gonna access and apply lessons connected via the Ben Franklin website on PBS, moving forward.

In this training, and in all trainings, we have a set of norms.

In just a moment, you all are gonna be placed into breakout rooms of about three or four people to potentially add to this list.

But here are our basic norms.

Of course, being respectful, actively listening, and actively engaging with me and each other.

Of course, being respectful of each other, critiquing our ideas, not the people who present them.

And particularly when we're in those small groups, giving room for all voices to be heard, moving forward.

All right, So I think it's really important any time that we are in any kind of classroom environment for us as educators, either in our leading of our students, or in our work with each other, to make every effort possible to create an authentic learning community.

And that means taking the time to get to know each other.

And particularly when we are thinking about diving into history that may hold different significance and meaning to various learners, it's important for us to understand what we are bringing into the classroom.

And so Dana dropped in the chat just a little bit ago that you might have a sheet of paper, and something to write with.

And so I'm gonna ask you all to create a quick identity chart.

Of course, this will not cover the breadth and depth in all of that you are.

But it is a great activity for us to beginning to dive into the fact that all of us, the figures that we study in history, us as educators, and our students are multifaceted people.

And to that end, here's what I'd like you to do.

Draw a small circle in the middle of your page with your name on it.

And then if you can, add identities around that chart, anywhere from seven to 10.

You can list identities like your familial status, your occupation, interests or hobbies that you have, your cultural, ethnic, religious folk background, physical characteristics.

You can also consider identities that might not otherwise be readily noticeable to other people.

I myself, am a crafter.

I am a writer, I'm a stepmom, I am a teacher leader.

I am a sister, and a daughter, and a wife, and a Southerner, a Christian, an African American.

So I wanna give everybody about three minutes to create your identity charts.

And after those three minutes, we're going to break you into small breakout rooms.

And I'll provide time within those rooms for you to share those charts with each other.

Throughout the night, you'll be sent back into those breakout rooms for a chance for us to discuss particular clips, to discuss our learning, and then we'll come back together.

So starting now, I'm gonna give you about three minutes to create your identity chart.

And at the end of those three minutes, Lauren will be sending you into breakout rooms to share and to start to get to know each other.

Hopefully, by the end of the night you will have come to know the peers in your breakout rooms just a bit better, and hopefully created new connections that can last beyond tonight.

So our working time will begin right now.

You've got three minutes.

[upbeat, happy synthesizer and guitar music] [upbeat, happy synthesizer and violin music] [moves to flowing, spacey synthesizer music] [moves to upbeat spacey synthesizer music] Let's take about 10 seconds.

And Lauren will be sending you all into breakout rooms.

As you share your identity charts, if there's any information you wanna share with your colleagues that's not on the chart, perhaps where you teach the grade level, all of these things will help support our work as we move forward.

So please don't let the identity chart limit how much you decide to share of yourself with your peers.

Lauren is gonna send us into those breakout rooms and we're gonna take about five minutes.

So based on the size of your room, roughly a minute per person, probably.

And then we'll come back together, and talk a little bit about this activity and move forward.

So enjoy getting to know each other.

Let's move into those rooms.

You'll have about five minutes.

[upbeat synthesizer and orchestral violin classical music] Welcome back.

I hope you had a chance to enjoy your breakout rooms and beginning to get to know some of your colleagues and peers just a bit.

I want, as a whole group, for us to kind of briefly talk about this opening activity.

Perhaps ways that we might use it, along with some of the ideas that considering identity, and self might have on how we see the world.

And not only how we see the world, but how we perceive history.

So I'm gonna briefly kind of hit each one of these questions.

I don't have to hear from everyone, but I would love to hear from some of you.

I know you had a chance to talk in small groups, and it's a little easier I think at times for us to share about ourselves in the comfort of a smaller space.

But we're still a decent size group tonight, and I would love to hear from some of you.

So if you will please use that hand raise icon, as I call out some of these questions.

And Dana will call on you all to come on mic and kind of share out.

But let's think about that very first part of this question.

How do our different identities see the world?

Or better yet, how do our different identities impact how we see the world?

How might those identities shape how we perceive history, or even how we teach it?

I would love to hear from some of you all.

If you'll use that hand raise icon.

Otherwise, I'm gonna call, thank you so much, thank you.

- It looks like Ryan is ready to talk.

- [Ryan] I know, for me, I kind of highlight the sort of role that perspective plays on studying history, and the fact that your perspective really shapes what you see, or I should say how you see an event, or just about anything.

You know, we all sort of have our lens, if you want to use that word, or our eyes and how we see things.

But you know, we don't all grow up the same, we don't all see things the same.

We aren't all sort of told same things by our parents.

You know, as much as we don't want to think that that impacts us, it really does.

You know, we all see different things in the media.

You know, and all of those things play a role in how we see events.

That's kind of my thing with that is the idea that perspective really plays a role in how we see events in history, and how we sort of study those events in history.

- Thank you so much, Ryan.

Other thoughts or impacts on how our identities... Ryan had a lot of really important ideas, especially in terms of even how our identities are built.

What roles our families and our communities play?

Please feel free, you all.

I know I'm asking to kind of to hear voices.

But if you are more comfortable dropping that input into the chat, I certainly want to hear from folks.

I am going to take presenter privilege and call on my friend Lee Holder whose face I'm looking at right now.

Lee, speak to me a little bit about how do you think... What parts, let's actually jump into a slightly meatier question.

I'm gonna kinda jump down to that question if you wanna speak to it.

What parts of your identity are reflected in national history?

What identities do you think are not reflected, or harder to find in our shared story?

And I'll start with Lee and then I'll take other hands if you wanna speak to that question, yes.

- And for some reason I couldn't find my raised hand anywhere.

[Kimberly laughs] I don't what's wrong.

I don't know if this answers your question, but part of my identity is being born in Charleston, South Carolina, and coming from that part of the world, and that attitude of the world.

Which I don't share a lot of those beliefs that are shared in that part of, not to get overly political, but my views are quite different.

My view and love of history, I mean, I looked at Fort Sumpter practically every day, and my love of history is there.

Ah, I know this is weird, but sometimes my identity, and the way I reflect is shaped by what particular class of students I have.

And they make me look deeper into myself sometimes to see different slants or different views, and I focus in on that.

I don't know if that makes a lot of sense, but my students often help me shape my identity.

And my identity's constantly evolving as I learn more.

- Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Lee.

Elizabeth, I just saw your comment and I love it.

Stories of the impoverished are harder to find and teach.

Absolutely, especially stories that actually are authentic to people who grow up in impoverished situations outside of, you know, kind of big trap stories, or stories built on the promotion of capitalism.

Or some grand manifest destiny or this kind of moral, moral kindness or greatness that we put upon the idea of being humble.

And you know, coming from a certain background in terms of success stories.

But true depictions of the differences that economic tragedy in the lives of citizens in this country and throughout the world.

Absolutely, moving forward.

I wanna talk a little bit about some of, moving forward one more time for me, Lauren.

I wanna talk about some of the lenses, to go back to what Ryan said, that are gonna shape our work together tonight.

And that shaped Dr. Powell's creation of the curriculum.

There were three main pedagogical principles that drove her work and that are gonna drive how we process through some of this information about Benjamin Franklin.

The first is an anti-bias, anti-racist framework.

And that is the commitment to identifying our biases, understanding our identities, embracing diversity and actively working toward ending racism and racial inequities in our society.

The second framework is probably the framework that I think drives my work as a teacher and an educator, both in my English classroom and in my work as a Holocaust educator.

And that's culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy.

Understanding that our students bring a full and complex person into our classrooms, and that we should be committed to supporting their identities, celebrating those identities in order to create an environment where all of our students, not only can achieve success, but they know that they are seen and valued.

One of I think the most important things that we can understand as humanities teachers is the power that we hold to help students see themselves in our curriculum and also to recognize their ability to contribute to a particular field of study.

That your stories matter.

And if they have not been written yet, you have the power, the agency, the right, the privilege and the skills to tell them for yourself, to add them to our national narrative.

And that each one of them has a unique ability to do that, even if not on a grand scale, within our classroom communities.

The last framework that is gonna shape our work is media literacy education.

And that's just a commitment to teaching our students to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and respond to media in all its forms.

And we're gonna be looking at a lot of visual media tonight.

I'm also going to be giving you quick glimpses of other primary source documentation that's included at students of different grade levels, subject levels, or even across our course levels.

You might find either more rigorous, more challenging, or more appropriate, moving forward.

So let's have just a quick conversation about how Benjamin Franklin is currently being taught in our schools, going forward.

Here are two quotes from Schuster & Stetson's teaching about Ben Franklin.

The first presents the idea that it's hard, because it leads to challenging discussions.

How do we value the good contributions with the bad?

How do we celebrate the greatness of this American, while also having an honest reckoning with his poorer choices, his faults?

Is there a balance?

I do not have the answers to that, but would love to discuss it with students.

There's never enough time to dig deep in elementary.

Franklin is a useful representation of how democracy requires painful compromises, that people even our heroes are complicated and will sometimes let us down.

Same can be said of a country, even a relatively great one.

So I don't struggle to talk about slavery, because I believe that natural rights are worth teaching well.

And the numerous times in which we as a country mess them up are absolutely essential to teach young people.

Franklin's evolution on slavery makes him very useful as a proxy for our country in general, moving forward.

I wanna talk just a little bit about how our students enter into our classrooms, how they might enter into this particular subject matter.

Students come in eager to explore those gray areas.

I teach high school sophomores, and I told their parents a couple of weeks ago in open house that I love it because they challenge every word I say.

And not from a place of defiance, but from a place of wanting to make sense of the world.

I remember that rebellion, and I was a good kid, I was a nerd, but rebellion was the defining feature of my teenage years.

Everything was open to why, "But why?

Well, I'm sure that's what you would say, because you're a teacher."

Everything was about looking for the hidden agenda, looking for the other side, looking for the books they didn't want us to read.

And we can harness that natural curiosity in our students to create complex and really rich classrooms.

Teachers wanna modify curricula to challenge students, to think critically about complicated figures in our history, including Franklin and the other founding fathers.

And lastly, even the most avid in humanities instructions don't always have the resources and support they need to teach about the complicated history of Franklin and the Founding Fathers.

There are a couple of points in line with our understanding of culturally relevant, and culturally responsive teaching.

But I also think it's important for us to note.

While students do come in eager to have these complex conversations, I think it's very, very important for us to understand that just as students come in with varying levels of prior knowledge, students also come in with varying levels of prior trauma, or oppression and varied experiences with the world.

And very often what we might see as a very black and white, it's a history on the page, and this is just the way it is.

There's a different, what I like to call admission fee for various students when we talk about different topics.

When we talk about things like a Founding Father being a great statesman and an enslaver, reconciling those facts comes at a greater cost for students whose ancestors were enslaved.

And perhaps even for students who know that their ancestors may have been enslavers.

When we talk about Benjamin Franklin's complex, and at times very strange relationship within his own family.

The fact that he ends his life estranged from his own son.

When we have students who come from complex family structures, it might trigger or have a deeper impact on those students.

So even though we are looking at objective truths, we have to understand that the reception of our students, and even the processing that we go through ourselves, are directly influenced by our lived experiences.

And that it's very hard, we know as educators, but it's very hard to get a student to think meta cognitively when they are still at a very base and visceral emotional state, working through their own stories, their own viewpoints.

All of these things should be taken into account when we think about how we present this information.

One of the ways that we can help to narrow that focus, help students to process information in a safe way is through the use of structured reflection activities, moving forward.

As we, moving forward one more time.

As we work through tonight's information, particularly through these film clips, I'm gonna provide some focus for you.

But each time we do this in our classrooms, it's very important that we provide specific focus for students.

Even our brightest learners need to have the parameters of their processing shaped a little bit.

Back in April, the Ken Burns documentary on Benjamin Franklin premiered on PBS.

We're gonna be looking at three clips from this outstanding documentary that I highly recommend.

Hopefully some of you have had a chance to view it.

If not, you'll have that opportunity if you attend all three sessions.

But also it's available on PBS Passport, and I highly recommend that you check it out.

It's a four hour documentary broken into, I watched it in two, two-hour places, and I learned an immense out about Ben Franklin.

A Founding Father that I thought I knew a great deal about already.

In our very first clip here is the essential question that I want you to consider.

If you want to jot this down, Dana's gonna drop it in the chat as well.

What do you think the filmmakers think about Ben Franklin?

We're talking about perspective.

We're talking about Lynn as a high school teacher, again, who understands that students come in wanting to question everything.

I want them to consider potential biases of the people producing the information that they are receiving as objective.

So what do you think the filmmakers think about Ben Franklin?

What evidence do they present for us in this clip of him as an approachable, or adaptable person to teach in our classrooms today?

So let's take a look at this opening clip.

You all have your guided question.

Feel free to take notes.

I'm actually, Lauren, gonna come back to IMPACT after we watch the clip.

[thunder rumbling] - [Benjamin] Histories of lives are seldom entertaining unless they contain something either admirable or exemplar.

Know then that I am an enemy to vice, and a friend to virtue.

A mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power.

I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country.

And the least appearance of an encroachment on those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil exceedingly.

[thunder rumbles] Benjamin Franklin.

[upbeat, jolly acoustic mandolin strings music] - Franklin is by far the most approachable of our founders.

He's not somebody made of stone like a George Washington.

Franklin was pretty simple in his moral code.

He was driven by a desire to pour forth benefits for the common good.

But there's a lot in Benjamin Franklin that makes you flinch.

And we see Franklin not as a perfect person, but somebody evolving to see if he could become more perfect.

- [Narrator] He was a teenage runaway who achieved such remarkable success that his example would be handed down for generations as the embodiment of the American dream.

He was a printer, a publisher, and a writer.

Producing everything from essays on politics and religion, to biting satires and words of wisdom that would endure forever.

[thunder rumbles] He was a prolific inventor, and a scientist whose pioneering discoveries would make him the most famous American in the world.

He was a civic leader, the founder of a library, and a college who introduced a host of improvements that made the lives of everyday people better.

He embraced the Enlightenment belief, and the perfectability of human beings, but no one understood their foibles and failings, including his own, better than he did.

He also owned and enslaved human beings, and benefited from the institution of slavery.

[gun fires] He was a reluctant revolutionary who became an indispensable founder of a new nation, helped craft the document that declared his country's independence.

And then did as much as anyone to secure the victory that assured it.

And he guided the complicated compromises that created his nation's constitution, then tried to rectify its central failing.

- He constantly remade himself, from apprentice, to printer, to scientist, to government official, to revolutionary to abolitionist.

He never was finished with himself.

He always thought that he was a work in progress.

- [Narrator] He could be funny and unforgiving, folksy and philosophical, generous and shrewdly calculating, broad-minded, yet deeply prejudiced.

A family man who spent years away from his wife, and let political differences destroy his relationship with his son.

He concealed those contradictions behind the carefully crafted public image.

- He's a Puritan who then becomes the leading figure in the Enlightenment.

So he stands astride so many contradictions in his own life that he understands them, and they don't become contradictions for him.

They become some seamless web of insight.

- He wrote so much, he wrote so well.

He's somebody that we need to know about.

He can put us in touch with the sensibilities of the 18th century in a way that makes it both accessible, and yet captures its remoteness.

- Franklin is endlessly, endlessly interesting.

He is the only Founding Father who evidently had a sense of humor, who was evidently human, who evidently had a sex life.

And there's so much about him that makes him seem approachable on the one hand, and superhuman on the other hand.

- [Narrator] "Let all men know thee," Benjamin Franklin said, "But no man, know thee thoroughly."

- [Benjamin] I never intend to wrap my talent in a napkin.

To be brief, I am courteous and affable, good humored, unless I am first provoked, and handsome and sometimes witty.

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten.

Either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing, Benjamin Franklin.

[upbeat, jolly acoustic violin music] - So that is a clip from early on in the documentary.

And there were two questions that we were looking at.

What evidence do the filmmakers present for Benjamin Franklin as approachable, or adaptable for us today?

And what do you think the filmmakers think about Ben Franklin?

As we work through a couple of more clips from the documentary and we begin to trace our essential question for tonight, I want to share with you a couple of ways that you can guide students in doing so.

One is a graphic organizer.

It's a processing tool that I use in my own classroom.

And the other is the Thinking Tracker developed by Dr. Powell.

So the first one I wanna share is one that I use in my classroom.

My students respond to text via a tool that I call IMPACT.

Lauren, if we can go back just one slide.

Thanks.

IMPACT is six questions that often replaces longer form annotation.

I love it because it's a simple acronym my students can remember very easily.

And it also covers a multiplicity of layers of thinking.

And so here's what IMPACT stands for.

The very first question that I want my students to consider when they're viewing a film clip, or looking at a short text is what left an impression?

What is the significant idea or concept in this section of the text or in this film segment?

Did you read or see something that moved you?

In order to allow our students to authentically engage I think acknowledging their feelings is paramount.

What is the pressing issue?

What is the conflict or problem being discussed at this point in the text, or in this particular film segment?

Did you alter your thinking about something?

How did your point of view about the character, the plot, the concept, the historical figure change based on this section of reading, reviewing?

What new ideas did this clip, did this text create in your mind?

Did today's text or concepts create a question?

What are you unsure about?

What are you curious about?

I love that Elizabeth dropped in the chat she was IMPACT-ing already.

I've always wondered how many descendants Benjamin Franklin has in France.

Those are the kinds of questions that we wanna leave room for our students to ponder.

And lastly, and this is the reflective stage, what are your thoughts?

So as we work through our central question tonight, I'm gonna provide an option.

As we work through in response to each clip, you can respond via IMPACT, or you can respond via this next tool that I'm gonna share with you.

And that is a Thinking Tracker.

Our essential question tonight is gonna be how do Benjamin Franklin's beliefs alter through his lifetime, especially his ideas on slavery?

Layering literacy strategies, presenting layers of text, essays, interviews, primary source documents.

This graphic organizer, this Thinking Tracker allows students to process that information in a way that is centered on our learning standard.

We'll use either the Thinking Tracker or IMPACT to inform our own thinking and working tonight.

Next slide.

So you all, as Dana dropped in the chat, you all are gonna get a copy of the slide deck with links to all of these documents.

I'm gonna have Lauren go ahead and open up what the full form of the Thinking Tracker looks like, just so you can see what it would look like.

So our essential question would go across the top.

How did Benjamin Franklin alter his beliefs through his lifetime, especially his ideas on slavery?

We're gonna be examining three short clips.

The opening clip is actually our longest one.

I think the others run about two minutes, so we'll still have time to process.

But our first column is summary.

What is it about?

Our second column is evidence.

These are concrete facts that are gonna stand out to you as we process through these clips.

And lastly, this is where you are tracking your thinking.

How has my thinking changed?

You can see that the steps here are very similar to those six steps in IMPACT.

We're having students have a chance to summarize their learning, identify specific evidence from the text, and reflect a bit on their own thinking.

So if you have still got that paper out, go ahead and jot that essential question at the top, you all.

It's gonna drive all of our responses tonight.

Dana just dropped it in the chat for us.

How did Benjamin Franklin alter his beliefs throughout his lifetime, especially those about slavery?

So let's dive into our first text.

We can move forward.

As we watch this first clip, keep in mind some of those frameworks that we talked about, the principles of anti-bias, anti-racist education, and culturally relevant pedagogy.

How can we bring students, particularly students of color, safely in and safely out of this conversation?

Next slide.

So here's our first chance to apply either one of those thinking trackers.

You can respond via IMPACT, or you can respond in terms of our Thinking Tractor, by summarizing what's happening, citing evidence that speaks to how Benjamin Franklin might feel about slavery, how some of those beliefs might be changing.

And lastly, that column to note your thoughts, and your opinions based on the clip.

So let's take a watch.

- [Narrator] "The future prosperity of the British Empire," Franklin wrote in one essay, "Lay in the American Colonies."

Because of the abundance of land, he predicted the white population would double every 20 years, and within a century would even surpass England's.

All of this disregarded the sovereignty of Native Peoples whose land it had been for millennia.

In the same essay, he argued strictly on economic grounds that the importation of Black slaves diminished a nation, because the whites who have slaves are enfeebled by not working themselves.

- He is combining racism, and opposition to the slave trade simultaneously.

Some of the initial efforts to stop the slave trades in North America originated in concern that there were too many Black people there.

It was an immigration problem rather than a moral problem.

- [Narrator] He also worried about the influx of immigrants he described as having a swarthy complexion, including Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians, and Swedes.

Even the Germans who now represented 1/3 of his own colony.

"Why," he wrote, "Should Pennsylvania founded by the English become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them?"

[dog barks] - [Benjamin] We have so fair an opportunity by excluding all Blacks and tawnys of increasing the lovely white and red.

But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my country.

For such kind of partiality is natural to mankind.

- In the middle decades of the 18th century, notions of racial inferiority were so deeply embedded that the unusual fact of this document actually is how he says at the end, "Or maybe I'm just biased in favor of people like myself."

Franklin doesn't deserve particular praise for that, but it is unusual in the sense of he's being self-reflective about his own prejudices.

It's the self-reflective part, which is slightly unusual.

The prejudices are not.

- So let's take about three minutes and jot down our thoughts based on this first clip.

Just a brief summary.

Evidence that links to our central question of how do we see Ben Franklin's beliefs since this is our first clip, it's largely what are his beliefs at this moment?

What evidence do we see?

And how has your thinking about Benjamin Franklin changed as a result of this information?

Remember, if you would like to, you can also respond to the impact questions of what left an impression, what moved you?

What's the pressing issue?

How did your thinking alter?

What questions do you have?

And lastly, what are your thoughts?

I'm gonna give you all about four minutes to jot down some of your own thoughts before we move forward.

[upbeat music] Let's take about 30 seconds to wrap up our notes.

[upbeat music] The great thing about the thinking trackers and throughout the slides and in the PDF you'll receive is that Dr. Powell has linked to the primary sources in each case.

So the primary source that is referenced in this clip is observations concerning the increase of mankind from 1751.

And you'll see at the top of the slide, there's a direct link to the primary source.

So the thing I love about the learning tracker about the way this particular series of clips is set up is that I think it's really accessible across multiple grade levels.

I love how all of us would be able to modify the language of the questions to make it accessible.

I could see a student as young as fifth grade processing through a dense primary source document or a film clip using these guided questions.

So we're gonna hold our responses to this question so that we can get into the next clip.

I wanna make sure that we have quite a bit of time to kinda share out our reasoning.

And the next clip I think gives us even more to chew on in a way when we look at this essential question.

In 1757, Benjamin Franklin is sent to England to negotiate taxes with the Penn family, the patrons of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania colony at this point.

In this clip, we find that one of Benjamin Franklin's enslaved people has run away.

As we look at this clip, I want us to continue to use either the thinking tracker or our impact, and I want us to summarize those ideas, identify evidence that Franklin perhaps might be open to changing his ideas or beliefs about slavery.

Does the information that we receive in this next clip impact our understanding of his beliefs?

In that very first clip, we have a scholar tell us in this kind of odd way, Ben Franklin is simultaneously combining this very racist and white supremacist idea with the abolition or prohibition of slavery.

So as we watch this next clip, just this information in any way shape how we are seeing his beliefs evolve potentially.

And then two bigger questions that you'll talk about, I think hopefully more in depth in your small groups.

What do you think Ben Franklin doesn't ever free the enslaved people that he owns?

And how does that impact your thinking?

So let's go ahead and dive into this next clip.

- [Narrator] Franklin and William had brought along two enslaved men known only as Peter and King as servants.

Peter behaves very well to me in general.

Franklin wrote home to Deborah and begins to know the town, so was to go anywhere on errands.

But King sensing an opportunity for freedom in his new surroundings ran away.

- What we know about these men is relatively little.

What we do know is that while Ben Franklin's feelings or opinions about slavery may have changed over time, he doesn't set his slaves free ever.

They run off and he doesn't necessarily pursue them perhaps with as much vigor as he might have and they die off.

But at no moment do we really see Franklin step out front and say, I am setting an example by setting my slaves free.

- So let's take this clip and add it to our tracker.

Take a couple of minutes.

It was a shorter clip so I'm gonna give us about two minutes because you are gonna be in smaller groups to kind of process.

So let's take about two minutes and add our thoughts to that essential question.

So what was this clip about?

What evidence stood out to you?

And how has it further evolved your thinking on Benjamin Franklin and the issue of slavery?

So let's take about two minutes and then we'll move into small groups to kinda debrief both clips.

And our processing time starts now.

[bright music] All right, y'all.

Of course, in our classrooms, we would give students, you know, a much extended amount of time.

I wanna honor your time and still keep us on schedule tonight.

So if you'll go forward for me please, Lauren.

And one more time.

One more time.

All right, so you now had a chance to see two out of the three clips.

Lauren is gonna see you guys out into breakout rooms and we're gonna do, I'm actually gonna give you about four minutes.

So roughly, that's about 45 seconds to one minute per person.

And I would love for you to process these first two clips, kind of share what you thought they were about, what evidence from these clips stood out to you, and how they impacted your thinking.

All right, so we're gonna take about four minutes or at least one minute per person in our breakout rooms and then we're gonna come back together.

[upbeat music] Being recorded.

Welcome back, I hope that everyone had fruitful discussions.

I know that the information is big and the time I'm giving you to process it is very small.

Of course, again, in our classrooms, in our teaching, we would of course give our learners more time.

But I definitely wanna get you through all the steps in the lesson.

This is certainly a lesson depending on, I wanna talk just a little bit about application.

Depending on the level of your classrooms, I think in my high school classroom, it's very likely that in my, you know, my standard level classes, I might give them all of the clips with just a few of the primary documents, things like the actual enslaved, you know, the fugitive slave ad.

I might give them an excerpt from his observations on mankind in my honors or AP classes.

I might give them both that we look at the clip in class because it's shorter, and I would give them the primary source document to unpack and at least in my English classroom to annotate, you know, at night they might, after having viewed it in class and we did an impact in class kinda that short response, they look at the primary source document and do a longer annotation or reflection at home, and we bring both of those into class the next day for blended either small group discussions or whole blast discussions.

We've got two more clips that I wanna share with you and give us a chance just to process so that we can round out actually seeing how Franklin evolves.

So after Franklin returns to America, if this is an African American school at the urging of his wife, Deborah, this is a school that is run by a colleague of his, he writes after his visit in a letter to Reverend John Waring.

And this is an incredible letter.

This is one of those primary documents that I would absolutely say I would give to all of my students.

In this clip, we're gonna see an a real turn in Franklin's belief on slavery.

As we watch, let's keep that essential question in mind.

How is he altering his beliefs toward African Americans and slaves and in the concept of slavery over the course of his lifetime?

So let's take a view at this next clip.

[gentle music] - [Narrator] I went to hear the Negro children at church.

There were 17 that answered very prettily indeed and five or six that were too little, but all behaved very decently.

It gave me a great deal of pleasure and I shall send a fellow to the school.

- [Narrator] Deborah Franklin had enrolled a fellow, an enslaved child in the Franklin household in a new school in Philadelphia, part of an effort to educate black children in North America that Benjamin Franklin had endorsed.

At Deborah's urging, her husband made a personal visit to the school.

- [Narrator] I was on the whole much pleased, and from what I then saw have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race than I had ever before entertained.

Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory is strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children.

You will wonder perhaps that I should ever doubt it and I will not undertake to justify all my prejudices nor to account for them.

- I think a major turning point in Franklin's life was when he visited that classroom.

He did not like black people when he was a young man.

There's no way of getting around that.

It's very distasteful to say, but it's true.

He had once written that the hardest thing for a man to do is to change longstanding prejudices of belief, but to succeed in doing it is a test of one's humanity.

[gentle music] - I saw Lee's question.

This letter was written in 1763.

Elizabeth, I absolutely agree with your point in the chat about how do I accurately teach history, not making my children despise our nation.

I focus on the evolution and trajectory, absolutely.

I will be honest in terms of my identity.

There are times that I as an educator struggle with my own citizenship as a woman of color, as an African American in this country with its roots in knowing the place of my ancestors within that story.

And how do I find purpose, and how do I find sort of peace with being able to load the exceptional nature of the foundation of this country while equally and appropriately condemning the, you know, horrific genocide and enslavement upon which it's based.

And I think being honest in that tension within ourselves and as appropriate even with our students, is the key to helping them to process.

That it's not a matter of love it or hate it or it was great or it was awful.

As we, I think model processing through an evolving nation and evolving founding fathers, I think that's what our students need to see that education is not necessarily about.

And you know, sage on the stage and here's how you should feel about Ben Franklin and here's how you should feel about this nation, but not to be overly reductive, but even in the sort of cognitive processing they're doing through something like a thinking tracker.

Like what are my feelings?

What evidence are these feelings attached to?

What evidence is there that things are improving?

What evidence is there that change is possible?

And I think when we present nuanced pictures of history like that, we empower our students to see that positive trajectory is possible.

In the words of Dr. King, you know, that the art of justice is long, but it is bending toward righteousness, that it's bending toward what's right.

We are approaching the end of our time, but I wanna make sure that I do present this final clip, not just so that we end in a better place, but because I think it is critical to sort of seeing this altered Ben Franklin.

So in this final clip, we're gonna look at how Ben Franklin has changed.

The year is 1787, Benjamin Franklin owns enslaved people between 1735 and 1781.

We know that he does not free his slaves.

Instead they either run away and unlike other founding fathers, he doesn't do a huge amount to sort of track them down.

I will say this, a great sort of mirror piece, a great founding father to juxtapose Franklin might be George Washington, for whom we have a huge amount of evidence, particularly in his pursuit of an enslaved woman named on a judge who once getting her freedom, gives multiple news interviews about her escape from the Washington, while simultaneously, we're seeing George and Martha Washington regularly advertised for her return because of her great value.

So I think juxtaposing those primary sources to be really great for students.

In 1878, Benjamin Franklin has become president of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society and he as president presents a Petition to Congress.

Let's take a look at this final clip.

- [Narrator] During his time as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Franklin, a former slave owner, had accepted the presidency of the Pennsylvania Society for promoting the abolition of slavery, a Quaker group in Philadelphia.

He had considered introducing a statement of principle into the constitution condemning slavery and the slave trade, but several delegates had persuaded him to drop it.

- The question of anti-slavery, pro-slavery was not an important issue for the vast majority of people who wrote or thought about or argued about the American Revolution.

On the other hand, given the fact that it is the daily reality for enslaved men and women, in some ways that was the key question every day.

- The gross hypocrisy in fighting a war for liberty, liberty of people, and not including everybody was obvious.

If you're talking about liberty, you're talking about liberty.

- [Narrator] With the constitution in place, Franklin felt free to address the issue head on.

- [Narrator] To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, from a persuasion that equal liberty is still the birthright of all men, we earnestly entreat your serious attention to the subject of slavery, that you will be pleased to counter the restoration of liberty to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom, are degraded into perpetual bondage, that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people.

[gentle music] - The first real act of Franklin's life or the first public act, I guess, is his running away from home.

So here, you have a young man in quest of freedom.

And the last real act of the last public act of Franklin's life is to treat us against slavery.

So the end, the life is largely bookended in a way by these two endorsements in some way of freedom.

- Benjamin Franklin evolved as far as his understanding of race relations and slavery were concerned.

He had owned slaves, he didn't see anything wrong with it until very late in the game.

But in his last years, he started to change his mind.

- Philadelphia became a leader in abolition and the emancipation of enslaved people of African descent.

There were laws on the books that began the dismantling of slavery.

It was a train that could not be stopped.

And so we see someone who understands the tide of the city, of the state, looks at the laws, understands that slavery is going to end at least in Pennsylvania, and he got on the right side of that conversation.

- If this were a petition coming from anybody else, the Congress would've not even considered it.

But because of Franklin's signature, they're forced to consider it.

And it's the first outspoken in public debate in American history on under the new nation on slavery.

- [Narrator] In Congress, the petition was immediately attacked by Southerners.

Representative James Jackson of Georgia warned that if Congress tried to abolish slavery, it would light up the flame of civil discord, and the southern states will never suffer themselves to be divested of their property without a struggle.

Another congressman claimed that the south sweltering climate prohibited whites from working the soil.

For that he said, they needed slaves.

- And Franklin goes back to a device he had used as a teenager, which is to write a parody in the voice of somebody else.

So he writes a sermon that he pretends has been given by a Muslim from North Africa about why they have to keep white Europeans in slavery.

And it parodies the entire argument of all those who are opposing abolition in the United States.

- [Narrator] If we forebear to make slaves of the Christians, Franklin's character asks, who in this hot climate are to cultivate our lands?

- [Narrator] And if we set our slaves free, what is to be done with them?

For men accustomed to slavery will not work for a livelihood when not compelled.

Here, they are brought into a land where the Son of Islam gives forth its light and they have an opportunity of making themselves acquainted with the true doctrine and thereby saving their immortal souls.

- And so of course, the reader realizes that Franklin is using precisely the same arguments of James Jackson of Georgia, which immediately proves to you without question the absurdity of the arguments.

This is the genius of Franklin to take something and just turn it around to switch the lens and say, so how would you like it if it looked like that?

- [Narrator] The House of Representatives voted 29 to 25 that Congress has no authority to interfere on the issue of slavery.

In the Senate, the petition was tabled without discussion.

- What they agree on more than anything else is we're not talking about this.

The federal government is not talking about this.

This is not the forum to deal with the national question of slavery because there is no national question.

It's a state question.

The question of the future of slavery is really left for the individual states to decide.

That's how we end up with the North South Division.

- I would put it this way.

Before the revolution, slavery was never a major public issue.

There were people who spoke before the revolution, who spoke against it and gave good reasons to what evil it was, but it was not a major public issue.

After the revolution, there never was a time when it wasn't.

- [Narrator] During- - Moving forward.

So in our classrooms, students would, with this fourth clip, go through the same steps that we've modeled tonight, summarizing what we see in the clip, pulling specific pieces of evidence, and then charting their thoughts on how Benjamin Franklin has changed.

This is clip for you all would likely be an independent lesson in my class.

It is so rich for analysis, for dissection, for comparison.

As an English teacher, there are a number of ways that I would likely use it.

There are links to the petition itself to that primary document as well as to the satire piece that he writes.

In an English classroom, I think it could make for a very thoughtful companion piece to a modest proposal, and in some ways provide students a safe way to enter into a conversation that's more fraught, I think with emotion and complexity for American students.

I think starting from the point of his satire and then moving into the serious subject that it addresses, might be a particular technological choice that would benefit students in history classes.

I think both primary documents, the petition itself, and the satire along with the clip could easily be turned into an independent lesson.

So at the end of Dr. Powell's curriculum is this idea of students taking that learning tracker or taking the four, at this point, five impacts that they would've created and either independently or in a group create a mini speech.

Instead of a paper, I think a lotta times in terms of our time and capacity as teachers, longer form responses are not, they are not always appropriate and not always possible.

But having students take that tracker, take their impacts and synthesize them into a 62nd argument, is something that either individually or in groups is really possible.

So in those groups or independently, they would state their claim or thesis to our essential question, how does Benjamin Franklin's beliefs about African Americans in slavery evolve over his lifetime?

They would pull from each one of those boxes, from across the notes they've already taken to select evidence to support their claim.

They could use evidence and frame sentence starters depending on the level of your students to connect those pieces of evidence to their thesis.

And lastly, making their statement about how they respond to Franklin's evolution.

There's a couple of resources, final resources I wanna share with you all, next slide.

One is a model that Dr. Powell provides some of those sentence frame starters.

I think they're super helpful.

They'll be in the PDF when you receive it.

So how to ground their textual evidence.

The article states, according to this, in this film segment, the film segment emphasizes that senate starters to support their change in thinking.

I still believe Benjamin Franklin was this, but this evidence makes me think that by focusing on this piece of evidence, a person might not notice that this is a current.

And lastly, clarifying the impact in actions.

Sentence starters for that.

The last thing I wanna share you is a simple model that I use in my own classroom to help students to organize that thought.

If you're an ELA teacher, you're probably familiar with pieces or races, but it just takes students through those same four steps with a mnemonic that's very easy for them to remember.

They answer their question using the language of the question.

So our simple question is, how does Benjamin Franklin's beliefs about African Americans and slavery change across the course of his life?

In my classroom, in the very beginning when they're learning how to use this model, I tell them, use the language of the question.

So my students would write Benjamin Franklin's beliefs about African Americans and slavery change greatly over the course of his life.

Benjamin Franklin changes from an enslaver to an abolitionist due to various experience he has throughout the course of his life.

They would then move into citing that evidence and explaining how this evidence shows that he's changing.

The last step, the S step is they're just gonna sum that up.

Next slide.

And now, we have reached the end of our time together.

And so PDS and I make a quick response, quick request to you all to complete this exit survey.

It'll take maybe three, four minutes of your time.

I just wanna thank you very much for the gift of your time.

I know as educators, we all had other things that we could be doing tonight and it has been my privilege and honor to guide you through this work and to share my perspectives.

And I hope above all that there's one small piece of this that you can take either one of the thinking models or one of the graphic organizing tools and use it to amplify the amazing teaching that I'm sure you're doing every day in all of your classrooms.

So I'm gonna turn it over to Lauren and Dana to wrap us up for the evening.

- Terrific, thank you so much Ms. Jones, and thank you for walking us through such meaningful tools and resources to meaningfully and authentically teach on Benjamin Franklin and American history.

I know in the beginning you said that you just wanted to make sure that everyone walks away with something they can use tomorrow.

And I have a full list of things that we can walk away and use tomorrow.

So thank you.

And I wanna take a moment to thank all of the teachers and educators that tuned in tonight.

What a terrific night.

And like Ms. Jones said, thank you for taking tonight to be with us.

This is just the start.

So while you're completing this survey, we wanna direct you back to tomorrow, well, next week, not tomorrow, but direct you to next week.

We're gonna come back together for the second part of this series.

And this is just like the tip of the iceberg.

So come back, there's gonna be more incredible tools, more clips, ways for you to see how to extend this documentary, how to extend the video clips.

And if you missed it in the beginning, after this three part series, if you attend all three pieces of this, you'll receive a classroom extension kit.

So you're gonna receive the whole four hours of the documentary and books and tools to extend it in your classroom.

So with that, we're gonna go ahead and flip to the next slide, and just, I wanna make sure that you have Ms. Jones email address.

So she was gracious enough to provide that.

And also our email address is education@pbsnc.org.

And of course, this opportunity and any others can be found on our website.

But we just wanna thank you, and you'll notice on the last slide we have our references from tonight.

Thank you again and feel free to hop off once you've completed your survey.