Students will learn about how the U.S. government classifies race and ethnicity. The teacher will play a video of students at Park East High School in New York City who contacted the U.S. Census Bureau to start a conversation about the way race and ethnicity are identified in census surveys. Students will also read a blog post explaining how the Census Bureau has changed the way it collects data on race and ethnicity. In the last part of the activity, students will write a letter that could be sent to a leader in their community with the goal of sparking some type of change.
8
120 minutes
This activity uses the following online resource:
The following items are part of this activity. The items and their sources appear at the end of this teacher version.
Students will understand the impact of Park East High School students’ letters.
Students will apply lessons learned from the Park East High School example to their own persuasive letter.
English