Welcome to our page!  Thank you for stopping by. Feel free to stop by our website at www.fyrclassroom.org to see more videos and get access to the full curriculum.

Every day we'll have at least one person from our group check in, and engage with viewers. We're particularly interested in three facets of our work:

* For educators: Imagine that you were going to implement this curriculum in your own classroom/school. What kind of support do you think that you and your students would need to navigate discussions about race as a biological reality as well as a social construct.

* For researchers: What suggestions do you have to push our thinking? Also, do you think you, or someone you know, might be interested in partnering with us as we move to scale this up and out.

* For scientists: In what ways do you think that scientific advances in Direct-to-Consumer DNA tests might impact the information that will be available for consumers, particularly those under 18?

Beyond that, if you have a question, feel free to ask. Over the next eight days, the following co-presenters will periodically be available:

* Me: curriculum designer, camp director, researcher.

* Nina Jablonski: PI of the study, and along with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., inspiration of the work.

* Brandon Ogbunu: Camp Instructor (2016 and 2017)

* Michael Turner: Camp Instructor (2017)

* Lindsay Fulton, Genealogist, New England Historical Genealogical Society.

* Occasional surprise guests and visitors, TBA.

We all look forward to hearing from you, and having a chat; enjoy!

What a terrific project, and great video!  Have you run into any issues with absence of genetic or genealogical information with any particular population?

Lovely and powerful curriculum.  Do you see any differences in resources used by students to uncovering family histories that are correlated with different cultural backgrounds of students?

 Elizabeth,

Thanks for your answer.  I'm not surprised that there is a disparity in the availability of records for students from non-European cultures.  But as you have recognized, that also provides a powerful lesson for greater understanding of the consequences of historical discrimination.

Personally visiting far away locations may be difficult for students, but, in doing some research on my own family background, I've found  through web searches some local historical societies or individuals who know a lot about the population of some small town and are willing to share that information. 

I suspect that you are gaining a lot of useful information that can help the next groups of students who participate in this (or other similar) programs. As Professor Gates says, we are all interested in ourselves.

Great video, awesome program-always great to see influential people using that influence to do important things-like improve science education for underrepresented communities! I do have a few questions about the impact of the program on students. You mention an increase in student engagement-how are you measuring that? Are you measuring any other student impacts? I love the interdisciplinary focus of this. I know this is a middle school curriculum, but in many places (especially in urban centers, with high proportion of under-represented populations) schools are K-8. While instructional time for science is often less of a problem in middle grades than in K-5--it still can be less than optimal. Interdisciplinary programs/curricula can help with this issue, and I am wondering if you are looking at instructional time in science in middle (and lower) grades as a possible impact?

I am also thinking about the question you posed about working with students under age 18 and the kinds of information they may obtain from this work. Do you get parental consent prior to participation? Have you had any issues with parents having concerns/objections when certain types of information is uncovered? Do you have some any resources in your back pocket that you can pull out if a student does find something very difficult to handle? How does your experience in working with this age group using consumer DNA information point to some guidelines that other educators could use if they want to bring this into their classrooms?

 Thank you for posting this video! It's fascinating and I love the way that it uses readily available kits for use by middle school aged youth. This type of camp probably wouldn't have been possible even five years ago! I am intrigued to see how you handle the difficult information as Rachel asks above. Thanks!

Hi Lesley, 

Feel free to ask follow-up questions after you read what I wrote in response to Rachel's questions.  Thanks for jumping in!

First, this is an awesome project! Great job!

I have some questions about how you recruited your subjects. Were they from the same geographic area? Was it a day camp or an overnight camp? How many days/weeks did the camp run? Did students have to apply or pay a fee? 

Thanks!
-Trudi ~:)

I really enjoyed your video and the thoughtful commentary! I can see how this would be a powerful way for students to learn about genetics and anthropology. Several years ago, my husband and I were visiting Europe and found a tiny library in Southampton, England with information about my husband's ancestors. The old buildings, geography, and history of the town came alive for us after that!

I could also see this curriculum benefitting character education programs as students think about who they are and who others are in multiple ways. You referenced NGSS, so do you see science class as being the most natural fit for implemeting this curriculum? Thank you for sharing!

Hi Sarah, thank you for sharing your experience! It's something else, isn't it? I still have very deep feelings about the day I saw the image of my grandfather's name on the ship's manifest, and a picture of the ship. My life is easy in comparison!

My dream is that a group of teachers from within the same school would endeavor to implement it together. Not only would that share the burden (there's a lot to cover in this tome!), but it would organically show kids that science doesn't happen in only room 108. Science happens in the gym and art class. ELA happens in Science and Math and History, and so on. For that reason I attempted to (begin) tracking overlap of the curriculum for Math and ELA common core standards.

I don't want teachers to think I'm asking them to do more work. I want teachers to see this as seamless, and an opportunity to simultaneously meet the standards, provide space for kids to get to know themselves in a genetic and genealogical landscape, and learn about their students deeply and authentically. We have a ton of research that shows us that kids learn best when they feel connected to the curriculum and they feel that it is relevant to them. But what is relevant? You have to know kids well in order to answer that question, and then move forward. 

Hi Elizabeth - thank you and your team for the great video and thoughtful project.  I was wondering how your team helps the students navigate their conceptions of race versus ancestry.  Both are so important for one's identity, but seem to be frequently confounded.  

Thank you for your thoughtful question. Dr. Elizabeth Wright will certainly have thoughts on this, but I thought that I might chime in based on some classroom experiences while teaching the Finding Your Roots camp. My name is C. Brandon Ogbunu, one of the instructors on the project.

You correctly highlight that race is an extremely important and sensitive topic, and one that must be navigated carefully in conversations about ancestry.  On one end, we don’t want to ignore its social importance and implications. On the other, we do not want to conflate the social/arbitrary with the fixed/biological.  This isn’t easy, even among professional geneticists! (I’m a basic scientist who studies genetics, and find myself having related discussions with my peers)

With regards to young people, there are several strategies for how one can engage this. We took several approaches, all of which touched the issue in different ways:

1) One of the central messages of the larger project was that our identities are the productive of the “genetic, genealogical and intentional selves.” This was the brainchild of Dr. Elizabeth Wright, and was an extremely effective way of anchoring controversial discussions about identity.  We aren’t any one of these three “selves”, but the product of all of them, playing out in different ways.

I mention this in response to your question because navigating conversations about race is often facilitated by the way the “table is set” with regards to how we think about identity in general.  The race conversation, then, becomes an extension of conversations about identity, with some very specific and important differences.  (Another example is the adoption conversation, which has been explored in this forum)

2) One way to discuss race is to re-frame it in terms of "genetic variation within the human population," and to demystify the differences that have such strong social importance.  For example: a lot of race (as we’ve defined it socially) is about physical characteristics such as skin color.  We addressed this by having a detailed conversation about the genetics, evolution and biology of skin color. We are grateful to have a pioneer on the topic (Dr. Nina Jablonski) as one of the founders of this project.  The in-class student discussion was lead by Penn State PhD candidate Tina Lasisi, who did a masterful job deconstructing the biology and evolution of skin color differences.  The students really liked this experience.  The goal of this exercise is to communicate that variation is a feature of any population of organisms, and that variation often manifests in physical traits.  Skin color happens to be one of them.

(Note that one doesn't have to be a practicing biological anthropologist to have or lead this discussion. We simply leveraged the expertise of the people who were nearby)

2) Relatedly: In class, I often tried to use examples that turn our common understanding of race on its head, challenging students to think differently about these categories. One example is the phenotypic similarity between two largely unrelated ancestral groups: individuals of aboriginal Australian ancestry and individuals of sub-Saharan African ancestry.  In this situation, “ancestry” as we commonly understand it and “race” don’t overlap, which reveals how arbitrary and imprecise racial categories can be.

3) Lastly, how do we drive these things home while paying full and proper attention to race as a social category (and it’s profound implications in the modern world)?  This is an area that I continue to learn about, try to improve on, and don’t have all of the answers to. (so by all means, share your experiences and pointers!)   

The way that I currently think about it is this: If we can soften the hard brackets around the notion that people fall into fixed biological categories, then the social conversation about race (that many students are experiencing first hand, in life) becomes easier to discuss.

For example: the problem that I experienced as a young African-American boy was that I actually felt different. Not only in terms of my social understanding of the experiences of some populations vs. others, but because of an unfortunate sense of essential difference. 

My goal, as an educator (and practicing basic geneticist), is to chip away at the essential part of this (mis)understanding: to recognize that humans can differ in many ways, that variation is part of who we are as a species, and that we can decide to do something about the ways that we treat each other.

Just a few thoughts! Thank you for the question!

Not that I want to toot the horn of our own team, but Brandon’s response is as good as it gets. I’m gonna go read it again..

So the issue of race is addressed only from a biological perspective, while the socio-economic aspects of race and how it plays out, is simply not addressed at all?  If that is the case, then how is this handled when such a situation is brought up by a child that has experienced or witnessed racial name-calling, being maligned or mistreated, and bullied because of their race?

Hi eb,

I’m exhausted and I have a long day today and tomorrow, but I didn’t want to wait to respond to your concern. 

We absolutely acknowledge that race and skin color are very real, very lived experiences. In fact, the framing of the curriculum around who we are genetically, genealogically/socioculturally and intentionally, invites students to think very critically about the genetic reality of a trait and its lived experience. The fact (The. Fact.) that the color of ones skin does absolutely nothing to impart social value has not stopped the dominant culture from oppressing others. We can’t go back in time to disrupt that narrative. We can, however, work to disrupt the narrative now by acknowledging it, listening to the experiences of those who are being harmed by it, and acting to do what we can to end it. 

I’m happy to continue this conversation, but for now I must sleep. 

Thanks for for pushing us to better explain our work. 

~Biz

I appreciate you taking the time to pause and answer my question, before going to bed and getting ready for a busy day; however I have two burning questions: 1) Do you think a program or project such as this, can be implemented and be just as effective and successful, in a school district in which the 90% of administration, teachers and staff are Caucasian, and 60% of the students are ethnic minority.  2) Would you advise that all that would like to be involved -particularly the parents, are first given an introduction to how race will be viewed -primarily by its biology, and the framing of the curriculum will be around who we are genetically, genealogically/socioculturally and intentionally" Please explain further what is mean by this statement -especially the word "intentionally"  
(Wikipedia provides a definition for intentionally, as the name of an outstanding Florida, racehorse.)