I tried out Anne Sibley O’Brien’s RENEW protocol with a book that I was reading as part of a separate book project where, this semester we are reading and teaching about “the black experience.” While this was my first time going through the protocol with more intention, it was affirming to realize that I was already doing many of the practices within the framework. I will use this protocol for PINE projects books as well, but the timing for this book worked well and there have just been many learning connections between the two projects. I tried to stick to the order because I imagined that they were valuable to do sequentially, but admittedly, once I got going I went a little off track. 

I used the protocol for the story, Ruth and the Green Book, by Calvin Alexander. This story is based in the 1950s and is about a black family from Chicacago who travels south by car (their first car!) to visit their grandma in Alabama. They are traveling with Ruth (the child), Momma, Daddy, and Ruth’s stuffy, Brown Bear. They encounter many hardships along the way, mainly because of Jim Crow laws in the south. They eventually come across the Green Book, which eases their traveling troubles, but there is still a heaviness about how they do not feel welcome. This story is about hope, joy, perseverance, and family. 

Notice:

I went through the book and just had students notice what was happening in the story to start. They were very upset by the injustice that they were witnessing. One student said, “I don’t like the time where Jim Crow laws existed. It makes me mad.” I re-affirmed the importance of learning about our past so that we can improve upon it, learn from our mistakes, and keep going with the things that are okay. Lots of nods in agreement. The students were also keen to notice the ways that the family was happy. They thought Brown Bear was happy to be along for the ride, they thought they must feel really excited to see Nana in Alabama, and it seemed really fun to sing in the car together. At the end of the story a student said, “At first the book wasn’t great. Everything kept going so bad for their family. And then in the end things really got better. They made friends, got the Green Book and they saw their grandma!” 

Explore

Next we made a list of how we are the same and different. I wrote on a piece of chart paper: “What is the same about us? What is different about us?” 

Ideas recorded for same: We all have people we love; we all have our own personalities; we all can be kind 

Ideas recorded for different: We like different things; different skin tones; not everyone has a car (maybe not everyone has the same amount of money); culture and languages. 

We talked about how many of the things that make us different are on the “outside”, but the things that make us the same are on the inside (love, connection, family). 

Neighbors

For the “Neighbors” part, I addressed this more throughout the reading. We noticed things Ruth was doing that we had connections to… like traveling with her stuffy Brown Bear and going to see Nana. When I go through this protocol again, I’d like to be more intentional about asking about neighbors and have them dig in more here.

Educate: This book has a lot of great education built right in. All of the questions that were asked, we were able to answer from the authors note at the end. One question that came up (and continues to come up each time that we read a book that delves into racism), “But why would this happen? How could anyone think this way?”; I have been redirecting back to the book “Our Skin” (a book we’ve read a couple time throughout these coinciding projects).  I say something like, “remember in Our Skin we learned that a group of white people made up an idea called race? They sorted people and said that white people were better than other races in all kinds of ways. Well, even though that’s not true, they convinced a lot of people that it is true and they have been telling this story for a long, long time.” This answer seems to satisfy the question, though they still look very disappointed. 

Welcoming: 

I gave a reminder/wrap-up at the end of the lesson, “In our class we welcome everyone.”