Explore the powerful book and film in your classroom today!
THROUGH THE BANKS OF THE RED CEDAR
In 1963 Michigan State Head Coach Duffy Daugherty and 23 African American young men seized the opportunity of a lifetime. Maya Washington, the daughter of Minnesota Vikings football legend Gene Washington, deepens her connection to her father as she uncovers how the first fully integrated college football team in America changed the game forever.
Film:
Check local listings or request Through the Banks of the Red Cedar from your local PBS Station. Stream/Download on iTunes, and PBS Documentaries on Amazon Prime Video.
Book:
Available on Kindle, and in paperback, hardcover, and audiobook on Amazon and everywhere books are sold.
A Curriculum Experience
Audiences love the themes and historical resonance of both the book and film-- especially educators looking for engaging lesson plan materials exploring language arts, literature, ethnic studies, Black history, gender studies, football, and American history.
If you don’t already have the book, click here to purchase it in the format of your choosing. You can watch the film on the PBS Documentaries Channel, Comcast, and iTunes or by contacting your local PBS station. The resources are designed as a companion to both the film and book, however the themes can be explored independently as well. We hope you'll create the learning experience that best serves your audience.
Engage your classroom with a full unit lesson plan for the documentary film and book, suitable for high school and college educators (and younger audiences with modification).
The ebook includes worksheets, activities, and a final project designed by professional educators with National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, National Council of English Teachers (NCTE) and the International Reading Association (IRA) Standards for the English Language Arts in mind.
Screenings and Classroom visits are available by request as a compliment to the lesson plan. Visit www.throughthebanksoftheredcedar.com for more information. Pricing varies. Be sure to include your budget when making your request.
Full Unit Lesson Plan
Guiding Questions:
1. Our life’s journey can be seen as a series of events based on luck/fate, natural talent, or hard work. How do these factors create one’s path and identity?
2. What is our personal responsibility to our community and to people outside of our own communities? How does helping others succeed benefit everyone?
3. What is the relationship between our past and our present? What is your identity and how is it wrapped up in the generations that came before yours?
4. How do we properly cite evidence from a nonfiction text to analyze perspective?
Enduring Understandings:
1. The relationship between the present and the past.
2. The significance of the desegregation of college and professional football as it relates to the Jim Crow of the South in the 1950s and 60s.
3. The relationship between the Civil Rights Act(s), activism of the 60s, and current social issues.
4. Journey is both literal and metaphorical in understanding narrative.
5. Exploration of storytelling vehicles: oral, audio recording, film, and writing.
Standards:
These lessons were written with the themes and goals of the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, and complimentary standards based on the National Council of English Teachers (NCTE) and the International Reading Association (IRA) Standards for the English Language Arts in mind. Educators may adapt the Unit Lesson Plan for their classroom as needed. (A summary of standards by subject appears in the full curriculum).
Journals
The lesson plan includes Annotation Journal worksheets, and Journal prompts for every chapter of the book Through the Banks of the Red Cedar: My Father and the Team that Changed the Game, and discussion journal prompts for the documentary film Through the Banks of the Red Cedar.
Exercises, Activities and Final Project
Major performance assessments and rubrics are included alongside individual and group activities, and assignment options to explore vocabulary, themes, historical context, continued research and self-reflection.
Filmmaker /Author, Curriculum Editor
Maya Washington is a multi-disciplinary artist and arts educator with a BA from the University of Southern California and an MFA from Hamline University. Maya is the author of Through the Banks of the Red Cedar: My Father and the Team that Changed the Game, and the writer/director/producer of the documentary film Through the Banks of the Red Cedar. As an educator, Maya has worked in k-12, college-level, and community based classrooms throughout the United States.
Maya is available for classroom visits and screenings by request. Visit mayawashington.org, or throughthebanksoftheredcedar.com for more information.
Curriculum Author
Meghan Maloney-Vinz was an educator in the Saint Paul Public Schools for eight years before leaving to pursue her MFA in creative writing at Hamline University. Since completing her degree, Meghan has served as managing and executive editor of Water~Stone Review for fifteen years and has worked as adjunct faculty in the education and creative writing programs. She also works as program coordinator for the BFA (creative writing) program at Hamline. Aside from her work with the Creative Writing Programs, Meghan is the managing editor of the Under Review, an online literary journal with a sports slant and is a founding member of a small book arts press, broadcraft press. Meghan lives in Saint Paul, MN with her wife and two children.
Curriculum Editor
Taylor Briese is in her 6th year as a Secondary Education Social Studies Teacher. She has working experience in both private and public schools in both the United States and United Kingdom. Taylor is a honors graduate of Roanoke College and has completed nationally competitive teacher training programs through the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Jack Miller Center. She also hosts her own Radio Show with WRKE 100.3, streaming online at WRKE.org. Taylor lives in Roanoke, VA with her rescue dog, Eliza