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When the Levees Broke and a Teaching Guide
Posted December 13, 2007
The Rebuilding New Orleans Initiative is using the experience of Katrina to foster national dialogue about issues of race, class and poverty that were brought to the fore in the aftermath of the storm. Thus, the RF provided support for production of the Emmy Award-winning documentary, When the Levees Broke, by the acclaimed director Spike Lee. In addition, partnering with Teachers College, Columbia University, the RF underwrote the development of a multi-disciplinary curriculum and online resource: Teaching the Levees. The curriculum has been distributed for free to 30,000 high school and college instructors and community leaders in all fifty states. A website (www.teachingthelevees.org) has also been set up to provide instructors further resources and to enable downloads of additional curriculum copies.
Demand for the Teaching the Levees curriculum package was very high and all 30,000 free copies have been distributed. Requests continue to come in, so Teachers College Press has decided to reprint the curriculum book, which they will sell at a discount while continuing to make it available online for free.
Teaching The Levees:
A Curriculum of Democratic Dialogue and Civic Engagement
January 25, 2007
02/21/07: Spike Lee and Sam Pollard win George Polk Award for documentary television.
Backed by a Rockefeller Foundation grant, a team at Teachers College, Columbia University, is developing curriculum materials tied to the recent Spike Lee documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. In addition to the curriculum's detailed viewing guide, it utilizes aspects of the film as points of departure for discussion.
As noted in an article in Education Week ('College Offers Lessons Tied to Katrina Documentary'), The Rockefeller Foundation, 'which underwrote the film, got in touch with Margaret Smith Crocco, a professor of social studies and education at Teachers College, Columbia University...She and her colleagues have crafted a 100-page curriculum to accompany the film which will feature different lesson plans for high school students, college students, and adults.' It will also include a 'detailed viewer’s guide that divides the film into smaller parts so that educators can easily navigaate the four-hour documentary.'
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