Newswise — On the heels of the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and as the school year begins, Teachers College will launch a new curriculum package based on Spike Lee's HBO documentary, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" at a special event on September 6th from 4:00 to 6:30 p.m. at the Teachers College Cowin Center at Broadway and 120th Street.
Titled "Teaching The Levees: Lessons from Katrina," the event, which is free of charge and open to the public, will be moderated by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. Panelists include Columbia University President Lee Bollinger; Gloria Ladson-Billings, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin whose expertise is teaching about race; Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Professor at Princeton University and senior fellow at the Jamestown Project, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on democracy and social issues; and Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, a member of the New Orleans City Council. Discussion will touch on questions that are the focus of the curriculum and based on the film: "Who are we as a country?" and, "Who do we want to be?"
Sam Pollard, who collaborated with Spike Lee on "When the Levees Broke," will also speak at the event.
Deputy Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools, Marcia Lyles, will offer a response to the panel discussion.
Lee's film, which aired on HBO in August 2006, records the painful experiences, aftermath, and voices of hope and despair of those who lived and continue to live through the tragedy of Katrina. It documents the failure of public officials and organizations to provide victims of the storm and the breach of the levees with remedies for their plight. The curriculum, created at Teachers College under the direction of Professor Margaret Crocco, is designed to help educators and community leaders encourage democratic dialogues about race and class in America through a public education campaign based on the film. It is aimed at both adolescent and adult groups or classes.
Others involved in the project include Gregory Thomas, Deputy Director of Planning and Response in the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; Diana Hess, whose expertise is the teaching of controversial issues; Milton Chen, Executive Director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation; and Jane Bolgatz, author of the book Talking Race in the Classroom. In order to ensure that the material in the package is relevant to the issues raised, an advisory board consisting of experts in different areas related to the curriculum has reviewed the lessons and provided feedback for the teams. The board includes Hess, Bolgatz, and Thomas; Gloria Ladson-Billings; Douglas Brinkley, historian from Tulane University and author of The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast; Professor Henry Louis Gates, The Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the WEB DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University; Emily Clark and Sylvia Frey, historians at Tulane University.
The 100-page curriculum and HBO's DVD set of the Spike Lee film will be distributed to 30,000 high school, college and community educators free of charge by TC Press with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. Additional curriculum assistance will be provided to educators online at the Levees Web site: www.teachingthelevees.org, which was created and is maintained by the TC Ed Lab at the Teachers College Gottesman Libraries.
For more information on the event, please visit http://www.teachingthelevees.org/launch or contact Maureen Grolnick at 212-678-3020.
About Teachers College:
Teachers College is dedicated to promoting equity in education and overcoming the gap in educational access and achievement between the most and least advantaged groups in this country. Through scholarly programs of teaching, research, and service, the College draws upon the expertise of a diverse community of faculty in education, psychology and health, as well as students and staff from across the country and around the world.
For more information about the College, please visit www.tc.columbia.edu.
About the Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation was established in 1913 by John D. Rockefeller, Sr., to "promote the well-being" of humanity by addressing the root causes of serious problems. The Foundation works around the world to expand opportunities for poor or vulnerable people and to help ensure that globalization's benefits are more widely shared. With assets of more than $3.5 billion, it is one of the few institutions to conduct such work both within the United States and internationally.
For more information about the Rockefeller Foundation, please contact Michael N.Cowan, associate director, Communications, at 212-852-8412 or [email protected].
About Home Box Office, Inc.
Home Box Office, Inc. is the premium television programming subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., providing two 24-hour premium television services, HBO and Cinemax. Together, both networks reach approximately 40 million subscribers in the United States via cable and satellite delivery. Home Box Office's international joint ventures bring HBO branded services to more than 50 countries around the globe.
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