The second Monday in October
A student-led conversation about history and remembrance continues
The conversation around Columbus Day has been happening at Gordon for years, led by third grade and seventh grades, who both have extended lessons on the colonization of North America.
Today, the seventh grade brought the conversation to the entire Middle School for a workshop at the weekly Middle School meeting.
The meeting began with a special guest and a reading of a book Gordon students read in third grade about the Tainos' first contact with Europeans.
If a lion’s story takes the perspective of the oppressed or less powerful and a hunter’s story takes the perspective of the dominant of more powerful, is this picture book a lion’s story?
How about this song? A lion’s story or a hunter’s story?
In small groups, students went over passages from Columbus’s journals and from a Spanish priest named Bartolome de las Casas that illustrated what happened to the Tainos Columbus encountered on his trips to the Caribbean.
Students acknowledged the experience of present-day Tainos, reviewed the history of Columbus Day in the United States, and the past fifteen years of conversation about the holiday at Gordon.
Then they put the questions to their fellow Middle Schoolers: Should the second Tuesday in October be a day off? Why or why not?
Should we do anything in particular to mark the day?
Should we leave the name “Fall Weekend” Should we call it something else?
Some of their answers are here. And the conversation will continue.