Created by: Jackson Smith
Why We Should Remember the Titans
Overview Learning Experience
This film is intended for a middle school aged audience and higher. Students will watch the film, Remember the Titans, and analyze its critical contents. The purpose of the film is to portray how a physically active sport, football, erased the walls of racism in a newly integrated high school in the early 1970’s. This movie was based on a true story and should offer students a visual and an accurate representation of the effects of racism, segregation, and then integration of African-Americans in the United States. This will correlate with our in-class learning of how physical activity can influence cultural competence and help our understanding of appropriate conflict resolution.
After viewing the film, students will be asked 5 high order thinking questions in relation to the movie and media literacy. I plan to use a media outlet to allow students to research and answer their high order thinking questions. Allowing students laptops to research the criteria for the questions and then answering them via another source, like ClassDojo, so students can publish their thoughts and answers to improve their technological skills. Through this process, students will learn more about the integration of public facilities and the effects it had on the people of the United States during the early 1970’s. Students will also learn that physical activity and education can improve cultural knowledge.
North Carolina Physical Education Standard and Clarifying Objectives
NC P.E. Standard: PE.9.PR.4.2: Select the most appropriate ways of responding and mediate to settle conflicts.
Students will meet this standard by exploring how racial confliction of the team was settled through team building and accepting that cultures differ. The movie shows multiple team building routes by making players of the opposite color room together during a preseason camp, to the environment in which practice took place.
NC P.E Standard: PE.9.PR.4.3: Explain the influence of physical activity on cultural competence and the development of self-awareness.
This standard will be met by analyzing the plot of the film and determining that the goal of athletics, although involving a new mixture of different cultures, prevailed by diminishing of racial tensions.
Media
Description of Integration
Remember the Titans (2000) is a film that displays the struggles and triumphs of a newly integrated high school in Virginia during the early 1970’s. It displays the harsh realities of racism in the United States during this time period. This film, to which was based on a true story, is to bring light that integration did not bring an end to racism or inequality. Remember the Titans is a heart felt movie that shows color is only seen by those who look out for it. That through team work and passion, all is possible. Student will watch this film to then analyze its plot and context in regards to its relation to the standard and compare their original visual of integration in the United States to their new viewpoint.
5 Question Sets with Model Student Answers
Q1) Segregation was originally doctored to be titled as, “separate but equal.” Was this the case in regards to public facilities like schools? What event, or legal action, resulted in the desegregation of public facilities? How was the result of this verdict, especially in southern states, shown in the movie?
A1) Segregation did not provide equal opportunity for minorities. The were given diminished and hand me down tools for success in comparison to the white community. The Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case was the legal identification that segregation did not provide equal opportunity and that it needed to be terminated. The movie shows a protest at the freshly integrated school by the white community as a result of Brown vs. Board.
Q2) How did the film change your prior knowledge of segregation and racism during this time period to what yo know now? In what ways was did this film support your base understanding of this topic?
A2) This film opened my eyes to the harsh reality of racism of segregation during this portion of the United States history. I learned that sports can provide an atmosphere that race can be disregarded and allows people to work for a common goal.
Q3) How does the cultures displayed in the movie differ from your own? How did these cultures reshape your idea of what segregation was like?
A3) These cultures shown are not all that different from mine. I am from a North Carolina town right on the border of Virginia, the state in which the setting of the movie take place, so the cultures of the Caucasian characters are similar to mine. Gratefully, the amount of racism displayed in the film to now has decreased but unfortunately still exists. In regards to the African-American culture displayed, it was quite different than mine in forms of the music they listen to or the way they talk and act but I enjoyed learning about it.
Q4) Denzel Washington was chosen to be the lead role in this film, why do you think that is? Would the movie have different if someone like, Eddie Murphy was chosen?
A4) I believe Denzel was chosen because in nearly all his other movies he plays a strong and influential leader allowing the audience to make an immediate connection rather than Eddie Murphy who is more known for his comedic and humorous roles.
Q5) How might the beginning of the film, when the African-American students are being harassed and bullied, might make people of that race feel in comparison to those not part of that culture?
A5) Those part of the the African-American race might feel more anger in relation to this racist taunting where as someone not apart of that culture who maybe feel more remorse or sad that these people had to endure that.
References
NC P.E. Standard http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/docs/curriculum/healthfulliving/unpacking/health/9-12-pe.pdf
Brown vs. Board of Education https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/history-brown-v-board-education-re-enactment
Remember the Titans Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=79&v=nPhu9XsRl4M
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