Renaming: Learning About Our Top Names
(Updated with all slideshows, Nov. 2, 2020)
The learning has begun about the top school name suggestions!
Teachers have created special new slideshows for classroom learning about each name.
You can see the slideshows on the BUSD school renaming web page, and these will also be available on the PTA webpage as well. We already have five slideshows ready to go, and as new slideshows are finalized, they will be added!
This past week, students learned about:
Ruby Bridges - courageous child, now activist, integrated school in Louisiana
Ruth Acty - trailblazer; first Black teacher in BUSD, taught for 50 years
Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Supreme Court justice, fought for gender equality
Next week, students will learn about:
Betty Reid Soskin Slideshow local activist, Rosie the Riveter park ranger
Yoshiko Uchida Slideshow - Berkeley author, wrote about the Japanese-American experience
The week of November 2, students will learn about:
Maya Angelou Slideshow - poet, author, activist (who lived in Berkeley in 70's)
Muwekma Ohlone Slideshow - the local indigenous people who continue to live here
We hope you will take the time to look at the slide shows as well. It’s easiest to view them when you click on “Present” from the slide deck as some of them have special transitions built in.
Please talk to your kids about each name. You could ask, for example (any of these 3 questions could work for any of this week’s 3 names):
“What do you like/admire about Ruby Bridges?
“What is something Ruth Acty did that you think was really important to do?”
“If you could ask Ruth Bader Ginsburg about her life, what would you want to ask?”
At the end of the three weeks of learning, during the week of November 9, classrooms and the school community will have straw polls and focus groups to provide feedback on top choices for the Superintendent and Board to consider, before the final decision is made by the Board on December 2.