Power & Place — Grade 10
In this unit, students examine how geography, history, and systems of power shape what people are allowed to be and become. Building on the justice and advocacy work of Grade 9, 10th graders ask the harder question: when the systems that constrain us are invisible, how do we name them? Through narratives spanning postcolonial Nigeria, revolutionary Iran, contemporary America, and the borderlands of Chicago, students discover that place is never neutral — and that understanding where you come from is always also an act of understanding power.
How do the places we come from — and the systems built around those places — shape who we are allowed to become?
📚 Recommended Anchor Texts
Lessons
The First Place
Place as the first system — and what it costs when a system changes
The Veiled City
Place as narration — how a memoir can refuse the system’s story
Standards Alignment
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