The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What is a society? How do social systems present opportunities for people? How do they also oppress people? Does your society work for everyone? Why or why not?

Teaching Suggestion: The questions are intended to prime students for reading the sources below. Consider having students write responses or discuss the questions again after reading the sources. Connecting the last two questions directly to the author’s purpose for writing the book may increase student perceptions of relevance and interest. As discussion may become sensitive, reminders of pre-established social and emotional learning strategies and difficult discussion protocols may be beneficial for students before engaging with the materials.

• This article from History provides an overview of the theory of social Darwinism.
• This article from the National Equity Project will help students apply a lens of systemic oppression to their understanding of this book.
• Teachers may find these guidelines from the University of Michigan useful for facilitating sensitive discussions.

Short Activity

Explore the short resources related to Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory of youth development. Then, create a systems model of your own or your group’s environmental systems to explore how each system relates to the individual. Afterward, discuss whether this framework supports the idea of individual choices and free will or not.

Teaching Suggestion: Students may need reminders that this is one of many sociological theories and that the exploration here intends to understand an alternative framework for understanding social hierarchy beyond an emphasis on personal choices or biological determinants.

• This article and this video provide different overviews of ecological systems theory as an alternative to viewing social status as a product of individual choices or biological traits.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

Write about a choice or an event you responded to that made a change in your life. This might be positive, neutral, or negative. What went into your decision-making or response process? What factors in your control did you consider? What factors out of your control played into your choice or response? Considering this reflection, how in control of your life do you believe yourself to be, and why?

Teaching Suggestion: To increase engagement, consider encouraging students to share only what they are comfortable sharing and offer chances to share if desired without making it a requirement.