| LESSON | TEACHER | FULL LESSONS |
| 1 | V. Natalie | Homebuying/Home Care |
| 2 | E. Allman | Thinking For Yourself |
| 3 | A. Dumas | Homebuying in a Homeless Shelter |
1) Tenant Rights and Legal Aid by Victoria Natalie, Bunker Hill Community College
For this important lesson, we read and discussed the Attorney General's Guide to Tenants' Rights. Because students had on their own collected the guide at their City Halls, many of the students had already had a chance to look through the guide and generate questions about what they didn't understand or wanted more information about. The issues of tenant/landlord rights and responsibilities led to questions about zoning laws. At that point, the students broke into groups and looked up phone numbers of the Better Business Bureau, city building and zoning departments for questions about building additions and laws regarding pets. After a lengthy discussion about the need to know proper procedures when building additions on property, we returned to the issue of housing discrimination and the federal anti-discrimination laws. For homework, students wrote about a time they experienced discrimination and how it was or wasn't resolved.
For more information about tenants' rights visit E-square 2/Rental &
Homebuying Center:
http://www2.wgbh.org/mbcweis/esquare/homectr.html
2) A Two-Part Discussion About Discrimination by Eunice Allman, Quincy College
PART ONE
All the students were given a copy of the FannieMae Foundation's student workbook which correlates to the teacher's guide How to Buy a Home in the United States. Their response to receiving the books was "Can we keep this?" Needless to say, they were really excited and happy to have the text.
We started the unit with a preliminary discussion about homebuying and renting. This led to a difficult and very worthwhile in-depth discussion about housing discrimination. Most of my students rent and have had a variety of experiences with real estate offices while looking for apartments. My conclusion, after listening to their stories was that indeed, many of the students had been subject to discrimination while they searched for places to live. I knew that we would return to the topic of fair-housing and discrimination. But first I wanted to do more of my own research and compile accurate and helpful information about fair-housing rights.
PART TWO
I decided to address the discussion about discrimination by asking the students to read the famous essay "I Have a Dream" by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as a packet of fair-housing information which was distributed at one of the ALRI's teacher training workshops.
The well anthologized speech "I Have a Dream," speaks directly about Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a time when justice and equality reign throughout the country. Among other things, it portrays the extent to which discrimination and prejudice permeate life in this country. Because the issue of housing discrimination had already surfaced in our class discussions, I thought that this speech would provide a perfect segue into the topic of fair housing law. With its passionate language and positive message, I strongly recommend it as reading material for any language-appropriate adult education classroom.
As we read the speech out loud, we discussed it and its terminology. And then the students shared their experiences of discrimination in the United States. The discussion became very sensitive as students analyzed how their own assumptions and discriminations "played into" racial and ethnic prejudices that had been taught to them by both family members and U.S. media and culture. Then, I focused the topic back to homebuying by referring to the information packet on fair housing practices. First we looked at the Federal and State of Massachusetts Laws of Fair Housing. I explained that each state has its own laws, and that if a case goes to court, the laws that are the strictest are the laws that are abided by. Then we looked at written scenarios that might suggest housing discrimination.
Overall, the class was not aware that they are protected against discrimination
in many different realms, housing being one of them. Students had no idea
that they had access to recourse if they were being discriminated against.
This mini-unit on Fair Housing proved to be an eye-opener for the students.
At the end of the class discussion we broke into small groups and assessed
our knowledge of Fair Housing law.
3)A Poet's View of America as Home by Marie Hassett, ABCD's LearningWorks
The materials for the homebuying readiness lessons were selected for their accessibility, relatedness to key concepts, and usefulness as starting points for discussion. Since the primary focus of an ABE II class is developing students' literacy, I chose a variety of genres of reading material to supplement the FannieMae Foundation's curriculum: poetry, fiction, non-fiction narrative, and a newspaper article...The following self designed lesson- A Poet's View of America as Home explores, among other things, the narrator's experience of facing racism and discrimination.
Vocabulary:
Abelardo Delgado, "Stupid America."
Questions:
Describe a stereotype that affects your life.