Grade: 11^th grade

Subject: U.S History/Geography

Standards:

Arizona History and Social Science Standards 

• HS.G1.1 Use geographic data to explain and analyze relationships between locations of place and regions.

(Key tools and representations such as maps, remotely sensed and other images, 

tables, and graphs)

• HS.G3.2 Evaluate the impact of economic activities and political decisions on spatial patterns within and among urban, suburban, and rural regions.
• HS.G3.5 Evaluate the impact of social, political, and economic decisions that have caused conflict or promoted cooperation throughout time.

National Council for Social Studies Standards

Geography Theme 3: People, Places, and the Environments

• Assist learners to analyze the spatial information about people, places, and environments on Earth’s surface.
• Enable learners to describe the processes, patterns, and functions of human settlement. 
• Challenge learners to examine how the forces of cooperation and conflict among people influence the division and control of Earth’s surface.

Learning for Social Justice Standards

• JU.9-12.12 I can recognize, describe and distinguish unfairness and injustice at different levels of society.

Objectives:

• Students will be able to
  • use maps, tables, and graphs to identify patterns of gentrification in their community.
  • describe patterns of gentrification in their community.
  • evaluate how gentrification changes the social, economic, and political characteristics of neighborhoods.

Guiding Questions:

• What does gentrification look like in our community?
• What are some factors that led to the gentrification of Southside and La Plaza Vieja?
• Who benefits from gentrification in our community?
• How has gentrification changed the social, economic, and political characteristics of Southside and La Plaza Vieja?

Assessment:

• Use students’ displays with pictures and descriptions, responses to the gallery walk, and answers during class discussion to assess understanding.

Prior learning: 

• Students will have previously studied the relationship between the New Deal and redlining as well as completed “Gentrification: Taking Advantage of Redlining Part 1.” 

Materials:

• Nine large sheets of paper to hang around the room 
• Flagstaff Changes from 1990 to 2010
• Steps to change the date in Google Maps
• Links to current demographics in Flagstaff:
  • U.S. Census for the City of Flagstaff
  • The west-side demographics for zip code 86001 (includes Southside and La Plaza Vieja)
  • The east-side demographics for zip code 86004 (includes Sunnyside the low-income neighborhood with mostly Indigenous, Latinx, and African American families and community members) 

Differentiation Strategies:

• Provide students with discussion questions before discussion time. 
• Offer specific streets or addresses for students to choose from for added support.
• Allow students to present their displays instead of a gallery walk for added challenge. 

Cross-Curriculum Connections:

• Students could create charts, tables, and graphs to illustrate changes from the information compiled from 2010 to 2023. Additionally, students could calculate the changes in demographics from 2010 to 2023.

Extension:

• Arrange for students to meet with the Southside and La Plaza Vieja neighborhood associations to discuss the changes students identified, to learn the stories about the people who lived there, and to hear the context of the changes.  

Activating Background Knowledge: 5 minutes

• Encourage students to think back to when they were in elementary school or when they moved to Flagstaff and what Flagstaff was like then.
  • Who did they spend time with and what places did they go to?
  • Where did they shop or eat out?
• Ask students to make a quick list of changes they have seen since they were in elementary school.
  • Suggest they think of certain parts of town
  • New buildings
  • New stores/businesses
  • Businesses that aren’t here anymore
• Invite volunteers to share some changes.

Presenting New Information/Explicit Teaching: 15 minutes

• Review with students the benefits of bar graphs, pie graphs, and line graphs.
  • Bar graphs compare different groups or categories.
  • Pie graphs show the relationships of the parts to the whole.
  • Line graphs track changes over time.
• Explain that they will individually read through the Flagstaff Changes from 1990 to 2010

document to identify at least one trend or pattern from each of the nine images. 

• Tell students to share their ideas in pairs or small groups after they finish.
• Invite each group to write at least one trend or pattern for each image on the large sheets of paper around the room, which correspond with the image numbers on the document.
• Encourage students to share some of their answers for each image.

Guided Practice: 20 minutes

• Model finding a street view from Southside or La Plaza Vieja and how to change the date for the view.
  • Steps for changing the date in Google Maps
• Explain that students will be choosing three sites in either Southside or La Plaza Vieja to find “before” pictures and “now” pictures (six pictures total) and will fill out T-charts to track the differences. Choose one of the following options for grouping students:
  • Complete the activity individually so that each student picks a neighborhood and then finds three changes.
  • Complete the activity in small groups (four to five students in each group) so that the group chooses a neighborhood, and each student chooses two to three streets to look for changes on. 
  • Complete the activity by dividing the class in half so that each larger group is assigned to either Southside or La Plaza Vieja. Divide those two larger groups into two smaller groups that cover a section of the neighborhood. Each student can choose one to two streets to find changes to report. 

• Ask students to find current Flagstaff demographics to compare to the 2010 data.
  • U.S. Census for the City of Flagstaff
  • The west-side demographics for zip code 86001 (includes Southside and La Plaza Vieja)
  • The east-side demographics for zip code 86004 (includes Sunnyside the low-income neighborhood with mostly Indigenous, Latinx, and African American families and community members) 
• Instruct students to write a paragraph that explains how the changes they captured reflect patterns of gentrification in Southside and La Plaza Vieja.
  • Evaluate the changes from the demographic data in 2010 to the current demographic data. 
  • Analyze who benefits from the changes and who does not have access to the changes.
  • Include factors or processes that led to gentrification in the historically African American and Mexican neighborhoods. 
• Guide students in creating a display of their pictures with their descriptions.
  • Options include:
    • Create Google slides. 
    • Draw the changes on a large piece of paper.
    • Create short videos to show the changes.

Group Practice: 15 minutes

• Engage students in a gallery walk for students to view the changes that their classmates captured and to write down patterns they see.
  • Allow students to complete this digitally or in person depending on how students captured the changes they identified.
• Facilitate a class discussion about the unfairness and injustice of gentrification at different levels of society.
  • Consider using these questions:
    • Who benefits from gentrification and how do they benefit?
    • Who is harmed by gentrification and how are they harmed?
    • How does gentrification change the social, economic, and political characteristics of neighborhoods?
    • What systemic processes lead to gentrification and how do they do so?
    • What are some patterns of gentrification that can be disrupted?
• If you have a quiet class, you can have students discuss in pairs before a class discussion.

Wrap-up: 5 minutes

• Ask students to complete an exit ticket to brainstorm strategies for how to disrupt the patterns of gentrification they identified.