Agency and Action

Facing History learning experiences are classroom-ready activities that you can incorporate into your lesson plans. They are designed to be modular and adaptable, so you can use them over and over again with a wide range of texts to help students explore characterization, point of view, perspective taking, setting, and thematic development through a Facing History lens.

Before class, familiarize yourself with the Four Corners teaching strategy. Make four signs—Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree—and hang them in the corners of the classroom.

Before introducing students to the concept of agency, we recommend that you start by asking them to reflect on power, since the two are directly related. 

1. Pass out the What Is Power? Anticipation Guide handout and have students complete Steps 1 and 2. Then debrief using the Four Corners teaching strategy. To provide space for everyone to share their ideas, have students share with others in their corner why they chose that stance before facilitating the class discussion. 
2. Then have students complete Steps 3 and 4 on the handout. They can share their definitions in pairs or small groups, adding any new ideas to their own. 

1. Explain to students that they will be learning about the concept of individual and collective agency. Pass out Introducing Agency . Depending on your students’ familiarity with the concept and their reading skills, you might read aloud as a class or have students work in pairs. There are stopping points built into the reading where students can process what they are learning in different ways. 
2. Debrief by asking students to work in pairs or small groups to come up with one question and one comment about the reading to share with the class. Discuss their questions as a whole group. 

Students will be discussing scenes in the text that you choose or that they identify where one or more characters face a choice. In their discussion, students will consider the characters’ choices, decision-making process, power, and agency. We recommend that you choose scenes that are robust enough for students to focus on one to three pages of the text. 

1. Let students know that they will be examining scenes in the text to better understand how power and agency can influence a character’s decision-making process. As in real life, when a character has agency, they feel like they can make decisions, take action, and have control over things in their lives. There are many factors that can influence this process that contribute to whether or not someone feels like they have agency, as well as actions that others can take to instill agency in individuals. 
2. Review the definitions of individual and collective agency. Then use the Jigsaw teaching strategy and divide the class into “expert” groups. Depending on your text, “expert” groups can analyze the same character at different moments in the text to consider the relationship between agency and context, or they might examine different characters at the same moment to consider how aspects of their identities and relationship to social systems and power influence their  agency.  
3. Pass out the Analyzing Actions and Outcomes handout and read the instructions together. Model the activity on the board using a character and moment the students are not analyzing. Circulate to encourage students to support their reasoning with evidence from the text. Then have them move on to the discussion questions on the back of the handout. Before moving students into their “teaching” groups, have them place a star alongside three ideas on their handout that they want to share. Let them know that they don’t have to share the same ideas as others in their group.
4. Move students into “teaching” groups. Have each student share their three starred ideas and discuss connection questions 3 and 4 together, looking for similarities and differences in their characters’ experiences. Then discuss the final question as a whole class. 

Have students identify and explain in writing an example of individual or collective agency in the world today. Remind them that having agency—the power and ability to make decisions and take action on their own behalf in order to reach their goals—doesn’t have to include participation in movements or lead to sweeping changes. They might choose to write about a family or community member, a mentor, or a friend. Or they might have read about someone in a local or national news source. After they identify their subject, they should explain in a piece of writing how they see the subject having the power and ability to take action, explain the factors that may influence the subject’s agency, and reflect on what they can learn from this individual or group.