It is thought-provoking, humorous, serious, hopeful, assuring, and committed to engaging students in important discussions on significant themes.
This book is a timely work of fiction and a companion book to Jerry's Craft's outstanding book, New Kid. The resource is great for comprehension guidance, classroom discussion, literature circles, book clubs, novel studies, task cards, book challenges, reflection journals, and/or student writing prompts. At the same time, the mostly white leadership at RAD makes some deeply cringe-worthy attempts to diversify, including appointing a white teacher (who has already made clear that, despite his enthusiasm, he is blatantly the wrong choice) to the newly created Office of Diversity and Inclusion - over a clearly qualified Black teacher, screening a movie for the student body that reinforces the negative media stereotypes about Black life (the aftermath of which involves painfully funny attempts at "reparations" by white peers), and sending teachers to a conference on diversity and allyship with the acronym, "NO CLUE." Packed into this two page spread where the staff returns from the NO CLUE conference and are greeted by Drew and Jordan is a "Karen," the white librarian who tells the boys she "agreed to ask you both to help pick out diverse books for the library." Not only does she put the work she needs to do (educating herself on what diverse books are and where to find them) she disses graphic novels! I know that both these are things that librarians do and I know librarians who do this, but it still hurt to see it in the panels and think about how profoundly it impacts kids.Includes Google™ Slides! This product includes 185 cards to use as resources for studying the graphic novel, Class Act by Jerry Craft. Drew struggles with the things that he feels he shouldn't do, like play basketball, hang out with the other Black students at RAD (an awesome moment when Craft manages to get a stellar group of writers on the page and name check them) and tell classmates not to touch his hair. Craft has Liam flip the script, asking Drew if it would be acceptable for him to stop being friends because he does not have the same status. All three are in different socioeconomic classes and a visit to Liam's "Lebron James House Big" mansion (with a tense traffic stop by a white police officer, yet another stunning, intense moment) causes Drew to question his ability to be friends with someone so wealthy when his own grandmother works to exhaustion for so much less. And, in all this, Craft tells a compelling story of Jordan, Drew and Liam, their wealthy, white classmate.
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