Guiding Principles for Best Practice:
& three introductory lessons
Barbara B. Brown
Boston University’s African Studies Center
Africa@bu.edu
Pedagogy for best practice on Africa benefits from:
1. African voices, because Africans are rarely “heard” and often viewed as
“recipients” of aid and pity and not as creators of their own lives
2. visuals, because kids’ visual banks are so narrow. Kids need a range of new
“deposits” into their visual imaginations of Africa
3. connections with the US, because kids tend to think of Africa as “far away” and
unconnected to “our” lives
4. “ahas” and “wow I didn’t know that” responses from kids, because kids need to
be shaken up, out of their comfortable notions, to pay attention and to be ready to
take on new concepts about Africa
The three introductory lessons below can work toward some of the above:
1. The poster-size map “How Big s Africa?” www.bu.edu/africa/outreach Ask
students two key questions:
a. What difference does size make? (the “so what” question). The answer
will surely start with something along the lines of “If it’s that large, then it
must be diverse”. From there, encourage students to brainstorm the
manifold ways in which Africa is diverse (physical geography, foods,
religions, countries with their diverse politics and economies and cultures,
clothing, history, etc)
b. (for older students): What has kept us from recognizing Africa’s huge
size? (Here the answers are varied from map projections, to racism, to lack
of knowledge about the different countries to media representation, to its
marginalized status internationally)
c. More lessons and activities for multiple grade levels are on the above
website and accompany the poster map
2. Bunmi Fatoye-Matory’s 1-page article from the July 1, 1996 Christian Science
Monitor and reprinted in Global Studies: Africa (7th ed, p. 213, published 1997),
“I Am Not Just an African Woman”. In this article Ms. Matory explores with
feeling and humor what it was like to come to the US and to lose her identity as a
Nigerian, an educated person with a certain professional background, etc. Middle
and high school students can read this article and do responsive writing.
3. Bingo: the US-African Connection is a game created for middle school kids to
introduce them to the varied connections which crop up in daily life: linguistic,
The http://www.bu.edu/africa/outreach/materials/handouts/bingo1.html
Further Resources:
“I Am Not Just an African Woman” by Bunmi Fatoye-Matory
http://www.csmonitor.com/1996/0701/070196.home.home.1.html