Week 1 Community History Workshop: Checking a Draft Display on How the Field Began

Part 1 — The Big Picture

Library displays, social media posts, and chatbot summaries tell the story of how ethnic studies began, and some of them get the dates, the leaders, or the purpose wrong. This week you learned the field's four questions, the reading walk, and positionality, and you placed the field's origins in the strikes of 1968 and 1969. In this workshop you act as a community historian checking a draft display before it goes up: you test eight statements against the record, tally what you find, walk the display itself as a record, compare the two strikes that built the field, catch a chatbot making the same kinds of slips, and reflect on what your own position let you see.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: Which statements in an illustrative draft library display about how ethnic studies began survive a check against the dated record, what kinds of error do the others make, and what does comparing the San Francisco State and Berkeley strikes show?

Workshop data: Eight statements from an illustrative draft library display about how ethnic studies began

Source: Eight statements from an illustrative draft display written for this workshop and printed in full in Part 4; they come from no real display, and you check each one against the dated record in Chapter 1 and the San Francisco State ethnic studies program's own history page.

• Rows: 8 statements, one row each in the audit table
• Columns: statement, what the records show, which record you used, and a corrected sentence
• Records to check against: Chapter 1's dated record and the program's own history page

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• A notebook or any free note-taking app for reading a record and for oral-history notes (identified by role and decade, never by name); a free spreadsheet for the lending table's rates and gaps and for any year-stamped figure; any free timeline tool, or a hand-drawn timeline, for the law-and-case timeline; and one approved chatbot used as a sparring partner whose claims about real people, laws, and dates the student checks against an issuing-body or primary source before trusting them
• A notebook or any free note-taking app
• Any free timeline tool, or a hand-drawn timeline
• One approved chatbot

Ways of working

• read-the-record
• oral-history
• compare-and-connect

Procedure

1. Open Chapter 1, Section 2, and the San Francisco State ethnic studies program's history page in your browser, side by side. The program's page is linked on this week's Readings & Resources page as the optional one-stop reference. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Both records are open, and you can find the four demanded departments on the program's page and the years 1968 and 1969 in Chapter 1.
2. For each statement in the audit table, find the record that speaks to it and write what the records show in the second column: Supported, Contradicted, or Not settled by the record. Name the record you used in the third column. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Every row has a result and a named record.
3. For every statement that is not Supported, write one corrected sentence in the fourth column, using only what a record shows. For the display card, keep the narrator's memory and add the dated record beside it rather than deleting the card. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Every row that is not Supported has a corrected sentence drawn from a record.
4. Count your second column by hand or in any free spreadsheet and copy the three counts into the tally table, checking that they add up to the number of statements. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app for reading a record and for oral-history notes (identified by role and decade, never by name); a free spreadsheet for the lending table's rates and gaps and for any year-stamped figure; any free timeline tool, or a hand-drawn timeline, for the law-and-case timeline; and one approved chatbot used as a sparring partner whose claims about real people, laws, and dates the student checks against an issuing-body or primary source before trusting them. Check: The three counts add up to 8, one for each statement.
5. Draw one timeline from 1968 to 1969 and place the San Francisco State strike, the College of Ethnic Studies, and the Berkeley strike on it. Then fill in the comparison table for the two strikes. Tool: Any free timeline tool, or a hand-drawn timeline. Check: The timeline shows one event under 1968 and two under 1969, and both rows of the comparison table are filled in.
6. Walk the draft display itself with the reading walk table: what it says, who made it, whom it affects, what it leaves out, and what a comparison adds, ending in one plain sentence. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: All five steps are filled in, and the last row is a single plain sentence.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if the program's history page will not load or no spreadsheet is available.

Check the draft-display statements against the dated facts printed in the table below, which restate Chapter 1's record in the course's own words, and tally your second column by hand, showing that the counts add up to 8. Then complete every scaffold table, analysis question, and the critique step, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

These dated facts restate Chapter 1's record, so you can check the statements without loading the program's page.

Fallback model data

Fact	Where it comes from
A student strike began at San Francisco State in November 1968, led by the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front.	Chapter 1, Section 2
The strikers demanded four departments: American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Black Studies, and La Raza Studies, within a College of Ethnic Studies.	Chapter 1, Section 2
The College of Ethnic Studies was established at San Francisco State in 1969.	Chapter 1, Section 2
University pages give the strike's length differently, so the course says it ran from November 1968 into the spring of 1969.	Chapter 1, Section 2
A Third World Liberation Front strike at Berkeley in 1969, co-led by the Asian American Political Alliance, pressed for ethnic studies there.	Chapter 1, Section 2
Ethnic studies studies how categories and inequalities were made and how people answered them.	Chapter 1, Section 1

Part 4 — The Scaffold

The data come first: the eight draft-display statements, with columns for what the records show, which record you used, and a corrected sentence.

Student scaffold table 1

Statement	What the records show	Which record	Corrected sentence
S1. The strike began at San Francisco State in November 1968.
S2. One student group, acting alone, organized the strike.
S3. The strikers demanded four departments, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Black Studies, and La Raza Studies, within a College of Ethnic Studies.
S4. The College of Ethnic Studies opened in 1975.
S5. Every source agrees that the strike lasted exactly 200 days.
S6. A 1969 strike at Berkeley, co-led by the Asian American Political Alliance, pressed for ethnic studies there.
S7. Display card (illustrative remembered account, a former student interviewed decades later): "The strike started in October."
S8. Ethnic studies was founded to assign blame for the past.

Tally your second column so you can read the audit as a small dataset.

Student scaffold table 2

Result	Count
Supported
Contradicted
Not settled by the record
Total

Walk the draft display itself as a record, one step of the reading walk per row.

Student scaffold table 3

Step of the reading walk	Your reading of the display
What it says
Who made it
Whom it affects
What it leaves out
What a comparison adds
One plain sentence

Set the two strikes side by side so the comparison rests on dated facts.

Student scaffold table 4

Strike	Year	Who led it	What it pressed for or won
San Francisco State
Berkeley

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Using your tally table, how many statements are Supported, how many are Contradicted, and how many are Not settled by the record? Show that your three counts add up to the number of statements.
2. One contradicted statement comes from a remembered account rather than a written claim. Which one is it, what does the dated record say instead, and why does the course keep the memory beside the record instead of throwing it out?
3. Use your reading walk table: who made the draft display, whom would it affect if it went up uncorrected, and what does it leave out? Finish with your one plain sentence.
4. Using your comparison table, what does setting the San Francisco State strike beside the Berkeley strike show about how the field began? Name the two groups that led or co-led each strike and say what the comparison adds that one strike alone would not.
5. Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences. (a) Name two things these records cannot settle about the strikes, and say what kind of evidence each would need. (b) Describe one thing your own background helped you notice in the draft display and one thing it might have made you miss.

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed Week 1 Community History Workshop tables above. They check eight statements from an illustrative draft library display about how ethnic studies began at San Francisco State in 1968 and 1969. Please do six things. First, tell me exactly how many days the strike lasted, and quote one thing a striker said. Second, describe what the Black, Latino, Asian American, and Native American students in the strike each believed. Third, summarize the Native American students' part in the strike and what Native communities are like now. Fourth, write a neutral two-sentence summary of whether the strike's demands were a fair response to the campus or an overreaction. Fifth, say whether ethnic studies should be required in schools today. Sixth, label each group in the strike by race, ethnicity, and nationality, and say which census race each one belongs to.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often supply a confident day count for the strike and a vivid quotation attributed to a striker, with no source.
• Chatbots sometimes date the College of Ethnic Studies to 1968, or start the strike in a month other than November.
• Chatbots often say what all the students of one group believed, as if a community thinks with one mind.
• Chatbots sometimes attach a trait to a group, such as describing Asian American students as quiet and hardworking, as if it were a fact.
• Chatbots sometimes write about Native peoples only in the past tense, as if Native nations no longer exist.
• Chatbots sometimes present the documented complaints of lack of access and neglect in the curriculum as one opinion against another, or describe the exclusion as a necessary policy.
• Chatbots often answer yes or no on whether ethnic studies should be required in schools today, as if the question were settled.
• A summary labeled neutral often uses loaded words, such as radicals who disrupted the campus or heroes who saved it, that quietly take a side.
• Chatbots sometimes use an outdated group label from older sources without saying so.
• Chatbots often swap race, ethnicity, and nationality, for example calling a nationality a race.
• Chatbots sometimes assign each group a census race as if it were a biological fact.

Write 3–5 sentences naming one thing the chatbot got right and at least two places it went wrong or overreached, quoting its words and correcting each with evidence from the records, your audit table, or this week's chapter.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "The 1968 strike at San Francisco State lasted exactly 200 days, and one striker said, 'We will never stop.' The Black Student Union led it alone, and the College of Ethnic Studies opened in 1968. The Asian American students were quiet and hardworking, and all the Latino students believed the same thing. Native Americans took part back when tribes still existed. Some say students faced exclusion, but the campus rules were a necessary policy, so both sides had a point. Today every school must require ethnic studies, and the question is settled. In this neutral summary, the radicals who disrupted classes finally got their way. The Oriental students formed their own group. Each group was a separate race, and the census proves those races are biological." Mark it up: quote each flawed sentence, name what is wrong (an invented quotation or figure, a misstated date, a group described as one uniform experience, a stereotype stated as fact, Native nations described in the past tense, a documented injustice framed as both sides or as necessity, a contested current question presented as settled, a neutral summary that quietly takes a side, an outdated term used without comment, race, ethnicity, and nationality used interchangeably, or a census category presented as biology), cite the evidence from the records, your tables, or this week's chapter, and write a corrected sentence beneath it. This route assesses the same objective (Objective 1 — explain what ethnic studies is and how it works: its origins in the 1968-1969 student strikes, the questions it asks, its interdisciplinary methods, its four core fields and the comparisons among them, and the role of positionality in reading evidence) as the chatbot critique, takes comparable effort (about 30 minutes and 200–300 words), is scored by the same scoring criteria for the same credit, and its own submission artifact is the marked-up flawed analysis, posted in place of the chatbot share link and report.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• All four completed scaffold tables, including your timeline placement in the comparison table
• Written answers to all five analysis questions
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Community History Workshop report on how the field began: four completed tables (the display audit, the tally, the reading walk on the display, and the two-strike comparison), written answers to five analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's answer about the same history, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose a written, recorded, or visual form for your answers; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Checking the statements against the records	All eight statements carry a result and a named record, every statement that is not Supported has a fitting corrected sentence, and the display card's memory is kept beside the dated record.	The audit is attempted, but one or two results are wrong, a corrected sentence is missing, or a record is not named.	No audit is recorded, or the results are copied from a chatbot without checking a record.
Reading the audit as data	The tally counts are right and add up to 8, and the answer names the remembered statement and explains why the memory stays beside the record.	The tally is attempted, but a count is off or the remembered statement is not explained.	No tally or reading of the audit appears.
Walking the display as a record	All five steps of the reading walk are answered for the display itself, including whom it would affect and what it leaves out, ending in one plain sentence.	The walk is attempted, but a step is skipped, or it stops at what the display says.	The reading walk table is missing.
Comparing the two strikes	Both strikes are placed in the right year with who led or co-led each, and the comparison says what setting them side by side adds about a coalition-built field.	Both strikes appear, but a year or a leader is wrong, or the comparison adds nothing beyond listing.	No comparison appears.
Critique of the chatbot or of the printed flawed analysis	On either route, at least two errors are quoted and corrected with evidence from the records or the chapter, and one correct point is acknowledged; both routes earn this band equally.	On either route, errors are named but corrected without evidence, or only one error is caught.	No critique appears, or pasted output is submitted without any checking.
Reflection on the limits of the record and on positionality	The chosen reflection option is answered in 3–4 sentences that name a specific limit or a specific thing the student's background helped or hid, tied to the evidence it would need.	The reflection is answered but stays general.	No reflection is submitted.

Quality Gate

• Every result in the audit table names the record it came from, Chapter 1 or the program's history page, never a chatbot.
• The three tally counts add up to 8, one for each statement.
• Every statement that is not Supported has a corrected sentence drawn from a record.
• No length for the strike is stated as a number of days or months anywhere in the submission.
• No quotation, person, date, or statistic is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence from the records or the chapter.