In honor of Black History Month, we are once again giving away a free lesson plan you can do with your student. This is a unit study that you can spend a day doing a deep dive with, or spend longer doing each activity and really getting the most out of this free unit study.

David Drake: Potter and Poet

This year, we have chosen David Drake, also known as Dave the Potter to be the focus of our lesson. David was an amazing potter whose pottery is now on display in several museums around the world. It is unique because he added not only his signature and the date, but poems to many of his pots. David was born in approximately 1800 in North Carolina and was enslaved from birth. He made butter churns and pots both large and small in a time when all such things had to be handmade. There was not Tupperware back then!

David was able to make large pots that held huge amounts of liquid or grain. If you have ever worked with clay, you know how difficult it is to make a large pot. It requires a lot of strength and skill. In his own life, David was not able to profit off his own work. As an enslaved person, all of the profits from selling his pots went to the man who enslaved him. However, recently the Museum of Fine Arts Boston has reached an agreement with David Drake’s descendants about ownership of two of his pots and paid for the privilege of continuing to display them.

Two Different Units, One Historical Figure

This unit study comes in two levels. There is a Yellow level unit study for students who are in elementary school grades. It covers poetry, copy work, literature, arts and crafts, geography and history. It has hands on activities and a few links to help you learn more. This unit uses a picture book, Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave by Laban Carrick Hill, to help the story come alive for younger students who may have trouble picturing things they do not understand. If your library has a different picture book about Dave the Potter, you may substitute it in this unit.

We are also offering a slightly different unit for older students, as a Violet Level unit study. This level is appropriate for mature middle schoolers and high school students. The Violet level program is based around the book Etched in Clay: The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet byAndrea Cheng. This book is written all in poetry and tells the story of David’s life in the style he preferred to write in. 

This is a Violet level program because of the complexity of ideas, the level of videos included, and challenge of the go-along activities in the unit study. The book has an accessible vocabulary and style that makes it an easy read for most high school students, and a good fit for students with dyslexia or other struggles. However, the student needs to piece together a story told from multiple view points and infer from context many details.  Even the arts and crafts activities for this unit study are more complex, and actually have a level of danger, as it includes a lesson on creating block printed art, like the art in the book.

This older student lesson includes directions written directly to the student, a geography lesson about the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, multiple arts and crafts activities that go with the book, a poetry lesson, a lesson on the science of pottery and how it is made, and various history lessons including a time line activity to compare David’s life to what else was happening in the country during his life time. This unit study will help your student reflect more deeply on this book, and so much more! We hope you enjoy our very first Violet level. 

David Drake, I made this jar for cash, though it is called lucre trash. Alkaline glaze stoneware, 1857.

If your student is working at a level that is between levels of these programs, please feel free to download both and pick and choose what will work best for them.

Why David Drake?

I believe in normal person history. I believe it is important to learn about the lives of every day people, not just presidents and kings. David’s life was not actually unique. At the time of the Civil War, David Drake was one of over 4 million enslaved people living in the United States who were finally free. Many history books have presented enslaved people as only doing farm or household labor, but the truth was they were doing diverse, difficult craftsmanship jobs as well. Many enslaved people were skilled craftsman or artisans. David is unique because he stepped away from the expectations of his time to not only create what he was forced to create, but his added poetry was resistance. Enslaved people were not supposed to read or write. However, David wrote on his pots. It was a small act of rebellion, but it lives on today, over a hundred years after him.

Further Learning

My daughter’s first attempt at stamp making, using a pink eraser. This activity is inspired by the art in the Violet level book and one of our suggested activities.

You can still download all our free lessons from last year, in our store!