Retelling History | Black History Month

This February, Fund for Teachers is celebrating Black History Month by highlighting some of our Fellows’ journeys to bring a better understanding of the African American experience to all students. In this four-part blog series, we’ll be diving into everything from the Transatlantic Trade to student advocacy. This week, we are taking a deeper look at how history is taught with our Fellows Pearl Jonas, Kristen Peterson and Melissa and James Petropoulos. Read on to learn more about their experiences in the classroom and how they are honoring Black History Month in their schools.

History shouldn’t be subjective. Facts are facts. Who records and repeats the facts, however, often determines the truth that’s shared. Pearl Jonas, teacher at Science Leadership Academy in Philadlephia, PA, strives to reduce the risk of fragmented history by teaching with artifacts and primary sources. To teach African American history to freshman in an urban setting, she used her Fund for Teachers grant to go to where the African Americans’ history began — the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Africa.

Classwork at The Dakar Institute of African Studies, combined with excursions to historical sites such as Goree Island, once the largest slave-trading center on the African coast, now informs one of five different African history units. The first two units of her African American history class now include primary sources, concepts, and debates that she collected and engaged with while in Senegal. Topics such as the   Negritude literary movement and Islam in Africa, as well as discussion about how oral tradition influences history, also help students reconsider previous misconceptions.

“This kind of framework is not available in textbooks,” said Pearl. “We now spend time breaking down the Transatlantic Slave Trade and learning about why it happened so we can gain a deeper understanding of what drives people and a society to commit crimes against humanity.”

While Pearl chose to design a fellowship focusing on the pre-history of slavery to construct an accurate and mindful curriculum, Melissa and James Petropoulos realized that the curriculum they taught was simply wrong. Textbooks used at Rowayton Elementary School in Norwalk, CT, stated that slaves in Connecticut were “treated as family,” giving students false perceptions of enslaved Africans in New England. James and Melissa designed a tour of sites associated with slavery during America’s Colonial period to give students the real story.

Evidence of a slave’s resistance through sabatoging work – toe prints in the brick before it went into a kiln.

“In that erroneous history book, slavery was trivialized and in many other books there was little focus on the dignity of the enslaved,” said Melissa. “We wanted to make a clear point through this fellowship: humanity trumps slavery.”

The husband/wife team drove from Connecticut to Louisiana, stopping at museums and sites that honor the culture, beliefs, relationships, and memory of enslaved Africans. They now integrate a new story into history lessons, accompanied by artifacts and interviews collected from their fellowship.

“Rather than teaching about slavery from the point of view of slaves being victims, I now demonstrate how they were heroic, resistors and contributors to our shared American history,” said James.

As a white teacher in an urban district, Kristin Peterson, teacher at John A. Johnson Achievement Plus Elementary in Saint Paul, MN, realized that her own lack of knowledge about her students’ heritage hampered their learning and self-esteem. She identified the new National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, DC, as the most reliable resource for learning about the accomplishments and hardships African Americans endured during the past 300 years. On her fellowship, she spent four days roaming six floors of galleries in the Smithsonian Institution’s newest museum, photographing exhibits and filming presentations and interviews with museum staff. She also purchased items for students to experience the museum in multi-sensory ways, such as basket weaving kits, quilts, music, maps and even a cook book.

“While I understand that I can never fully empathize with the experience of African Americans, I feel like I now have a very rich understanding and insight for what people went through and what their lives were like,” said Kristin.

Kristin has since incorporated technology into lessons in order to share her experiential learning.  A “Virtual Field Trip Kit” houses catalogued items that can be checked out to teachers and students, as well. She also placed her research on a district-wide drive for access by every Saint Paul Public Schools teacher. Kristin is a perfect example of the ripple effect one fellowship can have in a learning community. Not only are her immediate classroom students benefitting (as future students will for years to come), but also students throughout the school, her colleagues and even teachers whom she doesn’t know.

Documenting exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

These FFT Fellows pursued knowledge in response to learning gaps. In Kristin’s case, her own understanding was enhanced in an effort to encourage students with their history. For the Petropouloses, the state’s incorrect information is what needed to be addressed so their students could learn true history. And Pearl used her grant to seek information that wasn’t available anywhere else. Fund for Teachers is honored to serve as a bridge that takes exemplary educators from where they are to where they want their students to be.

We thank Kristen, Pearl, Melissa and James for sharing their experiences and their students’ learning. Make sure to check our Black History Month feed on our blog here. Next week, we’ll be exploring the topic of identity with more FFT Fellows. Stay connected and find out when it’s live by following us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

All of Us – Immigrants

FFT Fellow Chris Smith and 15 of his students recently hosted the first Chicago Immigrant Refugee Resource Fair at Mather High School. The story behind the event, shared below by Chris, demonstrates the true ripple effect of a Fund for Teachers grant. This high school music teacher designed a fellowship to attend the Blas International Summer School of Irish Traditional Music and Dance at the University of Limerick to enrich orchestra curriculum by integrating elements of Irish folk music, ensemble skills, and improvisation. He shares the progression of learning from there below. We are proud of you and your students, Chris!

“I have continued my study of Irish traditional music since 2013 when I was awarded the FFT fellowship, which was transformative to my teaching in many ways. Not only have I incorporated lessons that I learned in my teaching strategy, but my support from FFT has led to many more opportunities for me and my students

Fund for Teachers

Chris with Martin Hayes during his 2013 FFT fellowship

Last summer, I attended the Swannanoa Gathering outside Asheville, NC, to again study under Martin Hayes, a teacher from Blas. I also received a small grant from the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, which I used to host a lecture/performance and workshop by members of the Irish Music School of Chicago.

Additionally, I was inspired at write a grant proposal (which was funded) which allowed for a residency at Mather High School by renowned traditional Irish performer Kathleen Keane. Over the course of two months, Kathleen visited Mather to perform and work with a small group of motivated orchestra students. She taught them a set of traditional jigs which they performed in concert.

Because of my FFT experience, I was also awarded the Teaching for Global Classrooms fellowship by the US State Department. In summer 2016, I traveled to India and, in part, taught music at a school in Vadodara, Gujarat.

Visit this website Chris created to document FFT fellowship in Limerick, as well as another site, including access to his resulting unit and lesson plans, following his TGC fellowship.

Based on my TGC fellowship, I was able to apply to then attend a conference for alumni of government sponsored international travel. As a participant, I was invited to apply for money to create a project on the subject of inclusion. I was awarded a grant from the State Department to organize and implement the Inaugural ChiUnderOneRoof: Chicago Immigrant and Refugee Resource Fair.  My students and I hosted hosted 25 local community organizations who work to support our immigrant and refugee population.

Parenthetically, since my fellowship, my wife has been awarded a fellowship along with one of her coworkers and three teachers at my school. These are just a few of the things that have resulted from the opportunities afforded me by Fund for Teachers.”

Click here to read Chris’ description of how planning the resource fair impacted him and his students.

Student’s Art Chosen for LIFEWTR Campaign

Congratulations to Luis Gonzalez and his art teacher/FFT Fellow Ari Hauben for Luis’ selection as one of three young artists whose work now adorns LIFEWTR bottles. According to the company’s website:

“LIFEWTR Series 4 celebrates the long-lasting impact that art education has on our lives from youth into adulthood. The series features the work of three young artists who have discovered the empowerment that comes with creativity and demonstrated the importance of early art education in instilling the values necessary for a more inspired future.”

LIFEWTR also shared:

“Luis Gonzalez, a Boston native and high school senior, views the abstract art he creates as more than just a mode of self-expression—it’s “a lifesaver.” Growing up in an underserved community, art has kept him in school and has guided him down a safer path than the one he has witnessed many of his peers taking. Gonzalez plans to become a professional artist, following in the footsteps of his art teacher and mentor, Ari Hauben. He also aspires to teach other youth, and show them the possibilities that art can bring.”

Ari, along with colleagues Warren Pemsler and Chris Busch, designed their Fund for Teachers fellowship to experience art museums, theatres, stages and facilities in New York City, England and The Netherlands. They also met with outreach departments to learn best practices for expanding McKinley Preparatory High School‘s local partnerships with the Huntington Theatre and Institute of Contemporary Art Boston. Subsequently, the teaching team set about closing the achievement gap of emotionally-disturbed special education students who are predominantly children of color.

“One aspect of the achievement gap that seemed particularly pronounced among our students was their lack of cultural capital,” explained Warren. “To increase students’ exposure to dramatic and fine arts, we first developed our own cultural capital with our FFT grant and then formed collaborations with The Huntington and ICA to forge new paradigms that engage students in these areas of study.”

In recognition of his accomplishment, LIFEWTR sent Louis and Ari to the Teen Vogue Summit in Los Angeles last month. Soon Louis, Ari and Warren head to New York City for the formal introduction of the artful bottles.

“Fund for Teachers is the proverbial rock thrown in a pond, with its ripples spreading out in exciting and unexpected ways,” said Ari. “One perfect example is my student Luis Gonzalez. Luis has participated the past 3 ½ years in my art (and theater) collaboration with two other FFT recipients, spurred by our fellowship to New York London, and The Netherlands. Luis has participated in approximately thirty field trips to contemporary art museums and plays, many exploring cutting edge artists and playwrights. Through these experiences and others, Luis was inspired to create abstract and pop culture works of art. When the opportunity arose for students to enter a contest to be on LIFEWTR bottles, Luis was the perfect person for the task. Having seen his abstract art piece Daydreamin, LIFEWTR replicated the art on 15 million bottles with the hopethat it will inspire other teens to be creative.  Thank you FFT for the support and opportunity to connect our FFT experiences in the ‘real world’ with our students in the classroom, who then take this full circle and bring it back out to the world.”

Conducting Dialogues

One could say that Harriet Tubman founded the Black Lives Matter movement. After escaping from a Maryland plantation in 1849, she helped establish the Underground Railroad and became its most renowned “conductor.” Almost 170 years later, Houston students take their own Tubman-inspired trek during school-wide “Freedom Nights.”

Students from Quail Valley Elementary and Burton Elementary spend several months each year researching abolitionists and Civil Rights activists in preparation for a community evening during Black History Month. Civic leaders, educators and parents then recreate an Underground Railroad through a network of “stations” with activities and presentations: The music teacher leads freedom songs and spirituals; an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority member discusses freedom quilts; and a local storyteller shares slaves’ oral histories. Students’ journey ends at a “Freedom Wall” on which they write what freedom means to them.

“Even students who weren’t African America became interested in their ancestry, which led to a larger study of birth places, culture and a realization that their heritage, Black or not, matters,” said Tawanna Cherri, an FFT Fellow. “A desire to share in someone’s story is not innate, but has to be sparked from within. Our Freedom Nights are the spark we need to explore and embrace each other’s cultures.”

To date, more than 1,000 students have participated in Freedom Nights, the vision of four Fund for Teachers Fellows who used their grant to research the Underground Railroad’s final station, known as “Midnight” (Detroit) to “Dawn” (Canada). Tawanna, Brooke Wilson, Destiny Parker and Kelly Caldwell designed this fellowship after realizing their students’ disconnect from their connection to this history.

To learn more about this team’s fellowship, click here.

Refugee Children & Brooklyn Students Find Commonalities Through Art

Thank you, Amie Robinson, art and special education teacher at PS77 in Brooklyn, NY, for sharing your fellowship story with us. Last summer, Amie researched the impact of sketchbooks as communication tools among displaced youth and non-native language learners at a refugee camp in Greece. She’s now incorporating this experience into an alternate assessment social studies curriculum focused on developing global empathy and citizenship by having special education students connect with the students she left behind in Samos. Here’s how…

Upon returning home from Greece many people have asked me, ”How was your fellowship?” It is a simple question, but one that has been extremely difficult for me to answer.

During previous travels to Greece, I witnessed vast numbers of refugees newly arrived on the islands, and was profoundly moved by the sight of children covered in Mylar blankets and clinging to their families, confronted by unfamiliar surroundings and languages. I started following stories in the news about the refugee crisis more closely. As a teacher I was particularly struck by the lack of education for thousands of children stranded in Greece long-term. I knew I had to get involved, so this summer I went to the island of Samos and volunteered at a refugee camp, with the incredible support of Fund For Teachers.

My project introduced sketchbooks as a communication tool among displaced and non-native language children in Greece, and now incorporates that experience into an alternate assessment social studies curriculum focused on developing global empathy and citizenship for my students in New York City. Cliché as it may sound, I believe that art really can help change the world in its power to illuminate and inform.

Communication can be difficult for my students with autism, and for those identified as English Language Learners (ELL), it presents an even greater challenge. Obstacles in communication can lead to frustration, anxiety, and behavioral problems that disrupt learning. Art builds self-confidence by giving students a voice. Over the past two years, I have seen the power that creative expression has while inspiring and transforming my students’ learning. The portable nature of the sketchbook allows them to express themselves outside of school. I wondered if sketchbooks would provide displaced children in Greece a similar non-linguistic space to tell stories, make connections, and build expressive language skills.

I arrived on the island of Samos on July 15, and spent the first day exploring the town of Vathy, walking through the steep and narrow streets and watching the sunset over the port. The next morning, I had an introductory meeting to begin working with Samos Volunteers, a grassroots organization responding to the needs of the growing refugee population on the island. After being registered with Greek police and I was walked into the camp with the other new volunteers from New York, Sweden, Germany, and Poland. The tour of the camp was heartbreaking. The conditions that the refugees live in are entirely inhumane. New arrivals can be soaking wet from their journey and are often made to sleep outside on concrete before they are processed by the police. We were shown the overcrowded levels of the camp, many without running water or toilets. During our tour, a woman fainted from the heat, while another pleaded hopelessly with the police until she collapsed in anguish. The physical and psychological conditions can take their toll on individuals living in the camp, and while there are international aid organizations on the island, they are not equipped or appropriately staffed to handle the increasing numbers of refugees.

That night I sat down and cried. I reflected on everything I had seen that day and questioned whether or not I was strong enough to contribute. I reminded myself that one of the reasons I applied to Fund For Teachers was to step outside of my comfort zone and usual routine, and on my first day volunteering with Samos Volunteers I was encouraged by the incredible strength of the people with whom I worked. Their warmth and determination in the face of unspeakable suffering was inspiring. Furthermore, being part of a devoted volunteer team deepened my understanding of true collaboration. Every role—teaching English and art, coordinating creative activities for women outside of the camp’s stifling conditions, swimming, jumping rope, cleaning, serving tea, sorting clothes, or playing backgammon—was equally important to creating a safe and engaging community. As the weeks flew by, I learned from others skills that I thought I had, such as humility and patience, as well as some new ones, like learning the Arabic words for colors.

While on Samos, I spent most of my long days working at a shelter for vulnerable families. In the morning, I volunteered teaching English to adults from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Following the these sessions, I would work with their children (ages 3-16) to connect an art activity to their days’ lessons. I was so excited to present them with their sketchbooks and even more excited when they returned to school the next morning and shared pages filled with beautiful drawings. One of my favorite moments from my fellowship was the peek-a-boo like game the kids created to show me what they had drawn in their sketchbooks each night. They would open and close the cover quickly, revealing only a small part of each drawing at a time, until eventually they displayed the entire page, erupting into laughter. As I look back at these photos of their sketches, I am reminded of something a young woman from Syria told me, “just remember, although they are refugees, they are still first children.” The drawings—of ice cream, birthday parties, cats, fashion designs, rainbows, hearts and flowers—tell stories of childhood, familiar to us all.

In the evenings, during recreational activities, we extended our art projects to include collage, crafts, and painting. The children were all so curious and talented, and I was constantly fascinated by watching them explore new materials and make creative decisions. I was really excited when the education director from Samos Volunteers asked me to have them collaborate to create a large canvas painting that would be auctioned to raise money to provide supplies and programs to the refugee camp. We started by looking through their sketchbooks to find images. For one beautiful and moving painting they chose eyes, mermaids, and fairies dancing together in an ocean of tears.  In the second, we used drawings that they had made of robots and how they imagined the future. They then worked together to plan compositions, transfer their designs, and paint the canvases. It was thrilling to watch their drawings come to life, and to see each of their personalities expressed in the painting. We had so much fun each evening working together, especially my youngest artist, who decided to paint her hair blue!

I am so excited to share the many drawings, paintings, and photographs created by my students in Samos and introduce them to my students in Brooklyn through the stories they tell. My colleague and I are collaborating to develop an Art and Social Studies program at our school that focuses on global citizenship.  We are working on lessons that translate the experiences of young refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Burundi, and Congo to place a human scale on a global crisis. We want our students to develop critical thinking skills to connect to their world in a broader sense, and in our first session we introduced the crisis to students using the questioning technique to develop their research question, “What is a refugee?” We were surprised to discover that most of our students had no prior knowledge of the topic, but impressed by how quickly they engaged with the serious issues at hand.

Over the course of the unit, we hope that our students will recognize that they can make positive change.  In fact, with only one co-teaching session into our project in Brooklyn, they are already asking, “How can we help?” As a culminating learning activity students will will learn techniques in bookmaking and create sketchbooks for children at the Samos refugee camp. They will also organize a fundraiser to raise money for organizations helping refugees, including International Rescue Committee, Samos Volunteers, and MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

Being a Fund for Teachers fellow has expanded my classroom beyond borders, and I can’t wait to deliver handmade sketchbooks to my “habibis” and “habibtis” when I return to Samos as a volunteer again this July.

Pearl Harbor Day Re-Remembered

I teach Japanese as a foreign language to elementary and middle school students, many of whom come from immigrant families. Some families are from Central and South America, some from the Caribbean Islands, and others from Southeast Asia. I share this heritage. I grew up in Japan. My mother is sansei (third-generation Japanese American) from Hawaii; her father, a nisei (second-generation Japanese American), was one of many Japanese Americans on the island who enlisted after Pearl Harbor. He wanted to prove his loyalty to the country that had become very suspicious of his people, so he fought with other nisei from Hawaii in the 100th Infantry Battalion, which became one of the most decorated in military history.

Growing up, I heard my grandfather tell stories of fighting in Europe in World War II. Not until much did I learn of another battle fought by Japanese Americans on the mainland. It was not a battle of bombs and bullets, but a battle of patience and perseverance. Like my grandfather, who demostrated his patriotism by enlisting, many Japanese Americans proved their loyalty by enduring relocation to internment camps.

To fully understand and better teach this period of American history, I designed my Fund for Teachers fellowship to explore the Japanese American experience during World War II and – more specifically – the US government’s handling of these citizens.

I drove 3,500 miles through 8 Western States over 11 days to research 10 monuments and former internment sites. I also stopped at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles (where I took a selfie with  George Takai). An unplanned experience was attending the Annual Pilgrimage at Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming, where we honored those who who advocated, resisted and fought for Japanese Americans. It was this stop where I met former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta and Senator Alan Simpson.

Throughout my fellowship, I focused on two topics:
• What Japanese Americans endured throughout relocation, and,
• How relocation of the Japanese Americans is remembered today.

During the fellowship, I filmed interviews with former internees about their experiences, which I’m using as resources with students and colleagues. I am also designing two curricular units that teach about the Japanese American internment experience: one for Japanese language teachers that incorporates phrases and dialogues used in camps; and one for English Arts and Social Studies teachers who want to teach about the topic. Upon completion, I will offer workshops throughout Boston Public Schools and through local non-profit teacher training organizations.

In my classes, I’m using the knowledge and connections I gained through my fellowship to teach about the forced internment of Japanese Americans during the war. Previously, I’ve taught Japanese customs, traditions, history and culture, but I’d never considered teaching the Japanese American immigrant story. I now incorporate into my language lessons words and phrases, such as gaman (perserverance) and shikata ga nai (can’t be helped), that were often used by the Japanese Americans to describe their confinement. I’ve come to understand that by teaching my culture’s extraordinary circumstances, I can deepen connections with students whose lives reflect similar themes, old and new.

This year is the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camp in Auschwitz, Poland. It has also been 70 years since Japanese Americans in the mainland were allowed to leave the internment camps and return to the West Coast. On January 2nd, 1945, restrictions preventing resettlement in the 100 mile Exclusion Zone along the West Coast was removed. I believe a strong democracy lies in not forgetting the past, especially not the mistakes. My fellowship researching the plight of tens of thousands Japanese Americans was humbling and allowed me to gain a more complete perspective of the American immigrant experience. I am using this perspective to better understand (and teach) my students from immigrant families themselves.

Timothy Nagaoka teaches Japanese in six schools around the greater Boston area and has dedicated his career to creating opportunities for students and colleagues to connect with Japan. In recognition of his work, Timothy has received the John E. Thayer Award from the Japan Society of Boston, and the Henry L. Shattuck Public Service Award from the Boston Municipal
Research Bureau.

FFT Fellow’s Best Seller Makes Bill Gates’ Top 5 Reads

Bill Gates just released his suggestions for holiday reading, and FFT Fellow Thi Bui made the list!

This gorgeous graphic novel is a deeply personal memoir that explores what it means to be a parent and a refugee. The author’s family fled Vietnam in 1978. After giving birth to her own child, she decides to learn more about her parents’ experiences growing up in a country torn apart by foreign occupiers.

Thi’s learning took place on her Fund for Teachers fellowship.

To create an oral history project for immigrant students and complete a graphic novel about her family’s emigration, Thi sketched her way across time and her homeland, learning from and listening to her mother recount stories about their heritage. Thi’s experiences and drawings gave newly immigrated students at Oakland International High School the courage to document their own journeys to America through a graphic novel format. We Are Oakland International shared illustrated stories by 170 students – where words and often language could not – and sold copies to raise money for quality public education for them and their peers.

“My students’ memories of their home were fresh when they arrived in my class, and so were the contrasts with their new environment,” said Thi. “By modeling how I went through the same process, through a project that was deeply personal while academically rigorous, we – together – opened doors to what would otherwise have remained silent, forgotten histories.”

The Best We Could Do is a national best seller and required reading for every entering freshman at UCLA.

Click here to watch and listen to Thi read an excerpt from The Best We Could Do at an Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

Rewriting History

by Melissa Petropoulos | Rowayton Elementary – Norwalk, CT

Earlier this year, my grade level was told by administration to pull our 4th grade Social Studies text books from our shelves, an act affirmed by the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. Why? A section of the text was culturally insensitive and inaccurate about enslaved people in Connecticut, saying something to the effect that Connecticut slave owners treated their slaves like family members. Whenever I came to this page in the book over the past three years, I simply skipped it. I knew that the text trivialized the topic, so I provided alternate information to supplement my students’ understanding of slavery during Colonial America.

Read about the book recall here.

When this book was deemed inappropriate, I reflected on why I skipped over information that I found offensive rather than taking action myself. This consequently led to some honest dialogue with my husband, an eighth grade history teacher, and ideas around slavery became a recurring conversation between the two of us. We discussed ways we could bring the true story of enslaved people into the classroom through primary sources, research and visiting historic sites. Because the issue spans hundreds of years and multiple continents, we decided to narrow our investigation to the context of life during the Colonial period, a subject we both teach. Then we designed a Fund for Teachers fellowship to learn about the people who were enslaved during the Colonial Period in America and how they survived under the despicable injustice of oppression and slavery.

In that erroneous 4th grade history book, slavery was trivialized; yet in existing books we have read, there remains little focus on the dignity of the enslaved.

Our fellowship goal was to gain insight into the unique social, political and economical conditions in each colony and how those conditions affected the beliefs, cultural experiences and perspectives of enslaved Africans.

Our road tour covered eight states: Connecticut, New York, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and Washington DC. We experienced museums, slave markets, historical societies and plantations. We were immersed in a dark history and keeping dry eyes was nearly impossible.  Our first site was emotionally the hardest: original slave cabins, a slave pen, and sculptures depicting 23 beheaded slaves who revolted in 1811.

We felt that we knew a lot about slavery in the United States prior to our fellowship, but by being in
places where enslaved people walked, touching my finger into the impressions of their fingerprints on bricks they made, standing under the summer sun that once beat down on their work-torn bodies, we
began to really comprehend what happened in this country. We learned about craftspeople, what they created, what they built. We learned about resistance, both subtle and overt, as a way of showing disdain for their bondage.

Consequently, now – rather than skipping one page in an entire social studies text book devoted to the cause of slavery, we choose to focus on the contributions of the men, women and children who were enslaved. We will teach about the human spirit, the passing of culture and heritage from one generation to the next, the craftsmanship and skill set, the desire for freedom, and the closeness of families. We will teach about daily life of the enslaved and the extraordinary stories that came from our dark past.

We were in Georgia when the riots happened in Charlottesville, VA. Having been immersed in a time period of oppression and racism for 12 days this summer, we were especially offended and disgusted by what we saw. To combat the hate we saw, we plan to celebrate in our curriculum the contributions of African Americans from early America throughout social studies units on regions of the USA. Through research, students will share slideshows or visuals of their findings
about the history of slavery from the perspective of the enslaved. These presentations will be told as first person narratives in order to convey the daily life of an individual who was enslaved.

I also envision planning a peace or unity rally at my school.  October 25 is Unity Day, a day of kindness, acceptance, and inclusion and would be a great opportunity to send a strong message to our
students.

Becoming a Fund for Teachers Fellow gave us a feeling that doesn’t come along all the
time, one of validation. We felt proud that our idea for exploring a
topic was funded and that my students would benefit from my vision and learning. I felt like a winner. The euphoria of that recognition has not worn off. Every museum, site, or  tour I
took, I did so knowing that there was an organization standing behind me, supporting my endeavor. It was a richly rewarding experience.

Melissa has been teaching in her beloved hometown of Norwalk, CT, for 28 years. She has twice been awarded NEF grants for classroom innovations: Other Talents and Pond Study. With a
love for science, she established a First Lego League to bring quality STEM  to her school and is equally passionate about history, infusing lessons with primary sources and recreating history through dramatics.

James Petropoulos is a product of the Norwalk Public Schools and has been teaching for the Norwalk Public Schools at West Rocks Middle School for the last twenty years. James spent nine years teaching sixth grade Ancient History and for the last eleven years has taught eighth grade American History and Civics for the Norwalk Adult Education Program for the last twenty-five
years.

If These Walls Could Speak

On the final day of their fellowship, Alice Laramore and Kat Atkins-Pattenson shared with us their reflection on a four-week, 9,000 mile road trip along the United States/Mexico border exploring language arts, visual arts, immigration and identity. Thank you, Team Paredes Que Hablan (or Walls That Speak) for sharing your experiences and hope for future students.

Our students cross borders every day. They switch from home language to school language and back again.Their warm presence, giggles, and questions invite new families inside our school buildings. And, everywhere they go, our students carry the imprint of their family members who came to Boston for refuge, for freedom, for opportunity. Every time these young people change spaces, they reconcile their identities and pasts with their presents and futures.

imageWe know that for students to truly succeed academically, they must see mirrors of themselves in our curricula – art, media, and text – and validation of their identities in our classroom spaces. While we can empathize with our students, as white female teachers, we do not truly understand the depth of our students’ experiences. To effectively understand our students’ experiences, we need to cross borders ourselves and experience the displacement our students have experienced traversing these borders.

Today, the last day of our trip, we are energized by the Borders and Identity Unit that we have built and will use to launch the year with our students. We are flooded with all that we’ve seen in our seven cities. We are entrenched in the creative part of teaching, the part that involves being an interesting, engaged individual to better support the interesting, engaged individuals in our classrooms. The part that means we learn something new in order to teach something new. The experience of being a learner better prepares a teacher to teach, and this summer was an opportunity for us to authentically learn about murals on different borders, to confront not knowing and to investigate, to use art as a lens into community.

Watch in this video the artistic expression Kat and Alice captured in three countries and seven cities to help students answer the question: “How do we show other people the depth of our past and the strength of our future?”

This month, we immersed ourselves in adult project-based learning. We’ve tried lots of new things, from food to cloud-mountain hiking to driving to places we’d never been (while blogging) to talking about art from sunrise to sunset. And we’ve done the whole thing together. Often, in our classrooms, we create groups that we believe will benefit from the individuality of each member. We build in scaffolds meant to allow the group to discover each individual’s strengths and to make empathy a non-negotiable. Though we embarked with empathy and respect already in place, our twenty-six days together have illuminated the strengths and areas of growth (thanks, BPS, for the language) of our partnership. We both value efficiency, and, in the face of less-than-such (e.g., when the internet goes as turtle-pace, when people get motion sick, when you walk up the wrong side of the mountain, etc.), we have learned much about each other. That knowledge has made us better collaborators and better friends.

In San Francisco, where we started our trip, we were oriented to the idea of looking. This was not just because there was so much to look at in The Mission, but also because we did our first day with a guide, who was able to re-frame what we had seen and interpreted in the context of history and community. Carla made us cognizant of how much we needed other people’s knowledge and understanding to build our own. The Pacoima (L.A.) murals added a layer of “looking around corners” to that concept. On the hottest day of our trip, we spent the majority of it seeking out art on the walls of automotive dealerships and in the parking lots of community centers. It wasn’t always going to be all in one alley. In San Diego, a park once occupied by people and now occupied by art, had us looking for four hours and not seeing enough. We returned home those nights googling Aztec symbols and stories, trying to learn enough to know something.

image

Tucson and Dr. Acosta gave us yet another frame through which to experience our learning. Freedom of education does not mean freedom to learn about the American Revolution and the Civil War through a lens of whiteness. Precious Knowledge, to our generation of “urban baby teachers,” is a reflection of our intentions. Though we (the generation of “urban baby teachers”) are in no way united in our vision or our understanding of social justice, the power of conviction in ideas, history, and lifting stories and voices drove us into the work of education. We wonder if Dr. Acosta knows how many teachers who are only five or six years in are tracking his legal battle and celebrating his victories, most recently the repeal of Arizona’s ban on ethic studies which a district court deemed racist and targeting of Mexican Americans.

In Santa Fe, we absorbed the International Folk Art Market, how artists envision and reimagine, how tradition can morph modern and can accommodate the present day without reneging its roots. This mirrors the murals we’ve seen and the art of Frida Kahlo, taking symbols from the past and bringing them to life in the now. In Mexico City, we saw so much. Teotihuacan, Frida, Diego, the Anthropology Museum, street art, the culinary art of Pujol, the stained glass and craters of Toluca. With American eyes and feet, we navigated the city, and learned all that we still had to learn.

It is hard to classify this experience, and even harder to know all that it will bring to our classrooms. It falls somewhere in the vicinity of sabbatical – an intentional, purposeful break that brings new insight – but also touches the realm of professional development, continuing education, and a creative project. We envision a unit with three parts. First, with our students, we will read several memoirs that broadly address the topic of borders and walls, thinking with our students about potential barriers and how to scale them. Second, we will all generate and share memoirs from our own lives on the same topic. The author of each memoir will formulate his or her own theme about the topic, communicating a piece of knowledge gained from navigating–either adeptly or crudely–a border. Finally, after examining many primary sources collected on our trip and within Boston, students will co-construct a mural combining the themes of their memoirs to create a community creation.

image

The idea of “insider and outsider” has been, in many ways, the crux of our travels. We asked questions and navigated our identity as visitor, as white visitor, as American, as woman. In our classrooms we are often the the outsiders to the communities in which we teach. However our ethnicities and upbringing reflect the dominant histories and tools that are demanded from dominant culture. In this unit, we hope to illuminate these walls, supporting students to name them, scale them, and ultimately paint them. As humanities teachers, we believe that providing students vocabulary and time to think and discuss the world and its issues leads to a brighter, more creative, and smarter future than the two of us can imagine. Solutions lie in the writing, in the art, in the conversations, and in the relationships that students create. Just as we wrote in our FFT proposal, students must see themselves reflected in curriculum, in physical space, and in pedagogy in order to be successful. Because we do not physically reflect our students’ identities, we think constantly about how to make all other facets of our teaching affirming. This unit and this project will be a launching point for discussions about personal identity, community, and what comes next.

In Mexico City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tucson and Santa Fe, this fellowship made space for us to be learners. After the twelfth grade, those opportunities almost always come with one (or many) literal costs. And Fund for Teachers (along with the school year calendar) gave us the time, space and finances to learn more in a way that will support our students, but also in a way that sustains us as teachers, professionals, and individuals. It made it possible for us to end the trip feeling rejuvenated rather than depleted. There is a constant push for teachers to continue professional development; it is indeed essential. But driving this profession development experience (and literally driving more than 900 miles) meant that we could pace our learning and reflection, and that we could intentionally choose meaningful experiences that hit our “zone of proximal development.”

If you’d like to know more about our trip, we’ve been writing the whole time. Read our blog at www.writingisthinking.org

In Solidarity,
Kat + Alice

Alice is a 7th grade Humanities/Special Education teacher at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Dorchester, MA. She infuses arts into her Humanities classes, most recently taking students to do pop-up Shakespearean theater in several Boston Public libraries. She works on a cross curricular team of teachers who study the intersection of English Language Learning and Special Education to build inclusive writing experiences in all contents.        

Kat is a 7th grade Humanities teacher at Gardner Pilot Academy K-8 School, a Pilot School in the Boston Public Schools. Katharine was a 2012-13 Donovan Urban Teaching Scholar at Boston College where she earned her Master’s in Secondary Education. Prior to becoming a teacher, Katharine built a college access program in rural Pennsylvania that continues to help first generation and undocumented students find the appropriate post-secondary fit while developing college and financial literacy
within the community.

Teachers Looking for Troubles

This weekend marks the 48th anniversary of Ireland’s Battle of the Bogside, a riot between Protestants and Catholics that initiated a three-decade conflict known as “The Troubles.” FFT Fellows Saul Fussiner and David Senderoff (New Haven Academy – New Haven, CT) are currently in Ireland researching this period of history and share their experiences below…

We teach a Facing History & Ourselves course for sophomores called “History, Legacy, Judgment and Justice,” which deals with how societies attempt to heal after long periods of conflict. We originally taught this course using the case studies of South Africa and Rwanda, but five years ago, in response to student surveys, we switched our second study to be Northern Ireland. We shaped a unit to include an inquiry activity and some quick background on the history of the Republican/Unionist divide, some lessons on Northern Ireland’s Civil Rights Movement and on Bloody Sunday, some classes on the period of the Troubles (especially 1972-1998) and activities and an assessment based on the Good Friday Agreement and its legacy. After teaching on Northern Ireland for several years now, we wanted to learn more about the background of this crisis–the long history of British colonialism and Irish resistance–that led to this struggle in the first place. And we wanted to see how this struggle is remembered, on both sides, in the lands where it took place.

On our Fund for Teachers fellowship, we are gathering relevant materials across Ireland and Northern Ireland. Along the way, we are gaining awareness and knowledge to help students contextualize the Irish situation (both before and after partition) and demonstrate how people behave in groups.

image

Our fellowship focuses on museums, tours and arts events that provide a nuanced background on Irish and Northern Irish history. Initially, we intended to research only Dublin and Belfast, but are now expanding to a wider range of places, including Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Derry and County Down. We also are documenting our visit with photography and video showing some of the places we visit; we are especially intent on conducting interviews.

Our ever-expanding agenda has included:

These activities are the backbone of our fellowship, helping us to build a comprehensive background for our course. By walking in the places where history was lived, one discovers interesting details about it, such as when I visited Alabama and saw with my own eyes how close King’s church was to the Montgomery state house and how close the projects of Selma were to the church where the marches were planned. In addition to everything else, we are spending much of our time in the North with the family of one of the teachers who visited us at our school two years ago, and he is a guide for us during our Belfast excursions.

Why teach about Northern Ireland in an urban school district in Connecticut?

We do so because the Good Friday Agreement represents what author Penn Rhodeen has referred to as the most successful example of a political solution to a major conflict in our time. Through dialogue and compromise, Nationalists and Loyalists were able to bring an end to thirty years of police brutality, bombings, kidnappings, murders, gangsterism and riots to forge a lasting – if precarious – period of peace. The warring factions in America’s own political system have been far less successful at dialogue and compromise, creating our current situation of mistrust of government and political institutions at home.

When we teach the Civil Rights Movement in American History, that teaching rests on an understanding of a long history of America and a feeling for the present day in our country. We are looking to replicate that long view and awareness in our understanding of (and teaching of) the Civil Rights period and Troubles period in Northern Ireland. We want to be able to “read between the lines.” We are both trying to become better historians of this place, and in order to do so, we wanted to experience it first hand, through interviewing of people there, and through studying in some of its most important museums and taking some of its tours and in walking
from here to there, literally, on its streets. The content of our Northern Ireland unit is always growing, and this fellowship will help us to become better resources for our students to understand this complex and confusing history.

There is an inquiry activity that we always do right near the beginning of the Northern Ireland unit, where students try to piece together clues to the puzzling struggles in Northern Ireland. Clippings and photos and statistics and maps and excerpts from interviews are examined and students create questions and inferences. We do a similar activity as they get into the specifics of the Northern Irish Civil Rights movement. Later, a big paper activity guides students through the escalation of violence in the 1970’s that followed Bloody Sunday. These are activities that can be added to and rejuvenated with the interviews and the video and photographs that we bring back.

For background information on The Troubles, the 1981 BBC documentary series directed by Ian Stuttard and compiled of key first-hand historical footage, is a good place to start. We also created this blog we’re maintaining throughout our fellowship to help document our learning throughout this grant and beyond.

 Saul teaches History, Civics and Facing History & Ourselves at New Haven Academy. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Hunter College. He has screenwriting credits on two produced films and regularly performs as a live storyteller with the Institute Library Group and the Story City Troupe. Saul has led workshops for other teachers on storytelling, student social action projects and the Holocaust and was a teacher with March of the Living in Poland in 2012 and 2014.

Dave found his niche in education while searching for a way to inspire people to seek achievements through willingness and determination. His “false starts” in the military and as an extremely amateur musician paved the way for higher learning. Always a New Haven Public School teacher, he has taught middle and high school, focusing on critical analysis and inquiry skills.

(Photograph of Dave and Saul at Lough Gur with their “I’m a Fund for Teachers Fellow” sign)

FFT Fellow Publishes Book on Survivor’s Story

Amy McDonald (Shades Valley High School – Birmingham, AL) recently sat beside Max Steinmetz at Temple Emanu-El, signing books and greeting visitors at an event hosted by Birmingham’s Holocaust Education Center. The two are old friends and partners in educating the next generation about the Holocaust, but on this day, they are author and subject of Amy’s new book, Determined to Survive: A Story of Survival and One Teacher’s Passion to Bring That Story to Life.

Max annually visits with Amy’s AP United States History students to talk about his childhood in Targu Lapus, Romania, and his family’s imprisonment in the Szaszregen Ghetto before being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp/killing center.

Last year, Max and his wife asked Amy to share his story in writing. She was honored and humbled and agreed.

By using her Fund for Teachers grant to witness places she had heard Max reference with students, Amy was able to bring his story and this book project full circle, not just for her students and other students in Alabama and the United States, but also those in Max’s hometown of Targu Lapus. Additionally, she also now:

  • Combines the approaches of teaching the historical context of an event while engaging students with the personal stories and experiences of individuals and groups;
  • Challenges students with not just the facts and statistics of what happened during the Holocaust, but by tackling the more complex questions of how and why it happened;
  • Collaborates with a Romanian high school teacher on ways to connect classrooms and students;
  • Combines teaching the history of the Holocaust with the power of one person’s story;
  • Provides students with a first-hand account of the background knowledge of a local Holocaust survivor’s life, knowledge that can be transferred in the forms of world geography, cultural studies, world religions and the history of the Holocaust;
  • Makes the numbers, statistics and documentary footage of the Holocaust more personal
  • Leverages real-world connections, both locally and in Romania, to collaborate on shared projects such as common readings, You Tube videos and interactive presentations; and,
  • Confronts students with how genocide, hate and intolerance impacted individuals, families, and communities, lessons that can be applied in today’s climate of terror, intolerance and prejudice.

Below Amy shares more about how her time in Romania impacted her, her teaching and her students:

“It is impossible to write in a few lines how much I was impacted by visiting Munich, Germany, as well as Targu Lapus and other sites in northern Romania. It was an amazing experience and beyond anything I could have ever expected,” said Amy of her fellowship. “While I saw many important sites, the most valuable and touching times were those spent with teachers and students. Their hospitality, warmth and kindness were truly humbling. Their openness to Max’s story was genuine, and their messages, words and gifts back to him were ones of respect and admiration.

 

There is much work to be done here, and my belief in the value of Holocaust Education was
strengthened even more. This fellowship shaped the experience of my Holocaust Studies class as more than an exchange of information. It allowed me to make the numbers, statistics and documentary footage of the Holocaust more personal. Holocaust education is in a state of transition as survivor witnesses become fewer and fewer. New approaches will be needed to maintain the intimacy of this history that we have been so fortunate to experience. We must prepare ourselves to continue to tell their stories as they have so bravely done in their efforts to ensure that all of those lives lost would not be in vain and that we “Never forget.”  

 

As the plane leaving Romania carried me back home, I had the thought that regarding Max’s story, I had hopefully left no stone unturned. I had now done all I could possibly do. I suddenly realized that I had not. Teachers are never finished. I am only just beginning.”

 

Read more about Max and Amy’s research on his remarkable life at http://bit.ly/FFTSurvivor.

Teaching Civil Rights Through the Holocaust

by, Natalie Biden & Emilie Jones-McAdams – Bronx, NY

“I looked across the border – that invisible line which separated my family’s old life from our new one – and wondered what was in store for us.”

This was the opening line in one of my student’s free writes about what it means to be a survivor. Barely a teenager, he explained how difficult the process of immigration was on his family. Out of his family’s struggles with emigrating from Mexico to the Bronx, one struggle landed harder int he forefront of his young mind – the lack of cultural and racial acceptance from his peers. Of course, he describes it as bullying, but what it really is: prejudice, ignorance and intolerance. As teachers, we firmly believe that communities in which all cultures are celebrated are the most beneficial places for our students’ educational, social and emotional well being. It is the desire and passion for fostering strong classroom communities that inspired our fellowship.

We left our home in NYC and ventured into the American South and Europe in order to complete a comparative study looking at the significance of those two locations in relation to civil and human rights violations. Through our Fund for Teachers grant, we were able to travel from the American South to Post-Holocaust Europe to discover and research their shared history of both discrimination and reconciliation.

Our key questions were:

  1. How can we more effectively teach about the Civil Rights Movement in the American South and the Holocaust?
  2. How can students use these historical events to reflect on how they treat peers? and,
  3. In what ways can we use the idea of bystanders, victims, and aggressors in historical events to help our students gain a personal awareness of how they impact their peers and school community?

We visited over 10 cities (in America and Europe) in the span of one month. Our goal was to visit important historical locations, learn from guides and educators, and collect invaluable artifacts and pieces of knowledge that would aid us in teaching the Civil Rights Movement and the Holocaust.

We started in the South. Some of the highlights were:

Then we headed to Europe.

We stepped onto four different concentration camps – Auschwitz, Birkenau, Dachau, and Buchenwald. Our Berlin Walking tour focused on periods of repression and persecution of various people groups in the city’s history, while Warsaw offered us a glimpse into its Jewish Ghetto past. By researching in cities such as Berlin, Munich, Krakow, Warsaw, and Prague via train,bus, walking, bike, and Trabant, we were able to appreciate these places for their history, their monuments and important markers of the past, as well as their growth and change over time into the modern cities they have become.

Each destination proved to be a powerful, moving and highly educational experience. In America and Europe, we were steeped in the rich histories, cultures, traditions, and stories. We paid witness to the shoes that the one of the girls was wearing when she lost her life during the 16th Street Baptist Church
bombing, and we paid witness to the thousands of shoes left behind by the victims of Nazi brutality. Never will we forget the things we saw during our journey.

After looking out at the world, it was time to look into our classrooms in order to help students develop a critical consciousness that allows for open and honest discussion and exploration of historical and current issues within a safe and supportive classroom community. As a result of our fellowship, students are tackling the complexities of human and civil rights violations. They are engaging in two new units on civil rights – one focusing on the Holocaust and the other on the Civil Rights Movement.

Viewing and discussing artifacts and pictures collected during our journey, and reading the challenging and complex texts gathered from the two major locations of our trip, students are being exposed to the histories of the South and Eastern Europe. We hope that the discussions and work that come out of these
topics will not only push our students thinking in ELA and social studies, but also encourage our students to think critically about the civil rights and equality issues of their time.

Culturally-responsive education research proves students thrive in classrooms where all cultural vantage points are considered valuable and celebrated. We believe that it is essential to not only teach tolerance,
respect, and acceptance, but it also important to carefully explore with students the times in history when human rights have been violated, and throughout the year, we will explore these moments in history.

Ultimately, the major impact on the students is learning how to turn tragedies from the past into lessons for the present and future. In the present, they are understanding why people should have basic human rights and what happens when people are denied those rights. This impacts the class by applying those same ideas to how they treat their classmates. When our students leave us and go on to higher levels of education and future careers, they will encounter people different from them and ideas different than theirs. We want our students to be good citizens and thoughtful people who impact their communities in positive ways.Learning to treat people with respect and celebrate differences will set them up to live honorably, think deeply, and engage in the social challenges of their times.

Civil Rights for Aborigines and African-Americans

by, Britnie Girigorie & Simone English – Brooklyn, New York

When Europeans first began to colonize Australia in the 18th century, the traditionally nomadic culture of the Aborigine people changed drastically. Under British rule, the Aborigines lost much of the land that they lived off of for centuries. They were subjected to removal of their children from their homes, racism and genocide, denied the right to vote and state benefits and segregated from the main population of Australians. Due to their dark skin the Australian Aborigine people were easily identified and discriminated against. In the 1920’s, the beginnings of a Civil Rights Movement in Australia began to emerge. However, it wasn’t until the 1960′s that the movement began to gain traction. Freedom rides and peaceful protest modeled after the American Civil Rights Movement led to a constitutional referendum allowing the Aborigine people equal rights as Australian citizens.

As English teachers at FDNY High School for Fire and Life Safety, we both noticed a need for units of
study to introduce our students to the diverse world to which they currently have little access. Studying the Aborigine Civil Rights Movement allows our students to connect with a culture across the globe and discuss similarities of the human experience, cultivating empathy and compassion for all of humanity. Therefore, we designed our Fund for Teachers fellowship to spent two weeks in Australia researching the Aboriginal Civil Rights movement to discover how it reflects the more familiar struggle of African-Americans in the United States and create a curriculum about how self-expression helps convey human experiences common throughout the world.

We started our research in Melbourne, where we visited several Aborigine museums and cultural centers. Also in Melbourne, we visited the Worawa Aboriginal School and met with the director, Ms. Lois Peeler. Ms. Peeler and her three sisters are the subjects of the movie The Sapphires that was released in the United States last year. She is to the Aborigine Civil Rights Movement what Rosa Parks was to African Americans. She is also the first Aborigine Super Model in the world.

While visiting the girls-only school, we had a meeting with several heads of departments there and
were given access to class rooms, dorm rooms and other areas of the school including spending time with the students. Over lunch, we learned from Ms. Peeler and others about the Aborigine movement and the progress of the Aborigines in Australia. We discovered that many of the girls were deaf because they live in remote villages and didn’t have access to proper medical care. However, to help with that, all the classrooms have surround sound hearing aids and the teachers speak through a microphone hung from her/his neck.

Our initial question was “How did the American Civil Rights Movement influence that of the Aborigine People?” However, not long after we arrived we realized that we would have to first answer other questions, such as “Where are the Aborigine people now?” We were surprised to find that not
many Australians knew about the Aborigines or simply where they lived. Even when we visited the cultural centers, information about the Aborigine people was limited and sketchy. Visiting the Worawa School really enhanced our learning.

Our second week was spent in Sydney were we visited an Aborigine cultural center. We were privileged to sit with elders who told us stories and showed us how to create our own boomerangs. We witnessed
traditional dances and participated in a smoke ceremony.

We developed the following essential questions to engage our students and school community:

How did the American Civil Rights Movement influence that of the Aborigine people?

In addition to looking to at the American Civil Rights model, we also study Aboriginal literature to discover what forms of self-expression the Aborigine people used to convey their challenges and triumphs? Our two texts for the unit are:

  • Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara, a story about three Aboriginal girls of the “stolen generation”and their escape from a reserve in their attempt to find home; and,
  • Dream Keepers: A Spirit-journey into Aboriginal Australia by Harvey Arden, who takes the reader into the minds, hopes and dreams of the Australian Aborigine people through mythical narrative about their traditional beliefs.

The poems we study include “A Song of Hope” by Oogeroo Noonuccal; “Word of a Ghetto Child” by Ray Sailor; and “What Becomes of us Now?” by Richard G. Kennedy. We also study poems from African American poets such as “Mother to Son” and “Too America” by Langston Hughes and “America” by Claude McKay. Through these books and poems, students experience the pain, the fears, the hopes, dreams, resilient spirit and the triumphs of the Aborigine people. We will seek to uncover what heroes or key figures emerged during this movement and how they use words to inspire change. Answers to these essential questions help our students understand the human struggle and human experience through the similarities in the fight for equal rights of Aborigines and African-Americans.

In addition, we developed an interdisciplinary curriculum unit with colleagues which will spark a culture of leadership, growth and learning among our school staff and we learned how two cultures so drastically different, used similar methods to gain equal rights. Students are learning about the Aborigine people through viewing photos, video footage and artifacts. They now know that African-Americans are not the only group of people who have had to fight for equal rights. This has cultivated empathy within our students, as well as a connection to another culture.

Learning about the struggle for human rights across the globe has fostered a sense of citizenship within our students, inspiring them to fight for themselves, as well as others, in the face of inequalities at the hands of the society. Students are also learning to value and understand differences among people. We help them begin to understand that the human experience is similar across many cultures. The Australian Aborigines, to which we may feel we have very little connection at the surface, faced inequalities and injustices similar to the family members of many of our students. This realization develops a tolerance for difference and a sense of advocacy for
others who may be suffering.

Living, studying and traveling within Australia for two weeks allowed us to gain a deep understanding for the Aboriginal people. Consequently, we now teach our students about what we learned with a passion that stems from personal experiences. We serve as examples for our students to take advantage of learning opportunities and never be afraid to grow professionally or personally. This opportunity to learn and carry out our own professional development allowed us to cultivate our interests and think carefully and strategically about our skills, knowledge and curriculum development practice as well as to foster our curriculum development skills. Through our fellowship, we developed a
common core unit based on what we observed and lived is an unmatched once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that surely ignited a fire within us.

Little Rock Nine Still Impacting Education

by, Jessica Mascle, Anthony Riccio, Nate Streicher & Eric Levine – Amherst, NY

Fund for Teachers Civil Rights

At the Central High School National Historic Site Museum

On an early Sunday morning in July the Tapestry Charter School Civil Rights team traveled to Little Rock, AR for a truly unique experience. We designed our Fund for Teachers fellowship to attend an educators’ Civil Rights Institute to help students make important connections between historic events and challenges of modern society in a way that engages the question, “How can I make a difference?” Little did we know that casual conversations had with fellow educators, hotel workers, shop keepers and cab drivers would be engraved in our minds and retold in our stories of the battle for civil rights.

During the course of the week, we were students engaged in the investigation of primary sources, fieldwork, experts and assessment tools.  Our group traveled to several historic sights including the Arkansas State Capital and Little Rock Central High School.  During these experiences, participants read excerpts from Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals, which fostered a visual understanding of the author’s writing and therefore created an emotional connection that reading the text in a classroom would not foster.

The importance of the Little Rock Nine is incalculable. Perhaps the most compelling discovery was the idea of personal narratives of the students themselves and the community at large. During our time in Little Rock, we were surprised by the impromptu “narratives” we were told by cab drivers as we were given informal sight seeing tours of the city. We were inspired by working with other educators, learning how different schools teach social justice issues, learning from the people who were living in Little Rock during the school integration crisis, learning new ways to use protocols for writing and processing fieldwork, and gaining new ideas for writing projects and final products.

The zenith of the week was sitting down and speaking with our interview subjects. Our conversations turned into our product:personal narratives telling the story of our subjects – their struggles, hardships
and ultimate ability to succeed in the South.

Far north of the Mason-Dixon Line we returned with the reality that although the fight for Civil Rights has come a long way, we still have a long way to go. From conversations with other Institute participants, informal conversations with cab drivers and shop keepers, and the interview sessions, all those involved painted a vivid picture of how America is still not equal.

Our experiences during the Institute allowed us to reevaluate our teaching plans to focus on connections from the Civil Rights Movement to modern day civil rights efforts, including those in our own school community, and what they hope to achieve. Western New York is a very diverse place and being so lends itself to the stories, struggles and tribulations of those who live here. By examining Western New York and our own school, we will be able to create a personal connection with our students, making the content more meaningful.

Experiences on our fellowship taught us is that history is better told by listening to a story than simply reading it out of a textbook. We now teach our students interview and oral history recording techniques that we learned and send them out into the Western New York community to obtain first hand stories of community members that have encountered hardships and struggles trying to achieve equality and respect so that future generations will be able to read and partake in the local civil rights movement. Additionally, we:

  • Revised and implemented a successful 11th grade curriculum to narrow the focus from the evolution of the American Ideals to the application of the ideals of Democracy in Buffalo, NY;
  • Created a personal narrative project for his 12th grade Economics and Government students that is influenced by the techniques learned at the Civil Rights Institute. Students interview local business leaders, politicians,and activists to explore the meaning of “heroism.” They then write personal narratives based on their interviews, which are presented to the subjects in person;
  • Created a 10th grade curriculum with a fellow teacher to broaden the focus from the tension between government oversight and individual liberties to a deep look at the importance of human rights and the violations of this basic idea. This includes the case study of the Little Rock Nine as a point of departure for rest of the expedition; and,
  • Wrote a series of lessons to explore the ties between the search for civil rights and the use of restorative justice to create a strong community.

The most memorable experience of our fellowship was a conversation we had with a cab driver named Owen. We asked him to reflect on his 60 years living in Little Rock and if life has changed for the better. He told us “you are naive to think that discrimination has ended. It has simply just changed its shape, color and stripes.“

Our job as educators is to make sure our society does not become complacent with injustices, and to make sure our students and children know that issues can not be changed if others do not know about them. Through case studies in classes and activities in crew, students will deepen their understanding of civil right and the importance of community.

Continuing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy Through Religion & Art

For an update on Starr’s student impact, click here.

In Limestone County, AL, 82% of the citizens are white. That percentage jumps to 96% when looking at the student body of Ardmore High School where Starr Weems teaches. Fearing her students’ first encounter with racial, cultural and religious diversity would be on the job, in college or not at all, Weems designed a Fund for Teachers grant to study three of the world’s major religions in Jerusalem. Her goal was to create a combined art/foreign language curriculum that introduced her homogenous students to the beauty of diversity and tolerance.

“As the only high school art teacher in the county and the only foreign language teacher at my school, it’s my responsibility to bring the cultures of the world to my students – many of whom will never leave our state. Somehow, I needed to inspire them to learn about the world around them so that they can be prepared to take part in a diverse society. It’s this responsibility that inspired my fellowship,” said Weems.

image

For one week last June,  the holy city of Jerusalem became her classroom for intercultural studies. After journaling and sketching at the Dome of the Rock and surrounding gardens, she ventured to the Souq al-Qattanin to experience the colorful markets. In the Christian quarter, she followed and documented the Stations of the Cross on the way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Weems spent an afternoon plein air painting at the Wailing Wall, explored the Western Wall tunnels and toured the Ophel Jerusalem Archaeological Park. She also collaborated with Israeli educators through pre-arranged visits to the Hebrew University High School and witnessed the Holocaust’s impact on art at Yad Vashem. Lastly, she met with Isareli working artists at the Huztot Hayotzer Artists’ Colony before viewing Chagall’s stained glass windows at the Chadassah Medical Center.

Three days after returning home, she boarded a plane to Rochester, NY, where she attended a symposium on the sacred texts of the Abrahamic religions at Nazareth College – also funded by her $5,000 grant.

Finally back in Ardmore, Weems implemented her new art/foreign language curriculum this fall (schedule and budget restraints necessitated the combined class). As part of the curriculum, her students heard from a local Holocaust survivor and experienced the Darkness into Life: Alabama Holocaust Survivors Through Photography and Art exhibit at the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center. After the field trip, students created their own art to reflect on what they witnessed (see below).

image

“A Hebrew proverb says that children are not vessels to be filled, but candles to be lit. How can a teacher light the fire of curiosity in her students if her own spark has grown dim?” said Weems. “Teaching is rewarding and exciting as no other career, but success comes only when educators take care to stoke the fires of creativity and inspiration. Guarding the spark (as I did with my Fund for Teachers fellowship) is an obligation that protects our longevity and influence as educators.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. saw the function of education as teaching others to think intensively and critically. “Intelligence plus character,” he said, “that is the goal of true education.” In honor of Dr. King’s birthday today, we also celebrate Starr Weems’ work toward building students of intelligence and character for a future of tolerance.

You can learn more about this fellowship and download the resulting new lesson plans from Weems’ blog Art in Jerusalem.