Frank Mangan and Brandon Hubbard-Heitz (The Howard School – Chattanooga, TN) are assessing the past and present effects of people’s interaction with the Alaskan wilderness to empower students to embark upon future conservation work in their contexts.

You can follow their learning on Twitter and read more about their adventure below…

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“Late in life, noted naturalist John Muir traveled to Alaska. As he sailed along Alexander Archipelago, he wrote,“To the lover of pure wildness Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world. No excursion that I know of may be made into any other American wilderness where so marvelous an abundance of noble,newborn scenery is so charmingly brought to view…”

Today especially, Alaska stands out for its 54 million acres that have been set aside as national parks, a vast expanse of wilderness that can only be appreciated by the naked eye. Even so, Alaska’s history is also a decidedly human tale of exploitation as much as conservation, abuse as much as preservation. From the migration of humans across the Bering Strait to the gold rush to the ExxonValdez, Alaska is a microcosm of the human-nature relationship within American history. Thus, it offers itself as an excellent starting point for an exploration of this dialectic that has defined the American people’s relationship with their land.

Unfortunately, this relationship often goes unexplored by students at the urban high school in which we teach. The school primarily serves children of color, many of whom lack the resources to explore the local,state, and national parks near their neighborhoods. According to the Outdoor Foundation, only 8% of black adolescents and 12% of Hispanic adolescents participated in outdoor activities in 2015, miniscule numbers compared to 71% of their white peers.As America grows increasingly diverse, this gap portends significant consequences not only for communities of color, but for the earth itself. The damaging effects of human-caused climate change are increasingly manifest and necessitate an “all hands on deck” response – one that is only possible if all people, including our students, become advocates for conservation.

Our self-guided fellowship into Alaska’s wilderness will enable us to report back to our students not only its beauty, but also the imperative to preserve that beauty. As a U.S. history teacher and an English teacher who teach juniors, we will equip our students to step into the wilderness – Alaskan and local, past and present – in order to experience the wonder of the earth and the need to preserve it for future generations. Like Muir, we are documenting our adventure, in writing and digitally, in order to create a meaningful experiential unit that transports students to the Alaskan wilds with the aim of inspiring students to seek out such experiences for themselves while also advocating for the preservation and protection of the natural world.”

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Armed with a 360 degree camera, Frank and Brandon are capturing experiences for their students, including:

• Observing the impact of the ExxonValdez oil slick and climate change on Kenai Fjords National Park;
• Witnessing the human-nature relationship on Reeve’s Field, the airstrip used to support the Pacific Theater during World War II;
• Exploring in Denali National Park and Preserve the Kantishna Mining District;
• Flying above the Arctic Circle to tour Simon Paneak Memorial Museum,
  which documents the natural, geological and cultural history of the Nunamiut people;
• Backpacking in lands preserved by the
  Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

In addition to incorporating images and experiences into U.S. History and English III classes, the teaching team plans to collaborate with colleagues to create an experiential interdisciplinary unit that promotes outdoor engagement and conservation. They also believe their experiences will help grow the school’s Outdoor Leadership Club, which Brandon founded last year. Lastly, students will visit a local tract of land managed by the National Park Service, interviewing rangers about local issues that interact with what their teachers learned in Alaska. Students’ research will culminate in a joint English – U.S. History research and advocacy project they’ll present to peers, teachers, parents, community members and park rangers.

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Brandon is dedicated to preparing his students for active citizenship in the world by infusing his classes with authentic reading and writing. In 2016, he co-founded the school’s Outdoor Leadership Club in an effort to diversify the outdoors and expose students to the beauty of nature. In addition to being a Fund for Teachers Fellow, Frank has received a Teaching American History grant and studied the Civil Rights Movement at Cambridge University through the Gilder-Lehrman Institute.

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?

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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:

• The Robert Russa
  Moton Museum in Farmville, VA, (considered the student birthplace of America’s Civil Rights Revolution)
• Woolworth’s lunch counter where the non-violent sit-in protests began (now housed inside the International Civil Rights Center Greensboro, NC)
• The King Center in Atlanta, GA, which included a visit to his birth home, the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he was a pastor, and his grave site
• The Rosa Parks Library and Museum in Montgomery, AL and,
• Activities in Alabama and Tennessee allowing us to physically walk us through locations of the Civil Rights March, including a service at the 16th Street Baptist Church, where Dr. King often spoke; Kelly Ingram Park, a ground for Civil Rights protests; and the Lorraine Hotel, the location of King’s assassination.

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.

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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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.

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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.