Last summer with a Fund for Teaches grant, Dr. Shelina Warren and four peers from Dunbar High School in Washington DC embarked on a journey across five states in the Deep South to more effectively teach complex and accurate historical narratives about race, civil rights, and the African American experience. In advance of Martin Luther King Day, we reached out to Shelina to learn more about their experiences and how students are learning differently as a result… 

You saw/experienced/internalized so much history on your fellowship. Is there one moment that stands out above the others? 

One of the most profound moments of the fellowship was standing inside the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, at the exact site where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life. The emotional weight of being in that space was unexpectedly similar to what I felt days later in Mississippi—standing in the courthouse where Emmett Till’s killers were acquitted and near the river where his body was found. 

In both places, I felt the same question pressing in on me: 
How do we teach students not only what happened, but how people responded—and what those responses demand of us today? 

That question is at the heart of what I was trying to solve through writing and receiving this fellowship. 

And what were you trying to solve? 

Before the fellowship, my students could name incidents of racial violence—Martin Luther King, Jr., George Floyd, Breonna Taylor—but they struggled to articulate: 

• How people responded in those moments; 

• Why those responses mattered; and, 

• What choices they themselves are inheriting today 

A pre-survey I administered at the start of my Emmett Till unit confirmed this gap: 

• While students expressed strong emotional reactions to racial violence, many lacked confidence in explaining historical responses beyond protests or anger. 

• More than 80% of students indicated that primary sources, real locations, and personal narratives helped them understand people’s choices more than textbooks alone. 

• Nearly all students said they believe their responsibility today is to speak up when we see injustice, but many were unsure how to do so meaningfully. 

The fellowship helped me realize that place-based learning—standing where history happened—is essential to bridging that gap. 

How is your fellowship’s place-based learning informing students in the various classes you teach? 

I am currently teaching a mini-unit on Emmett Till grounded directly in the fellowship experience, which specifically features high school curriculum activities and resources I received from the Emmett Till Interpretive Center and Facing History & Ourselves. Students are engaging with: 

• Photos and videos I captured at the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, courthouse, barn, and river as primary sources; 

• Documentary clips and insights shared by scholar Ben Saulsberry; 

• Comparative inquiry connecting Emmett Till’s murder to Dr. King’s assassination and contemporary racial violence; and, 

• Structured discussions centered on the essential question: 
  As we pursue racial justice today, what can be learned from the choices people have made in response to racial violence in the past? 

“Seeing the real places where Emmett Till’s story happened made it feel real in a way textbooks never did. It made me think about what I would have done then—and what I should do now.” — Dunbar High School Law & Public Policy student 

Alongside this unit, I am developing: 

• A student-created video project modeled after the National Civil Rights Museum introductory film, highlighting the legacy of our Law & Public Policy Academy 

• Podcast episodes that weave together fellowship sites, including an on-location sound bite recorded outside Dooky Chase’s Restaurant—a historic civil rights strategy space 

• A classroom Matter of Law panel series inspired by the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, where students examine court cases and consider legal vs. moral justice 

With two decades of teaching and a Ph.D. in Urban Leadership, is there anything new that you learned on this fellowship? 

Visiting Dr. King’s childhood home, final resting place, and the King Center in Atlanta helped me more fully understand the arc of his life—not just his death. Seeing where he was raised, where his ideas were nurtured, and where his legacy is preserved allowed me to teach him not only as a martyr, but as a strategist, organizer, and human being. 

At the National Civil Rights Museum, I also learned the origins of the phrase Speaking Truth to Power through Bayard Rustin’s work. That learning reshaped how I frame activism for students—helping them see that justice requires both legal change and personal transformation. 

One quote from Studio BE in New Orleans captured this tension perfectly: 
“How do you look terror in the face and still muster the courage to love?” 

That question now anchors my classroom. Love, I tell my students, is not passive—it is a deliberate act of resistance, one Dr. King embodied fully. 

I’m extending our fellowship’s beyond my students and me through: 

• Podcast episodes shared with families and the community 

• Ongoing conversations with colleagues about replicating place-based learning locally 

• An upcoming Humanities Circle presentation where I will share my Emmett Till unit and fellowship-based strategies 

The recent CBS Sunday Morning update about preserving the Emmett Till barn—and Shonda Rhimes’ continued support—only reaffirmed why access to these sites matters. Memory is fragile. Place helps protect it. 

At the heart of this fellowship is the belief that guides my work: So that others may learn. This experience strengthened my commitment to teaching truthfully, lovingly, and courageously, and to helping students understand that their responses to injustice matter. 

Students at Life Learning Academy are disconnected – literally and figuratively. Many of the students live on campus, located on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay. Also, students arrive after experiencing life traumas, often involving the juvenile justice system, and not finding success in traditional school settings.

Kevin Hicks arrived at Life Learning Academy with his own unique trajectory, including growing food at a commune in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, founding a rowing studio gym, and working as laboratory scientist at the United States Department of Agriculture.

The common denominator between students and teacher? According to Kevin, meaningful connections, worldly lived experiences, and adventure — the same components of a Fund for Teachers fellowship.

Last summer with a $5,000 Fund for Teachers grant, Kevin participated in the Marine Conservation program hosted by Global Vision International in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, to support the management and conservation of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. Working alongside national and international non-profits and government organizations, Kevin collected data, participated in coral nursery and management and joined beach clean-ups in the Mexico Caribbean Marine Biosphere Reserve, which is one of the largest ecosystems globally, and the largest national marine biosphere reserve in the Caribbean.

Afterwards, he studied Spanish with a tutor in Quintana Roo, improving fluency to better teach one-third of his students who are Spanish speaking.

“I got to see ‘Science as a human endeavor,’” said Kevin. “As humans, we have limited capacity. It made most sense to train us to be able to identify selected target species [such as sea turtles]. This way we focused on specific species that provide crucial data.”

Kevin relies on a similar targeted approach when teaching his “Earth Optimism in Action” ecology class, focusing on specific issues that provide opportunities for collaboration and change.

“My students choose a local environmental issue for which I supply 1-2 resources for them to contact for more information,” explained Kevin. “As the name of the class implies, they are empowered to take action and reach out to local organizations for more information. Their final project will be an ‘Action Plan’ with the help of the local agency to address the issue at hand. My fellowship will be used as my example for their final project.”

Through this class (and his fellowship), Kevin models more than environmental stewardship and hands-on science. He exemplifies for his students Life in Action.

“As an educator, it is my responsibility to be a role model, and I would like to be a role model of a global citizen who takes action in the world for the things that I care about,” he said. “I deeply care about our natural environment, and particularly the oceans’ health. I want to show my students, by my actions not just my words, that their actions matter.”

Fund for Teachers, one of the nation’s leading organizations supporting preK-12 educators, is proud to announce its 2025 grant recipients. This summer, 357 teachers will leverage $1.625 million into experiential learning in 79 countries on 6 continents.

These educators comprise Fund for Teachers’ 25^th cohort of FFT Fellows. Since 2001, Fund for Teachers has invested $39 million in 10,225 public, private and charter school teachers from across the United States.

Fund for Teachers annually invites teachers to propose solutions that address learning gaps for themselves and their students. Teachers are trusted with the freedom to determine what and where they want to learn and, after a thorough review process, individual teachers are awarded up to $5,000 and teams of two or more up to $10,000 to pursue customized professional development during the summer.

Fund for Teachers annually invites teachers to propose solutions that address learning gaps for themselves and their students. Teachers are trusted with the freedom to determine what and where they want to learn and, after a thorough review process, individual teachers are awarded up to $5,000 and teams of two or more up to $10,000 to pursue customized professional development during the summer.

“Teachers are at the heart of shaping not only students’ academic trajectories, but often also their social and emotional well-being,” said Karen Eckhoff, Executive Director. “Fund for Teachers believes this high calling merits validation and support, which we provide by funding fellowships that ultimately inspire teachers’ enthusiasm for student engagement and extend their longevity in the profession.”

The town of Roseburg, Oregon has a few notable distinctions – the subject of the Johnny Cash song “Lumberjack” and home to a pack of feral angora goats that predicted weather in the 1980s – but a diverse demographic is not among them. The county seat is 91% white and the students at Roseburg High School mirror that statistic. In this homogeneous milieu, social studies teacher (and Roseburg native) Ashley Painter was tasked with crafting Music History and Native American Studies courses, she used Fund for Teachers to orchestrate it. 

“My $5,000 grant funded a road-trip focusing on historic sites in America’s South and Midwest that highlight Civil Rights, Native American, and musical history,” said Ashley. “While my motivation for this fellowship came from a passionate and emotional appreciation for these cultures and historical content areas, there are also several new standards in Oregon that this project helped several courses meet.” 

On the road, she toured the Greenwood Rising Museum & Black Wall Street History Center in Tulsa when documenting country music. She walked around Whitney Plantation and Congo Square while seeking out jazz history in New Orleans.

She crossed the Alabama River on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and toured the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. She stopped at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and Medgar Evers’ home while following the Mississippi Blues Trail and visited the Delta Blues Museum and the legendary Crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

In Georgia, she sat at a lunch counter sit-in simulator at Atlanta’s Museum for Civil and Human Rights when researching the roots of rock and roll. And in Tennessee, she stood reverently outside the Lorraine Hotel after touring the Blues Hall of Fame and Sun Records (recording studio of such icons as BB King and Elvis Presley) in Memphis before taking the stage at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and making a pilgrimage to the Woolworth’s on 5th.  

Ashley rounded out the odyssey with visits to The Museum at Bethel Woods and Max Yasgur’s Farm, the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival, Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum; Detroit, the Home of Motown; and Chicago’s DuSable Black History Museum, Ida B. Wells House, Monument to the Great Northern Migration, and Chess Records. 

Artifacts and experiences gathered on her 10,000 mile/six-week journey now inform the majority of her Music History course, which focuses on US history from the mid-1800s through the 1990s and how music reflected and influenced current events of the day. So far this semester, students have been decoding spirituals. Ashley learned about Underground Railroad codes embedded in quilts and spirituals at Slave Haven in Memphis, where she sang “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” with the other visitors, and was led to a small compartment under the house where people seeking their freedom hid more than 150 years ago. 

“I aim for my emotion and experience to be funneled through my teaching to inspire my students to move beyond being knowledgeable, and to work for change in how they treat others and inspire other people to do the same, to travel and move beyond our state that so few of them have left, to find interest in other cultures and histories, and to yearn for knowledge throughout their lives,” said Ashley. “I believe my example of being a life-long learner, an empathetic change-seeker, and a risk-taker through this fellowship encourages my students to do the same throughout their lives, as well.” 

The inspiration behind Fund for Teachers fellowships are as diverse as our Fellows; however, only one (that we know of) stemmed from a subway attack. In November 2021, four Asian-American students were attacked because of their ethnicity by four Black teenagers. Alarmed by subsequent increasing racial tensions at Central High School, members of the school’s Asian Pacific Islander Union (APIU) collaborated with Black peers to brainstorm about ways to unite and support each other. 

One result was the re-institution of an Asian American history course Ken taught 15 years ago, previously cancelled due to budget cuts.  

“I feel that my strength as a teacher lies in my ability to work with students to create spaces where they can learn about issues that are important to them and develop solutions to problems they are currently facing,” said Ken. “My aspiration is to continue refining the course in a way that meets the needs and interests of my students. With this in mind, I designed a fellowship to better understand how the history of Asian Americans is interconnected with that of other BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities – specifically, how my students can reflect on how these interconnected histories have shaped Asian American culture.” 

Ken used a $5,000 grant to cover costs associated with the NEH Summer Institute: Little Tokyo How History Shapes Community Across Generations organized by the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). He was particularly interested in the events leading up to, during and after the Japanese Incarceration in World War II – when Japanese and Black Americans worked together to combat discrimination.  

“Thanks to my FFT grant, I was also able to spend time outside of the NEH Institute to fulfill the goals of my grant,” Ken explained. “Staff from the JANM helped me conduct research on how allies in the Black communities of LA supported Japanese Americans during and after the Japanese Incarceration. I met with an activist who took me on a tour of Little Tokyo and helped me understand the impact of gentrification on its Black and Asian residents. Finally, I was able to visit neighborhoods in LA, such as Crenshaw, where Black and Japanese Americans lived and challenged housing discrimination.” 

In addition to experiencing multiple museums and, ultimately, the Manzanar War Relocation Camp, Ken prioritized making personal connections with individuals who themselves experienced this period of history, including: 

• a docent at the Japanese American History Museum who talked about his efforts to honor Barbara Marshall, a Black American who supported Japanese American families during the Japanese Incarceration; and, 
• June Aochi Berk, the co-chair of the Minoru Yasui Civil Rights Committee, whose family was incarcerated at Camp Rohwer in Arkansas. 

(Exploring Los Angeles’ Crenshaw District; meeting June Aochi Berk, on a tour of Little Tokyo guided by members of the Little Tokyo Historical Society) 

Ken is working with the JANM to have students Zoom with a survivor of the Japanese Incarceration in the coming weeks. His fellowship will also inform their novel study of Buddha in the Attic, part of a curriculum Ken hopes to expand throughout the district through professional development workshops for teachers who wish to teach Asian American Studies using a cross-cultural lens. 

“Many students at my school, including those who define themselves as Asian American, struggle to define what Asian American culture is, especially in light of stereotypes that define Asian Americans as being a foreign culture,” said Ken. “I define culture as being the shared understanding of a group of people and believe that this understanding is shaped by the relationships that people build across cultures. Through my unit, I want students to consider the extent that Asian American culture is not only part of American culture, but is likewise shaped by the shared struggles we have with other communities of color.” 

Three years ago, Ariana Sanders (Cincinnati) used a $5,000 Fund for Teachers grant to participate in the Witness Tree Institute’s immersive educator experience in Ghana, where she explored the impact of colonization, as well as how Africans protect their natural resources. Her goal was to inform the development of learning objectives and course modules for Ethnic Studies to be offered not just at her school, Wyoming High School, but to ALL of Ohio’s high school teachers. 

“I cannot count the ways in which this fellowship was an influential time for me,” said Ariana. “It felt like an inspired experience literally from the second the plane landed — I felt more connected to my roots as a biracial person. The Witness Tree Program really allowed me to go into areas where it is NOT touristy, talk to many professors, participate in cultural activities (food, dancing, games, etc.) It is hard to put into words what that means or how much I see that impacting my soft skills — understanding others, appreciating differences…we all clearly need more of that!” 

_{Caption: Standing in Slave River, where captured men, women and children slaves bathed for the last time before they went to the auction; Ariana’s conference nametag and presentation session.}

That connection and cultural immersion informed learning standards and curriculum for a new official course offering in the Ohio Social Studies program called Religion, Gender, and Ethnic Studies, which Ariana presented at the National Council of Social Studies’ national conference. 

Additionally, Ariana sits on the advisory board for Boston University’s Teaching Africa Teacher (TAT) Certificate Program, which supports pre-service and in-service K-12 teachers and higher education instructors interested in engaging with Africa in their classrooms. As part of this opportunity, Ariana crafted an additional curriculum titled W.E.B. DuBois & Ghana: As told through 3 primary sources – which you can access here. 

“I’ve kept up with colleagues from my fellowship in Ghana, so those relationships, as well as peers through the TAT board, give me a space to advance higher education African studies and be in touch with people who are also working to ensure Africa is represented in more social studies classes. I feel like I am the biggest cheerleader for Fund for Teachers.” 

W.E.B. DuBois said, “It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.” He would be proud of the impact Ariana is making, as are we.