Today marks the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade History, an annual commemoration established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2007. The aim of the day is “to inculcate in future generations the causes, consequences and lessons of the transatlantic slave trade, and to communicate the dangers of racism and prejudice.” FFT Fellows consistently design fellowships to further this work and we are honored to share the work of one of them today. Aisha Haynes (Academy of Urban Planning & Engineering – Brooklyn) used her grant to research colonization in Ghana on the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved African arrived in Virginia to share learning with the school Equity Team and advance campus inclusivity goals. We’re grateful for Aisha’s work and her story…

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“Akwaaba” is a traditional greeting in Ghana that welcomes visitors. This greeting resonates with me often as a teacher in the neighborhood in which I teach in Brooklyn, New York. Many of my students are recently arrived immigrants, students who are living in temporary housing, or simply new to our school community. This warm welcome invites my students into our classroom space to move from becoming visitors in our community to making themselves at home. I designed this fellowship to celebrate their diversity, encourage their inclusion, and build leadership amongst my adolescent students.

For ten days, I experienced the history and culture of Ghana while staying with a host family to broaden personal understanding of the African country, particularly the role it played in the slave trade, and more effectively teach this period of history. Visiting the Cape Coast was the most transformative of experiences. To stand in the same spaces where enslaved people were once tortured, punished, and forever taken away from the life that they once knew was jarring. Despite this painful past, so many of the Ghanians that I met were willing to acknowledge the dark past while acknowledgouting the hope and promise for the future. I was inspired by this attitude and I hope to share these experiences and attitudes with my student.

The “Year of Return” [2019 commemorated 400 years since the first enslaved Africans touched down in Jamestown, Virginia in the United States] was a carefully curated event by the nation’s government and tourism department. Watching them weave music, dance, art, and history together to tell a comprehensive story of Ghana’s past and present. This has supported a more interdisciplinary approach to my teaching and I am encouraged that my students are learning more because they are engaged. I also hope that my students will feel emboldened to share their identity with newfound ways to tell their stories.

I did not expect to be so personally impacted by the visit. To walk into spaces and hear “Welcome home, my sister,” gave me a sense of joy and belonging that I have never felt in any place that I’ve visited. As a Black woman in America, I scarcely have the experience to be in spaces where everyone looks like me and I was unprepared for how significant that would be to me. Additionally, the visit to the slave castle left me committed to retelling the story of marginalized people in their voices.

Students now have access to the resources I collected during my time in Ghana to begin drafting their own origin stories. After developing these stories, they will be invited to address issues around their own identities and present their findings to the school community. This will culminate in a full day of activities entitled “Day of Dialogue” in which students act as facilitators.

This work is expanding school wide events to deconstruct stereotypes and build our school community. Staff, faculty, and the community take part in this daylong activity, which has become a tradition for our school. Our students lead the activities throughout the day in classrooms and after the day is complete, they often feel emboldened to share their skills at conferences and other schools on the campus.

After Ghana, I have renewed energy and more directed focus toward creating a meaningful experience for students. I teach mostly black and brown students and sharing these travel stories and memories with them is a personal experience that brings us closer. My teaching is transformed because my worldview feels larger as I feel more convicted to make their teaching relevant, interdisciplinary and authentic.

Too often, students feel like their learning is in silos- their personal lives are separated from the classroom. Having had such a rich cultural experience, I am dedicated to giving my students the same experience. Travel also reminded me that teaching should be interdisciplinary, relevant, and mixes the past with their contemporary lives. When teachers are personally enriched, they pass along the experiences and try to replicate those experiences in a meaningful way.

(top to bottom: Aisha in front of the Ghanian flag. The red in the flag represents the blood of those who died for independence from Great Britain, gold-the mineral wealth of the country, green-the country’s rich forests and nature, and black star-African emancipation. | The Door of No Return at Elmina Castle, through which tens of thousands of Africans destined for slavery passed to board slave ships. | Visiting Kwame Nkrumah Square, which recognizes the country’s first Prime Minister and President of Ghana. | Black Star Square, site of the annual Independence Parade. Read excerpts from today’s speech by the UN Secretary-General about this year’s theme “Confronting Slavery’s Legacy of Racism Together” here.)

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Aisha is a high school teacher in Brooklyn, New York where she has taught English for the last eleven years. She is also a doctoral candidate in New York University Educational Leadership and Policy program. Her research interests include the changing educational landscape, education equity and school leadership.

This month, 230 prek-12 teachers are learning around the world with Fund for Teachers grants, making this our busiest “Fellow Season.” Highlighting one teacher for our weekly Friday Fellow post is tough, as our exemplary grant recipients are checking in from near and far with updates that inspire wanderlust from behind our computers. In light of this holiday weekend, however, Jean Molloy‘s learning seems most timely.

Jean teaches American History at Robbins Middle School in Farmington, CT. She is currently in the middle of her fellowship exploring Civil War landmarks, monuments, and museums in four southern states to document how historians preserve and honor the past while maintaining values respectful to all Americans. We caught up with Jean to see how the research is going…

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Why this fellowship? Why now?

As a U.S. history teacher, I need to develop the critical thinking and reasoning skills of my 8th graders. Students tend to accept non-fiction text without questioning or extending their thinking and they struggle when reading primary sources. Middle school students sometimes have difficulty understanding the perspectives of others. One of the social studies standards that we want them to master in my district is the ability to analyze both primary and secondary sources to determine claims, evidence, and perspective. One of my goals is to help them improve this skill which is imperative to creating lifelong learners as students navigate through controversial issues throughout their education and beyond.

My fellowship will help me frame the following key questions for my U.S. History course:

1. How should Americans preserve history and at the same time be respectful to all humanity?
2. How do decisions about preserving our past impact how we live today? And,
3. What actions can we as citizens of a democracy take to make sure we preserve our history and learn from the past?

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What’s on the itinerary?

A great focus of the fellowship is on National Parks where significant events took place, but I’m also visiting some state- and privately-funded museums and engaging in conversations with curators, docents, and volunteers to help in my evaluation of how Americans are preserving our history.  In Gettysburg, I’m participating in two professional workshops for teachers: What was the Civil War really about? and Why do we preserve and protect Battlefields? In Richmond, I plan to meet with a member of the City Historic Preservation Committee to discuss the five Confederate statues on Monument Avenue. I hope to secure an interview with representatives of a movement to remove the statues as well.  According to a survey conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2017, “…our schools are failing to teach the hard history of African enslavement.” I chose destinations that will inform my teaching of this history in a balanced and coherent manner and also help students see the connections between our past and our society today.

Have you experienced any “A Ha!” moments you particularly want to share with students?

I am about half-way through my Civil War exploration and it is hard to process all that I have learned so far! Speaking with park rangers, museum docents and volunteers has deepened my understanding of this great conflict in American history and especially of the key people who were making critical decisions on each side. I have also learned that Virginians are very proud of their history and they want to talk about it. In addition to interacting with professional historians, I have been speaking with people in restaurants, B&Bs, and with other tourists at historical locations. I would have walked right by a slave auction block on a Fredericksburg street corner if I had not been chatting with my waitress at dinner. She explained how the city council recently voted to remove the block to a museum. I had to stop and think about what it must be like to walk by this every day which prompted me to dig a little deeper. The Fredericksburg website states that, “It is important to recognize that the City Council decision-making process, specific to the future of the auction block, has been taking place within the larger context of a community dialogue about race, history, and memory.”

In most of the Civil War Museums, there have been exhibits that also document the story of slavery in America, its role in the Civil War, and in American economics. Although I have grappled with how this story should be preserved, what I have seen so far in Virginia has helped me learn and is helping me frame questions for my students.

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Jean teaches 8th grade U.S. History, which includes a project based learning event on local history. Previously, she taught 7th grade Asian studies and participated in a teacher exchange program with the Republic of Korea organized by the East-West Center for UNESCO and also a teacher study tour in China with the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. You can follow Jean’s FFT fellowship on Twitter @IARMolloy.

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 Slave Trade to student advocacy. Our Fellows explored the “past and present” of black history in our last blog. In this final installment of our blog series, we look at how Fellows Shunn Rector, Diane Palm and Kristin Peterson are addressing the achievement gap impacting students of color. Read on to learn more about their experiences in the classroom and how they are honoring Black History Month in their schools.

Kristin Peterson is a special education teacher at a Saint Paul, MN, school that not only addresses students’ academic needs, but also fills needs stemming from poverty. Her school houses medical, dental and mental health clinics, as well as a food and clothing shelf. Visiting the National Museum of African History and Culture in Washington DC is not an option for her students at this point, yet she felt it vital that her students see their great heritage showcased.

Kristin wanted them to see how others have struggled also, and gone on to do tremendous things. So she went to the Smithsonian’s newest institution on her fellowship and created a Virtual Field Trip Kit with photos, interviews and primary sources she collected along the way.

“The greatest challenge that my school, students and district face right now is the significant achievement gap that exists,” said Kristin. “I believe my Virtual Field Trip through African American history is inspiring ALL students to reach for their own greatness and aspire to achieve at their very highest levels of learning.”

Inside the walls of Houston’s Juvenile Correction Facility, the achievement gap is impacted by students’ surroundings as much as their ethnicity. Shunn Rector and Diane Palm teach the incarcerated middle school students and decided to research black history in Senegal, the first African country to adopt a law criminalizing the slave trade.En route to Senegal, the duo conducted research on the Transatlantic Slave Trade at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library and, afterwards, explored Le Petit Senegal, a thriving population of 8,000 Senegalese immigrants in Harlem. The remainder of their fellowship consisted of interviews and documentation across Senegal. Now, their students design personal “Doors of No Return” to connect with this period of history and also make correlations with their own struggles.

“We recognize that the achievement gap exists when students feel like outsiders due to barriers of language, religious beliefs and race,” said Diane. “We wanted our students to understand that, unlike kidnapped enslaved Africans, they have choice when we are confronted with our symbolic Doors of No Return.”

Bridging gaps is what Fund for Teachers is all about. We step in with funding that equips preK-12 teachers with experiential learning that directly transfers to students’ needs, academic and/or otherwise. We thank Shunn, Diane, Kristin and all of the Fellows who participated in this series for sharing their experiences and their students’ learning. Make sure to see our previous Black History Month series blogs here, and stay tuned for more inspiring stories by following us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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. Our Fellows explored how Black history is taught in our last blog. This week, we are taking a deeper look at how Fellows Merle Rumble, Melissa Petropoulos and James Petropoulos are reframing black history to help students identify with their heritage and with others. Read on to learn more about their experiences in the classroom and how they are honoring Black History Month in their schools.

Although African American herself, Dr. Merle Rumble realized her knowledge of civil rights pioneers lacked a breadth and depth she wanted to share with third graders at Fox Run Elementary in Norwalk, CT. The ephemeral Martin Luther King Day left untapped the vast legacies of those who came before and after the progressive leader. She decided to embark on an independent tour of civil rights sites across nine southern cities with her Fund for Teachers grant to increase her understanding and inspire students to see themselves in the achievements of African Americans.

“I wanted to help my students not only to dismantle the false assumptions of African Americans being relegated to slaves and protestors, but also develop their appreciation for the positive impact and contributions of those whose struggled and persevered,” said Merle.

Through guided tours and impromptu interviews, she gathered materials to inform four new units: Africa to slavery, Rosa to Martin, The Civil Rights Movement and African American Heroes. Students are now researching African American heroes and learning songs and poems from the Civil Rights era, inspiring them to identify with those leaders’ achievements.

Looking more deeply into the lives of enslaved Africans during the Colonial Period led Melissa and James Petropoulos‘ students to reconsider how unique they all are. After learning about the unique contributions made by African Americans whom Melissa and James researched on their fellowship, their fourth graders organized a school-wide Unity Day assembly.

“Focusing on humanizing the slave as a person instead of the person as a slave helped students respect what slaves endured,” said Melissa. “Their response was increased empathy for each other.”

In this celebration of kindness, acceptance and inclusion, student pieced together their individual identities to form this Unity Wall. Each description, together, represents the diverse community that Roywaton Elementary strives to be.

While the name of our organization is Fund for Teachers, students are equal beneficiaries of the $27 million in grants awarded since 2001. These teachers crafted fellowships around what they felt would most impact their students. Consequently, students – for years to come – will see themselves and their ancestors in a whole new light.

We thank Merle, 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 how FFT Fellows are assessing the past and present in terms of black history. Stay connected and find out when it’s live by following us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Read our first installment in this series here.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.