Bringing Black History Into the Classroom Year-Round
Faith Ringgold is an African American artist who explores African American themes through her art.
February is Black History Month, which means teachers are incorporating relevant lessons, activities, and discussions into their classrooms.
It’s also important to remember that Black history is American history and should be part of the curriculum all year round. This interview with Black music educators offers a terrific perspective of how crucial it is for educators to think beyond the typical execution of Black History Month programs and incorporate Black history into the curriculum as a whole.
From Geno Young: “One of the most problematic things that I have personally witnessed is relegating the study of Black history and African-American musical culture to the month of February only. The lack of holistic, comprehensive study of Black history in all areas of students' curriculum can lead to an undue burden for skilled music educators and their Black History Month programs to be the sole arbiter of all things Black history, with little or no support or connection to the greater need for the study of Black history.”
Geno is talking here specifically about music educators but his point is applicable to all areas of a student’s curriculum. Below we have outlined some resources for teachers and parents to incorporate Black history into the classroom year-round.
Black Lives Matter in the Classroom
Lee & Low Books publishers recently conducted a very informative webinar about how teachers can bring Black Lives Matter into their classrooms. The recording is here and the activity book they discuss is available for purchase here. The teacher’s guide is available as a free download.
The author, Laleña Garcia, teaches kindergarten and has some great tools for teachers and parents for how to talk about some of these more challenging and nuanced topics with younger-aged kids.
Lead with Achievements — include more than just hard history
This webpage has some great advice for teachers and parents around how to lead conversations about Black History with stories about Black heroes and achievements, and to incorporate the hard history but also help students understand that there’s a lot more to Black History than stories about slavery. Teaching Tolerance has some excellent resources around how to “fill the gaps” of history textbooks in a way that celebrates how Black culture & customs have helped shaped the culture of the U.S. and the world.
Recognize Race
An important way to incorporate Black History into educational environments year-round (whether at home or at school) is to talk about race openly with our kids as much as possible and help students learn to become more comfortable with discussions about race.
Books are a great way to prompt these discussions. Even outdated books with outdated images or terms offer opportunities to ask our kids questions so they begin to think critically about the media they take in.
These tips are a great way to get started on these important conversations.
Resources, Resources, Resources
We compiled this list of resources to share with our teachers but there are so many wonderful ones out there— this is only small snippet of what exists:
More Than a Mapp offers a free iPhone/iPod app that allows users to discover and document the African American history embedded in the places where we live. The location-enabled app highlights sites of significance to Black history in your city through a map interface like Google Maps or Google Earth. Users can explore historic locations through a rich multimedia experience that offers directions and links to audio, texts, and videos of relevance to the selected location.
Smithsonian Education's Black History Month Teaching Resources: These resources from Smithsonian Education feature various collections, from "The Blues and Langston Hughes" to "Harlem Renaissance: A Reading List." It's a great place to let your students explore primary sources, and there is something for students of all ages.
Celebrate African American Heritage With Scholastic: This rich collection of teaching resources covers a lot of ground, including the Civil Rights Movement, African American contributions to the arts, and slavery in America. Each topic is covered with lesson plans, multimedia, and reading lists.
Black Culture Connection Resources for the Classroom: PBS curated a valuable collection of teaching resources, covering a variety of themes and important locations central to African American history in the U.S. The focus is primarily on upper grades (6-12) and there are lesson plans, videos, and multimedia collections available.
African American History Month Resources From the Library of Congress: There's plenty for students to discover in this collection from the LOC. In addition to lesson plans for teachers, there's also a cache of primary sources for students to explore, including artwork, baseball cards, political cartoons, and photographs.
The National Association for Music Education's lesson plans page covers African American contributions to music.
In conclusion
Black History Month offers a prime opportunity for teachers and parents to focus on deeper conversations with kids around these important topics— that being said, it’s important to practice having those conversations year-round. And, no better time to start than now.