Multiple events on docket scheduled to honor African-American contributions
In February, many across the country will celebrate Black History Month, and the Haddonfield School District will be no exception. Each of the district’s five schools will honor African American contributions to the nation’s culture and history in their own way.
According to an essay penned by Daryl Michael Scott, Howard University, for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Black Awakening of the 1960s dramatically expanded the consciousness of African Americans about the importance of black history, and the Civil Rights Movement focused Americans of all colors on the subject of the contributions of African Americans to our history and culture.
Black History Month was first proposed by black educators and the Black United Students at Kent State University in February 1969. The celebration was expanded to a month in 1976, the nation’s bicentennial. President Ford urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”
Since then, each American president has issued African American History Month proclamations. And the association — now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History — continues to promote the study of black history all year.
“We were extremely lucky to have the opportunity to book Mykee Fowlin on Feb. 4 to kick off our second semester No Place For Hate project as well as Black History Month. His programs combine both his professional acting talents and his psychological training. His mission is to create an atmosphere of worldwide inclusion, not just tolerance, towards all people,” said Haddonfield Memorial High School principal Tammy McHale.
“Mykee has worked extensively with all age groups in the United States and in other countries, and hopes all audience members will leave his performance with that wonderful, awakening feeling of beauty: the beauty within one’s self and the beauty within others; the celebration of our differences, and the acceptance of our shared experiences.”
In addition, McHale revealed HMHS teachers are planning to incorporate units in class discussion to develop sensitivity and an understanding that reflects individual differences while celebrating awareness for all people. History classes are planning to investigate the causes of the Civil War, analyzing diary entries about the Underground Railroad that were compiled by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The entries were written by William Still, a Philadelphia man who recorded his experiences helping runaway slaves escape through the Underground Railroad. Lessons are expected reflect on the important contributions and achievements of African Americans throughout the nation’s history.
Haddonfield Middle School is expected to join schools across the country, sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English, in the African American Read-In, established in 1990 by the Black Caucus of the NCTE to promote literacy as a cornerstone of Black History Month events.
“One of the lessons we do for Black History Month is about Ruby Bridges. We read about her life, and write facts about her. Then we connect our learning with the concept of ‘bucket filling’ and doing kind things for others. The children like making connections with this story,” Valerie Cline, principal of Tatem Elementary said about her first-graders’ experience.
Tatem’s second-grade plan will be to infuse books that promote diversity in daily and weekly read-alouds. Its third-grade team will be crafting a Black History Month mobile, where students will research a famous African American past or present and create a mobile and present about them. Fourth-grade will be reading poems about notable African Americans, including Marian Anderson, George Washington Carver and Jackie Robinson. Students are using what they learned in the poems to draft their own diamante poems about one person. Fifth-graders watched MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech and focused on the line, “I want my children to not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” They discussed what that meant, and how they could live up to the content of their character part in particular.
At Central Elementary, classroom 1R enjoyed working with its Bull Dawg Buddies (eighth-grade mentors) to discuss their hopes and dreams for the world. The students made mosaic doves carrying a very special message.
