Teachers recognize Black History Month in their classrooms
Eleventh grade students’ work was the basis for a large mural Mrs. Brandt created in her classroom.
February 25, 2015
February is Black History Month, and around Bellwood-Antis, students and faculty have been celebrating this historical time by participating in different projects and activities to go along with African American history.
Mrs. Hansard’s 4th grade class read the story “Kid’s Inventions.” In the story, children created inventions to solve a problem.
Hansard’s class created inventions and shared with their peers.
“Throughout the month of February, we have been reading Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom by Virginia Hamilton. We discovered many inventions Black Historians created and posted them in the hallway to share,” Mrs. Hansard said.
Myers kindergarten teachers, Kyley Longo and Dave Plummer did a project with their students so they could research Martin Luther King Jr. with a discovery board they had created.
“They were to choose an interesting fact; first grade wrote the sentence and kindergarten illustrated. We then took photos and videos to compile all the learned information into an iMovie,” said Longo.
High school Problems of Democracy and World Cultures teacher, Ms. Brandt, is yet another teacher celebrating Black History Month with her students.
“Jim Crow is historically important in that it establishes a difference between whites and blacks and the discrimination that blacks faced from whites. Jim Crow was the cartoon character that was supposed to illustrate what a black person was supposed to look like and act like,” she said.
On the topic of Human Rights, Brandt said, “It is important to us because without it we would be under a dictatorship and we would lose a lot of personal freedoms that we have in this country that we have fought long and hard to keep.”
Ms. Brandt’s Problems of Democracy class completed six word memoirs, pulling the words from a reading about an African American man named Richard Wright, who wrote about the discrimination and segregation he went through throughout his lifetime.
