Contributed by Lindsay Randall
I was recently invited, along with my frequent collaborator (also known as my partner-in-crime), Dr. Bethany Jay, to present at University of Southern Maine’s inaugural symposium, Race, Power, and Difference: A symposium for Maine Educators.
The symposium featured Dr. Tiffany Mitchell who kept the audience laughing throughout her keynote address that focused on how educators could go beyond one-dimensional narratives about people of color in the classroom, using her own experiences to emphasize points.
Bethany and I were there to present our work on how to incorporate practical strategies and hands-on learning regarding slavery. Our work with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teach Hard History program and lessons that we each use with our own students served as the basis for our discussion with the participants.
I shared our Little Spots Allow’d Them lesson, while Bethany walked everyone through a set of documents from the ZB Oakes collection.
***Interestingly, ZB Oakes was a slave auctioneer who lived in Charleston, SC in the 1800s. His papers are part of the collections at the Boston Public Library because they were seized during the Civil War by a Massachusetts regiment comprised of free blacks and brought back to Frederick Douglass – as almost a trophy about what he helped accomplish!
Our session was one of the most attended of the day, with some participants having to stand and a continual stream of adding more chairs to the already cramped room. It clearly demonstrated that educators KNOW that this is an important topic and yet struggle for finding appropriate resources. Throughout the presentation and activities the participants were continually engaged and asking great questions – of us and other attendees – about strategies that they might use or modify to fit their unique student populations.
And to make things even MORE exciting – one of the fellow presenters was Dr. Nate Hamilton! Nate frequently collaborates with Bethany and me and has been a part of the Peabody extended family for years. It was nice to see him in his “natural habitat” of Maine for once!
