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RE: Identifying Philadelphia's History Needs: Missing Narratives in K-12 Classrooms
An important need, for sure.
Can we know more about this group? After all, it's Black History Month, and unless I'm missing something, I don't see any programming from or by this group mentioned online. Does that make anyone else worry about their capacity, their ability to carry out programming?
Maybe there are other groups more ready for support?
Hey Ken, these are excellent questions! You are correct, they do not have a website; however, they do have a robust Facebook page and Google Drive full of lesson plans (that they provide themselves). They connect African American history educators to opportunities as well as provide those opportunities (conferences, professional development, monthly meetings, etc). They are a group of full time Philadelphia teachers who do all of their own fundraising for these events. At the beginning of February, they planned and hosted the Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Philly Schools and held a 2nd annual culminating conference at the end of it. Here's a more specific note from one of their founders:
“We are creating a network of educators who will have access to materials not currently available through the School District of Philadelphia curriculum..They say that history repeats itself every 50 years. We are reaching that mark [the post-civil rights movement period which began in 1968] now. We want to control the narrative [going forward] before it becomes all ‘Jimi Hendrix and moving into the suburbs,’” Ismael Jimenez, M.Ed.