Students from Fulton Elementary School learned learned about figures in black history by portraying successful people in the black community, including Oprah Winfrey Courtesy Springfield City School District
Fulton Elementary School students hosted a Black History wax museum, in which they dressed up as famous figures in black history. Courtesy Springfield City School District
Students at Fulton Elementary School recently learned about figures in black history by dressing up as athletes, judges, and poets. Courtesy Springfield City School District
Dressed in suits, glasses, athletic jerseys – even judge’s robes – 30 students in Fulton Elementary School’s 21st Century Scholars Program were barely discernible from the African American icons they embodied during a makeshift Black History wax museum event at the end of February.
Each student was positioned in a classroom with a Hollywood Walk of Fame star on the door.
With confidence and enthusiasm, students who were shy and timid prior to the event, recited facts about their icon to groups of proud parents and staff members who traveled from room to room to learn about almost 100 years worth of black history.
During the event, the students weren’t just learning about black history – they were black history.
“This is the first of many more to come,” 21st Century Program Director Candace Hester says. “Many more experiences for the students to step outside the box of the classroom for learning.”
Fulton educators say the students truly ‘owned’ this event, and they showed a deeper understanding of black history than in years past. Students played the roles of historic figures, such as poet Langston Hughes, self-made millionaire Madam C.J. Walker, TV personality Oprah Winfrey, Olympic medalist Simone Biles, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and the late basketball star Kobe Bryant.
The ‘Bio Bash’ wasn’t the only event in the Springfield City School District that sought to break the traditional archetype of how students learn about Black History Month.
In an educational environment where it’s becoming increasingly harder to hold students’ attention, educators have to be strategic and innovative if they want kids to truly absorb the information that’s presented to them.
“We have to do more than give them a piece of paper or give them a textbook,” Fulton Elementary School Principal Deborah Howard says. “These kids today have the world at their fingertips. They have a lot more exposure than we did, and we have to be ready for that.”
The week prior to the event at Fulton, Hayward Middle School hosted an evening event coordinated by the Springfield Promise Neighborhood, called ‘Black Excellence Extravaganza,’ which featured a performance by the Black Diamonds majorette team, a guest speaker who shared about prominent black individuals who were born in Springfield, a vendor’s market, and dinner provided by black-owned Springfield restaurant, All Season’s Catering.
Inspired by the African American History Museum in Washington, D.C., event organizer Kristen Clark wanted to create an engaging event at which students and their families could celebrate local black history together.
“We actually have a lot of black history here in Springfield that nobody knows about,” she says. “(Black history education) is usually the same thing … Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, you might get Malcolm X … I feel like we, as black people, have such a rich culture that we never get to learn about. We were kings and queens, so let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the great things – we were doctors, lawyers, inventors. There’s so much more to us.”
The success of Black History Month events within the school district also highlighted the need to celebrate the increasing number of different ethnicities of Springfield students.
The English as a Second Language (ESL) population in the SCSD has blossomed from 270 students last school year to 550 students this school year. The explosion in the student population has caused the district to bring on 10 new staff members in the Multicultural Outreach Office and begin plans to create a bilingual program in kindergarten through third grade where English speaking students and non-English speaking students will learn in the same classroom together and become bilingual.
Springfield educates students from a wide variety of linguistic backgrounds like Spanish, Haitian-Creole, Arabic, Mandarin and even a rare, Mayan language from Guatemala called Mam.
Howard says her school is second to only Springfield High School in terms of diversity within the district’s 15 buildings. Many of her students are native Spanish or Haitian-Creole speakers.
“Because we’re so diverse, what I’m finding is that not only do we need to know about black history, but every ethnicity that’s in this building,” Howard says. “We’re trying to be intentional about recognizing everybody.”
The Fulton community is already planning to incorporate Haitian holidays into their building celebrations next year. Springfield Promise Neighborhood is also in the process of putting together a multicultural event where all students’ backgrounds can be celebrated.
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