This July, 17 stellar DC educators were selected to participate in Teach the District, a professional development program that seeks to bring local history to life. While they participated on their own time, they represented:
14 SCHOOLS
Capital City Public Charter School; Capitol Hill Montessori; Center City Brightwood; Center City PCS Petworth; Columbia Heights Education Campus; Bell High School; DC International School; Friendship Technology Preparatory High; Kipp DC legacy College Prep; Lafayette Elementary School; Lowell School; Maury Elementary; School Within School @ Goding; School Without Walls High School; SEED Public Charter School DC
9 GRADES (2-6, 9-12)
6 WARDS (1-2, 3-6, 8)
3 SCHOOL SYSTEMS (DCPS, DC Public Charter, and private)
These classroom teachers and librarians experienced:
5 DAYS of paid hands-on learning and collaboration
4 CATERED LUNCHES
3 VISITS to cultural heritage sites
DCPL’s People’s Archive
Anacostia Community Museum
Sumner School Museum & Archives
2 PARTNER HOSTS, including behind-the-scenes access
White House Historical Association
DC History Center
1 HANDS-ON ACTIVITY, a civic engagement team building day sprucing up City Blossoms’s Marion Street Intergenerational Garden
At the end of the week, these extraordinary educators each produced a lesson plan, unit plan, or detailed activity to bring to their classrooms this school year, using the resources of the host sites and site visit repositories to deepen their students’ understanding of our city’s past, to connect, empower, and inspire them.
They received a stipend; dedicated research time in the Kiplinger Research Library and a guided tour of Decatur House; hands-on activities to replicate in the classroom; a session on civic engagement projects with classroom teacher, State Board of Education Ward 1 representative, and Teaching for Change DC Area Educators for Social Justice member Ben Williams; and first crack at the Teach the District resource guide, a living site which is now available to any and all educators looking to bring local DC history into the classroom.
Here’s to the dedicated educators who spent part of their summer breaks focused on actively engaging with DC history, from the history of Black-owned land in the 19th and 20th centuries to the impact of the lack of statehood, on behalf of their hundreds of students! It was a joy and an inspiration to spend the week with them.
This program’s year-long planning was led by the education team at the White House Historical Association (staffers Samantha Hunter-Gibbs and Ken O’Regan, and Lantry Education Fellow and The George Washington University student Patience Thompson), and Domonique Speare and Anne McDonough of the DC History Center. The execution of the July Teach the District 2023 session was a nearly-all-hands-on-deck endeavor, with staffers Alex Aspiazu, Autumn Kalikin, Jade Darling, Karen Harris, Maren Orchard, Mariana Barros-Titus, and education intern and Howard University graduate student Phillip Warfield of the DC History Center joining the team. Support for the DC History Center’s participation in the program was provided by the Office of the Secretary of the District of Columbia.