{"id":12918,"date":"2018-05-25T09:53:36","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T16:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=12918"},"modified":"2018-05-25T09:53:36","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T16:53:36","slug":"engaging-community-history-and-civic-dialogue-in-charlottesville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/engaging-community-history-and-civic-dialogue-in-charlottesville\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaging Community, History, and Civic Dialogue in Charlottesville"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charlottesville students dig into the stories, told and untold, that make up their community’s history, and prepare to engage as citizens in the dialogue of the present.<\/em><\/p>\n

These last few years, a lot of history has been made in Charlottesville. This is true in the most obvious sense: the events of August 12, 2017<\/a> will be recorded in history books, perhaps as a key episode of our present era. But it\u2019s also true in a more subtle, and more pervasive way. The history of Charlottesville, the way the community understands its past, and the stories it tells about itself, are in flux. <\/p>\n

Many of the region\u2019s great historical sites\u2014most notably Montpelier and the University of Virginia\u2014are reevaluating which stories they tell, and which stories they don\u2019t, undertaking years-long projects to learn more about the key role that slaves played in building and operating their respective sites, and crafting ways to tell those stories to the public. At the same time, through much of 2016 and 2017 an often contentious community-wide conversation, centered on the Robert E. Lee statue in the center of the city, put the place of the Confederacy and the Civil War in the community\u2019s identity up for debate.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, many of the region\u2019s high school students sat in their history classrooms, engaging with the history of their community, region, and country mostly through textbooks. Angela Stokes and John Hobson at the Albemarle County Public Schools, along with a team of teachers from three of the district’s high schools, saw an opportunity. <\/p>\n

They saw a chance to take their students beyond the classroom and beyond history as a set of facts, to connect them to the history in the process of being made all around them, and to invite them to participate in that process. In May of 2017 they received an LRNG Innovators Challenge grant for the work, and the Let \u2018Em Shine project was born.<\/p>\n

The LRNG Innovators Challenge grants are the result of a partnership between LRNG<\/a>, powered by Collective Shift<\/a>, the National Writing Project<\/a>, and John Legend\u2019s Show Me Campaign<\/a>. The grants support educators and projects that are expanding the time and space for connected learning<\/a>, a theory of learning that aims to connect school work to students\u2019 passions, peers, and out-of-school worlds.
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\nThe project started with visits to a variety of monuments around the community and a study of their history and significance, focusing on the three layers of meaning contained in each one, explains Hobson. First, there is the history of the person or event being memorialized, itself a rich story. Second, each monument tells a story about the people who put it up, their values and priorities, and the cultural and political context of the time. Finally, as with the Lee statue controversy that inspired the project, how we react to monuments in the present can tell us a lot about our current context and historical understandings.<\/p>\n

Rather than simply passing by anonymous statues, students and teachers alike now have some understanding of the history being honored, and think \u201cI wonder who put that up, I wonder why they put that up,\u201d says Hobson. <\/p>\n

Students then participated in a variety of \u201cfield experiences,\u201d travelling to sites such as Montpelier, the University of Virginia, and the state capitol in Richmond to meet with some of the experts and scholars rethinking the region\u2019s history. These connections include Dr. Deborah McDowell, the director of UVA\u2019s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, and the team spearheading \u201cThe Mere Distinction of Color<\/a>,\u201d a new exhibit at Montpelier telling the stories of those enslaved at the plantation. <\/p>\n

In the final phase of the project, armed with these new experiences and analytical tools, students have been invited to participate in this process of \u201ctelling a broader story\u201d of their community by working in teams to identify and research an untold story, and memorializing it with a monument of their own.<\/p>\n

One group<\/a> is working on a short film about the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, where many of the region\u2019s prominent African-American residents were buried in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Another group is painting a \u201cMural of Unity<\/a>\u201d to celebrate the diversity of their community, showing a side not reflected in national news coverage. One student wrote a song (sampling John Legend\u2019s \u201cOrdinary People\u201d), and recorded it with members of the school\u2019s band and choir.<\/p>\n