Teaching Hard History and The Illusion of Progress

A free program for K-12 Teachers at the University of Virginia’s Zehmer Hall March 17, 2018.

Offered by the Center for the Liberal Arts, the Carter Woodson Institute, and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance Project with funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

This free program will introduce teachers to two extraordinary new resources, provide hands-on experience in using them, and offer strategies for implementing them in classes. Teaching Tolerance will launch at this program its new Framework for Teaching American Slaveryin association with the detailed analysis in its report Hard History: Teaching AboutAmerican Slavery. The online framework allows students to draw connections between historical events and concurrent struggles for racial equality, and to contextualize how the world they inhabit was shaped by the institution of slavery and its ideological progeny, white supremacy: the tool proceeds era by era, with each section ending with pragmatic answers to the question “How can I teach this?” It has been carefully designed for use at every level of instruction. After learning about Hard History, which focuses on national and global issues, teachers will be introduced to the UVA Carter Woodson Institute’s The Illusion of Progress: Charlottesville’s Roots in White Supremacy, a hyper-local interactive site that attempts to broaden the focus beyond the Confederate monuments increasingly the subject of public debates and protests to the deep structures of white supremacy and the persisting inequities thereinto show theconsequences of these structures in Charlottesville, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the nation.

After a free lunch provided to all participants, representatives from Teaching Tolerance and Carter Woodson will lead a round-table discussion about classroom uses of these new and already essential materials. Participants will receive certificates of attendances and teaching materials associated with the resources.

Agenda:

8:30 - 9:00 Registration, coffee, pastries (free parking)

9 - 9:15: General introduction

9:15 - 11:15: Teaching Hard History:Monita Bell and Maureen Costello, Teaching Tolerance

11:15 - 11:30: Break

11:30 - 1:00: The Illusion of Progress: James Perla, Carter Woodson Center; Lisa Woolfork, UVA Department of English

1:00 - 2:00: Lunch

2 - 3:15: Roundtable discussion on classroom implementation

3:15 - 3:30: Conclusion, evaluations

Funded by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation
When
Where
University of Virginia