by MTA New Member Committee member Ariana
The month of February is dedicated to honoring the sacrifices and celebrating the achievements and contributions of Black Americans to the United States of America. During this time, many educators seek resources to bring into their classroom and share with their students.
Last year, a small group of Newton educators at Lincoln-Eliot Elementary School came together to create the “Heroes Among Us” project, to celebrate African Americans in our community, and to bring the Newton and Boston communities into our classrooms every day during the Month of February. This was no small feat during a time when our families had been more cut off than ever from the physical school building due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Heroes Among Us” is a series of short videos made by community members, family and friends from Lincoln-Eliot, Newton, and Boston communities. These videos are meant to provide an opportunity to amplify the voices of African Americans in our community to share their stories, careers and everyday lives. Each day, the students hear from different community members – lawyers, doctors, firefighters, and others who share a little bit about themselves and what Black History Month means to them. Since their creation, these videos have brought our community together in meaningful ways for both students and staff.
Read my interview with METCO Counselor, Fhynita, and first grade teachers, Kristina and Maureen, below to learn more about how they made their vision for “Heroes Among Us” a reality, and to get tips on how to try this in your school or district.
Ariana’s Interview with Fhynita, Kristina, & Marueen:
Ariana: “How did you come up with the idea for the “Heroes Among Us” project?”
Kristina: “Beginning in January we knew that we wanted to do something special to highlight Black History Month. So I initially sat down with Fhynita, just interested in hearing her perspective and her thoughts and we kind of decided we wanted to really focus on celebrations and giving a platform for people to really have their voices heard. So that’s kind of where our idea started by asking ourselves, How can we use the platform that we have to make sure that we are amplifying voices that need to be heard?”
Fhynita: “And we wanted it to be local folks; people that you could run into at the hospital or in your community, or somewhere close. Since we have students from Boston and Newton, we wanted to use those two communities, but also extend it to families. If you know someone, or if you are a Boston family but you know someone else, that is our extended community and the same for Newton. We also wanted to be able to showcase people doing everyday things; the kids seeing their parents, or when they’re out in the community, what they see people doing because it’s not always people of color that they run into in these roles.”
Ariana: “How did you decide who to interview?”
Fhynita: “So we started off with a list of fields or professions and thought, oh we’ll reach out to this or we’ll reach out to that, and someone that’s doing this or that. And some of the calls would be cold calls because we didn’t necessarily know anybody, then we just extended it to the larger Assembly Committee, and folks took, you know, different fields that they would be willing to reach out to. We also got a few friends and family that we knew, and we would reach out to them.”
Ariana: “How did you go about collecting interviews?”
Maureen: “Part of our network was to reach out to students’ families that we have here at Lincoln-Eliot. It was really exciting for kids to see their family members, aunts, uncles, parents, sharing what they do, and how important they are at home and kids in other classes “that’s my neighbor!” “I know them!”. People making connections among people they know, I think was really exciting for the kids.”
Fhynita: “And I think it’s another way for schools to partner. We use that language about “partnering with families,” but I don’t know if there are a lot of genuine or meaningful ways that families are able to participate, so I thought that this was a nice one. Judging by the kids’ reactions when they saw their families, but also how the families felt. Like anytime I reach out to families, just to give a little update or something cute or funny about their kiddos, because of the pandemic they can’t come into the school, so it’s almost like giving them a little picture of what their kid’s day looks like. Having them go home and share what they saw, or whoever they may have seen in videos has been great!”
Ariana: “What advice would you give to educators who may want to try this in their school and community?”
Maureen: “Well I think we kind of knew that this was going to be a month long celebration. We wanted to celebrate Black History Month for the whole month. Given that we had three full weeks of school, and we have a lot of videos, I thought that making a website, a one stop shop, with every resource the teachers need in there. Everyday they can go to the same place, it’s very clearly labeled, it’s easy to navigate, and we’ve added extra resources. We had a welcome video, and at the end we’ve got a culminating activity that the whole school will do where they’ll generate words and feelings and things that kind of resonated with them, and they’ll produce a word splash.”
Fhynita: “And as exciting as the whole project has been, it also took a whole lot of work. So again, these are not in-house folks that we are reaching out to, so there’s the initial outreach, and then there’s like a reminder. Then there are questions that a person may have and all this stuff. So it turned into a lot of work. It was definitely well worth it. Then we did wonder, what would be the best way to make sure that everybody in the school was watching once we put all this work in? Even hearing like the buzz as the kids walked by me and they had seen me and were super excited. They had talked to me and it gave me some encouragement that I needed because making a video is not my thing you know, so our kids are so great and they were like, “No, you did awesome!”, which really helped me. For the kids to also see their friend’s mom, or to see their own parent, and things like that, or to ask, “Oh your dad’s a doctor?” like, just all of that. It’s something that kind of brings everybody together, because they’ve seen it, you know? In terms of the website, we wanted it to be easy. We didn’t want teachers to have to go through a whole lot, just to click on a video and share this with their class. So we tried to make it as easy as possible, as user friendly as we could for the school.”
Kristina: “I would add to that, behind the scenes initially, we did some work just kind of planning, like knowing that we would be asking other members of the [assembly] team to reach out to people. We kind of drafted a sample email that you might send, and then the same people, with the video people, were kind of like, “Well, what do you want it to be about?” So we drafted a couple ideas that people could have to begin their discussion, or begin their video, so that was kind of some behind the scenes work that we did.”
Fhynita: “And as I reached out I explained to people, like, it is so important for kids of color to see their image reflected in these professionals. Also, maybe even more so for the white kids to see the professionals of color because they don’t typically see that and the images that they do get are typically negative, so it was so powerful in that regard.”
In closing, I have seen the impact of this project first hand. My students are so eager to watch the videos each day and to celebrate the things they have seen and learned about their family, friends and community members. Although it takes time, planning, and coordination, in the end, first year and veteran educators alike have a platform to amplify the voices of the everyday heroes in our own communities. We just need to get together and use it.
N.E.W. News 