Julie Kinnaird | November 3, 2020
UNC World View has had a full Fall and continues to offer programs that explore the importance of narratives. During International Education Week 2020, on November 19, UNC World View will partner with the Choices Program at Brown University to offer a virtual workshop that introduces educators to a new curriculum unit, Racial Slavery in the Americas: Resistance, Freedom, and Legacies. This new unit was developed to be used in upper-middle grades, high schools and community college classrooms. Racial Slavery in the Americas: Resistance, Freedom, and Legacies seeks to help students answer the question: how does racial slavery shape our world today? Educators support students as they consult primary and secondary resources to examine how and why the system of racial slavery developed in the Americas as a result of colonial systems and how the legacy of racial slavery continues to shape society today. According to Choices “At the heart of the unit are the experiences of enslaved people as they navigated and resisted a violent and oppressive system designed to dehumanize them.”
The upcoming program will feature an opening talk, Diaspora in the Americas: Memory, Myth and Meaning, by UNC’s Dr. Joseph Jordan, director of the Sonja H. Stone Center for Black Culture and History and Interim Vice Provost for Academic and Community Engagement. His talk will be followed by an interactive session by Choices’ director of professional development Mimi Stephens. Stephens will introduce the new curriculum unit and dive into some of the lessons and activities with educators attending the virtual program.
UNC World View is grateful for the opportunity to partner with Choices on this important program. In addition to the new unit, Choices offers almost forty other curriculum units, additional online lessons addressing current events as part of their Teaching with the News series, and more than 1,700 free, short, online scholar videos that can be used in the classroom.