Investing in Teachers to Transform Schools

Center for Inspired Teaching recently launched Real World History, a year-long history course for public school students in Washington, DC that teaches students history by "doing history" through community-based oral history projects and through internships at national museums. This year the Real World History course is centered around the study of the Great Migration, the period in U.S. history when millions of African-Americans migrated from the rural, agricultural South to urban metro areas in the MidWest, MidAtlantic and West.

On August 20th, Real World History students kicked off the 2015-16 school year with a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to see One-Way Ticket, an exhibit featuring Jacob Lawrence’s complete Migration Series.

Lawrence’s series of paintings depicting the Great Migration, the 20th century mass movement of African Americans from the South to the North, has not been housed in one location for 20 years. The paintings are accompanied by poems, sketches, letters, and photographs from the period that provide even deeper insights into the lives of those who made the difficult decision to leave their homes.

Real World History students spent the afternoon viewing and discussing these paintings as they selected ones that appealed to them to discuss later in the classroom. Accompanying the students were several members of Mt. Sinai Baptist Church in Washington, DC; these Washingtonians have family members who moved during the Great Migration, and they will be interviewed by the students for oral history projects featuring local DC citizens with personal connections to the Great Migration.

By design, Real World History takes a step outside the traditional history classroom, bringing history alive for students from high schools across DC as they learn and practice the mindsets and skills of historians. In addition to their own oral history projects, in the first semester, the class will dive into The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, an award-winning account of the Great Migration, which features interviews with more than 1,200 individuals. In the second semester, students will intern at a number of the District’s museums and historical sites, having the opportunity for real world application of their skills and to explore professions in the field.The visit to MoMA brought to light multiple dimensions of a little-known migration that had a deep impact on the United States.