Humanities in Baltimore Schools

FAIN: GA-254306-16

Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, MD 21201-5118)
Amanda Kodeck (Project Director: September 2016 to June 2019)

The City of Baltimore is rich in cultural and humanities institutions which, like the Walters Art Museum have a history of serving youth through field trips, outreach programs, hands-on role play activities, guided tours, and access to content through digital resources. While cultural institutions make every effort to facilitate connections between classroom learning and their content, we need to devise a vehicle for cultural institutions to be a part of the humanities curriculum not only as enrichment but as a meaningful, culturally relevant, and integral part of school-day learning. With funding from the NEH, the Walters will bring together other institutions, school and education representatives, as well as funders to will create an intentional, strategic, holistic plan that will “launch new forms of collaboration towards the goal of restoring and perhaps enhancing meaningful student exposure to humanities instruction.” NEH funding will allow cultural organizations to come together for a series of integrated conversations to determine how to implement the humanities as a core component of student learning, ultimately resulting in changes to school curricula. Funding will support the following activities: a multi-day symposium of diverse stakeholders; presentation of case studies; ongoing working groups; presentations of refined models; and recommendations for realistic alignment of the resources of the cultural institutions with the humanities curriculum. At the conclusion of the planning grant period, we intend to present to the NEH, as well as other local funders, a framework for the robust integration of the cultural institutions in the humanities content in Baltimore City Public Schools.