Created Equal

FAIN: GA-256385-17

Brooklyn Historical Society (Brooklyn, NY 11201-2711)
Emily Potter-Ndiaye (Project Director: January 2017 to November 2017)

Created Equal is an interdisciplinary professional development program that trains and supports teachers as they implement a combined historical inquiry and media arts curriculum, designed to inspire middle school students to learn the history of a seminal moment of the civil rights movement, understand the power of people and media to advance social change, and share their own story about racial justice through the creation of multimedia arts projects. In Year 2, BHS and JBFC will increase the number of schools served from 3 to 4: PS/IS 284 Gregory Jackson Community School, PS/IS 165 Ida Posner School, Ebbets Field Middle School, and East Flatbush Community Research School, all in Brooklyn, NY. Created Equal was developed as a collaboration between BHS and the Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC). A second year of funding from the NEH will be used to support the development and refinement of the curriculum, implement an impactful professional development experience, develop students’ media arts and history learning and lay the groundwork for national expansion in future years. Specifically, this grant will permit BHS to a) deepen students’ engagements with scholars and elders who were active in CORE (Congress of Racial Equality); b) support direct engagement with students and Dr. Brian Purnell, author and Associate Professor at Bowdoin College, through in-school visits that help answer questions and prompt deeper inquiry in service of research and planning for original documentary film projects; c) gather student questions that will prompt development of additional interview footage from experts and elders for use this year and in future years; and d) support a culminating film screening that will bring together students and teachers from all four schools to celebrate and learn with one another.