Created Equal
FAIN: GA-256422-17
Jacob Burns Film Center, Inc. (Pleasantville, NY 10570-2232)
Edie Demas (Project Director: January 2017 to December 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 focused on the Civil
Rights Movement. Created Equal was designed by JBFC and the Brooklyn Historical
Society (BHS) to provide middle school students with the key tools to read and
interpret current events as part of a larger conversation of American culture,
history, and progress – contextualizing the past, analyzing the present, and
inspiring the future of the civil rights movement within the larger arc of
American history. In the pilot year of implementation, 2015-16, using Stanley
Nelson’s Freedom Riders as a mentor text, JBFC and BHS brought Created Equal to
three under-resourced schools: Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field Middle School and East
Flatbush community research school, and Bridgeport’s Roosevelt school, all of
which are part of the Turnaround Arts
Network, a public-private partnership of the President’s Commission on the Arts
and Humanities which brings arts education programs, resources and supplies to
the 5% lowest-performing schools in every state. 160 students in 7 eight grade
classrooms participated in Created Equal in spring 2016. In our second year of
implementation, Created Equal is continuing in our established school partners
and expanding to two additional Brooklyn Turnaround Arts Schools; PS/IS 284
Gregory Jackson Community School and PS/IS 165 Ida Posner School. We anticipate
that approximately 230 students will participate this school year. After the
success of the pilot project and continual reflection and refinement, JBFC and
BHS are dedicated to maintaining the momentum and forward motion of Created
Equal. A second Year of funding from the NEH will assure that the exciting
momentum continues through the winter and into implementation in the spring.