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The Civil Rights Movement in Context
Course completed (taught December 2–February 3)
Too often, our students view Civil Rights in isolation — they don’t understand the rich historical background of African American history or the legacies of the movement in the more recent past. They know the major civil rights figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks, but they don’t grasp the complexities of civil rights leadership, or the experience of the movement’s foot soldiers — the students in SNCC, the freedom riders, or the everyday people who marched, boycotted, protested, and volunteered to make the movement happen. This course will try to explore the movement from all of these perspectives using, where possible, first-hand accounts from the people who lived this important history.
The instructor will assume that the main historical outlines of the movement are familiar to K-12 teachers — instead of recounting that basic history, we’ll spend much of our time delving into lesser-studied events of the movement and the primary sources that will allow us to explore our own ideas about the movement and its meanings in detail.
The best way to learn history is by doing history. This course will allow for the opportunity for deep historical analysis and interpretation using primary sources. We’ll tackle documents, images, newspaper accounts, artistic expressions, film, and other sources. By doing so, we’ll develop our own arguments and ideas about the movement, and help our future students do the same. Many of the resources we will use have been recently added to the Internet and they should be exciting additions to the course, and to historical scholarship more broadly. As you mine these sources, you’ll hopefully enjoy the historical process and also get some great ideas for classroom activities for your students.
The instructor has selected websites and multimedia resources that will give participating teachers access to literally thousands of documents including newspaper accounts, oral history interviews, government documents, photographs, works of art, film clips, and more. As a participant, you will have the opportunity to analyze these sources through engaging activities to create a lesson plan for classroom use; to receive individualized, constructive feedback and answers to content-oriented questions from a well-versed instructor; and to join other teachers from across the state in lively online discussions throughout the course — all on your own schedule from home or from your school’s computers.
This course really got you to look at the Civil Rights movement from several perspectives!
-COURSE PARTICIPANT
Syllabus
You can view full the course syllabus here.
Audience
Though the primary audience is social studies and history teachers, teachers of any subject and grade level are encouraged to participate.
Standards Alignment
This course addresses the following North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards:
- Standard III: Teachers know the content they teach
- b. Teachers know the content appropriate to their teaching specialty.
- Standard IV: Teachers facilitate learning for their students
- c. Teachers use a variety of instructional methods.
- e. Teachers help students develop critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.
- Standard V: Teachers reflect on their practice
- a. Teachers analyze student learning.
Time commitment
5-7 hours per week
Prerequisites
None
Materials required
None
