Grant gives teachers money for classroom civics lessons

(This is older news originally posted on May 17, 2024)
​Five middle and high school teachers were awarded classroom grants after participating in a Benedum Foundation sponsored summer institute run by Shepherd University’s Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education and Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities.

The teachers were among 30 participants in a summer workshop in June 2023 called People Powered: Civic Action, Community Engagement, and American Representative Democracy. The goal was to encourage teachers to transform 10th-12th grade history, social studies, and civics classes, and AP American history classes, by utilizing the rich resources of the Byrd Archives.

Each teacher received a $1,000 stipend for attending the workshop to use for resources and materials. In April they made presentations showing how they utilized the money. The teacher making the most effective presentation was awarded a $5,000 prize for the school to enhance its social studies curriculum and/or to apply toward learning resources and educational initiatives. Judges were Dr. Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt, retired director of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities, and Dr. Jason Allen, assistant professor of education.

The $5,000 prize went to Harpers Ferry Middle School for eighth-grade West Virginia studies teacher Caitlin Barker’s project titled “Storer College: Researching Our Local History and the Byrd Archive.”

“Caitlin touched each of the evaluative points and gave her students an exceptional learning experience as well as utilizing the Byrd Center Archive first-hand,” wrote Shurbutt and Allen.

Runner-up prizes of $2,500 went to four other teachers.

Huntington High School 10th- and 11th-grade teacher Heather Fletcher developed a unit called “Our Roots Run Deep: A Small Town with a Big Story, Black Huntington.” Fletcher introduced the work of Black scholars Dr. Bill Turner and Dr. Cicero Fain to her students as they explored the enriching environment of Huntington for African Americans in the early 20th century.

Alicen Galanis, who teaches world history and geography at Spring Mills High School, developed an interdisciplinary teaching unit called “Discovering the Great Depression and Harlem Renaissance in Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’”

Ned MacFadden, a seventh-grade media teacher at Eastern Middle School’s Humanities and Communications Magnet Program in Montgomery County, Maryland, introduced his students to a lesson called “West Virginia and Maryland: Shared Problems, Shared Solutions.”

Ashley Malott, a ninth-grade advanced placement and honors world history teacher at Washington High School in Jefferson County, West Virginia, developed a lesson called “Data-Based Questions (DBQ) for AP History Students and the Robert Byrd Center.”

The People Powered project was made possible by a $136,250 grant from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.

by Cecelia Mason, Shepherd University Communications