FEATURED TEACHERS
Antonio
T. Benson
Cynthia
Webb
Elaine
Cawley Weintraub
Barbara
White
These four
exemplary teachers served on the Advisory Committee
for this project and assisted in the evaluation of
the timelines and primary sources for appropriateness
to grade level and curriculum. In addition to submitting
ideas and questions during the research phase, they
were asked to develop lessons related to the projects
curriculum model prepared for the website. Some of
these lessons specifically relate to the timeline
and primary sources, while others are related to the
larger picture of slavery and abolition. To learn
more about these teachers, click on the names above,
then turn to the next section to view their lessons.
The MSP welcomes contributions from other teachers
who want to share their lessons and ideas on African
Americans in Massachusetts.
Antonio
T. Benson
Antonio
Benson has been teaching in the Boston Public Schools
for the past fifteen years at every level from elementary
up to senior high school, and pre-school before that
time. For the last five years he has been active as
a history teacher at Community Academy in Roxbury,
an alternative program for at-risk students in grades
8-12. Here he teaches American History, World History
and the Black Experience, and he finds that all three
are related and can be taught together. He thrives
on this program that is more innovative than the regular
classroom, where he can work with a special group
of kids in a non&endash;traditional setting. In his
exploration of slavery and desegregation as part of
the course on the Black Experience, his students study
Africa, the Caribbean and the United States. In Antonio
s spare time he is a doctoral candidate in the
Leadership in Urban Schools program of the University
of Mass. Boston Graduate College of Education. At
the end of this school year he will become a fellow
in the Education Policy Fellowship Program at Northeastern
University, a program to improve educational, social
and personal development of children and youth.
He works
on cultural tours in a travel business on the side,
including a recent civil rights tour with high school
students to Georgia and Alabama. The photo above is
from his passport, which is in use on cultural tours
abroad, ranging from Brazil this summer to Africa
and Europe in the past. Tony resides in Boston with
his wife and family of three boys (22,18, 15) and
one girl (5).
The unit
Antonio is sharing with this project introduces the
topic of West Indies and the Caribbean: Sugar
and Slavery.
There is new research on the number and activity of
slaves in Massachusetts before slavery was ruled unconstitutional,
and there is still an important story to be told about
the connections of the north to the slave trade through
the business of making rum and molasses. Antonio is
developing lessons and researching the Massachusetts
connection, and he will be adding more resources and
suggestions after an institute this summer.
Dr.
Elaine Cawley Weintraub
Dr. Cawley
Weintraub has been a teacher of history at the Martha's
Vineyard Regional High School since 1992. She is the
co-founder and research historian for the African
American Heritage Trail of Martha's Vineyard. The
Heritage Trail is a physical entity consisting of
fourteen sites documenting the previously unrecorded
history of the African American community of the Vineyard.
She is also the president of the African American
Heritage Trail history project which is a community
based educational program involving research, dissemination
and development of the African American Heritage of
the island. The history project actively involves
her sophomore students who are researchers and presenters
in the unfolding story of the history of people of
color on Martha's Vineyard. She is a Paul Cuffe fellow,
an award granted by the Munson Institute of the Mystic
Seaport museum. The fellowship was given in recognition
of her original research work into the role of African
Americans in the maritime history of New England.
Dr. Cawley
Weintraub presented her research at the Race, Ethnicity
and Power in Maritime America at the Mystic Seaport
Museum in 2000. She has published several articles
addressing educational issues, African American history
and Irish history. She is the author of theAfrican
American Heritage Trail of. Martha's Vineyard.
.A frequent presenter at conferences addressing
cultural and ethnic issues, Dr. Cawley Weintraub has
been recognized by the ADL, the NAACP and was a finalist
for the Massachusetts Teacher of the Year program
in 2000. She has developed a program of Irish Studies
at the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School andleads
a group of heterogeneously grouped students to Ireland
each year. She has presented her research and oral
history work at several sessions of the American Conference
on Irish Studies including the conference held in
Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1995. Dr. Cawley Weintraub
has presented several workshops for teachers using
the model of the African American Heritage Trail as
a program that can be adapted to the varying needs
of any community based, as it is, on archival research.
She acts as a consultant on culturally sensitive and
inclusive education. Elaine Cawley Weintraub received
her doctorate in 2000 from the Fielding Institute
of Santa Barbara, California.
A lesson
plan on School
Integration in Boston and Nantucket
and
notes on using the Martha's Vineyard African
American Heritage Trail
as a model are included in the section on Sample Lessons.
Cynthia
Webb
Cynthia
Webb has been a Program Director at Dorchester High
School for the past five years. She holds both a Master
of Education and a Master of Management from Lesley
College. Several of her responsibilities include supervising
the Academy of Public Service, the Entrepreneur Business
Academy, the Engineering Technology Academy, and the
Social Studies Department. Her lesson suggestions
focus on 19th century education for African American
children in Massachusetts.
Barbara
White
Barbara
White has been teaching in the Nantucket Public Schools
for 29 years. She is currently teaching eighth grade
U.S. History. She holds a M.A. from Boston University
in African-American Studies, as well as an M.A. in
Educational Administration from the University of
Lancaster in England. She was the recipient of a Rockefeller
Foundation Scholarship in 1978 which funded her research
in African-American history on Nantucket. Her work
on the integration of the Nantucket Public Schools
in the 19th century was published by Boston University
Press. WGBH in Boston later based a documentary, "Rock
of Changes" on her work.
Mrs. White
and her family spent the 1996-97 school year in Cairo,
Egypt, where she was academic head of an international
school. Mrs. White and her husband, Mark White, also
a teacher, collaborated on a project funded by the
Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, contributing chapters
to a book published by Greenhaven Press, War or
Peace in the Twentieth Century. In 1982 Mrs. White
was one of ten recipients of an award from the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts for "outstanding work in the field
of stereotyping and combating discrimination for Chapter
622, Title IX". This was based on her role as Affirmative
Action Officer for the Nantucket School system from
1979-1983.
Mrs. White
has been an active member of the school community.
She and her husband co-founded the first Peer Counseling
program for a public school in Massachusetts. She
has been a long-standing member of the Friends of
the African Meeting House on Nantucket, a group dedicated
to the restoration of the African Meeting House. At
present, she is the group's secretary.
The lessons
she developed on Desegregation
in Nantucket
for this project reflect her tireless work over many
years to increase awareness of the African American
contribution to Nantucket's history and to promote
cultural understanding.