The Amistad On The GO! (AOTG) educational toolkit contains first-person narratives and selections from primary resources, a curriculum guide, interactive worksheets, visuals, and access to digital resources for educator use on the topics of Slavery & Abolition, the Reconstruction Era, and Civil Rights Movement. Within each curriculum guide there are 6-7 lessons that cover the major historical occurrences of the topic.
When writing the curriculum, I wanted the students to build critical thinking skills. I am very committed to facilitating a learning environment that is both exciting and rigorous, one that empowers both student and teacher in pursuing learning. In my teaching pedagogy, I do not consider myself the “owner of knowledge” as the banking concept of education would promote, rather I would like the students to use the tools that I give them to formulate their own opinion based on the evidence provided in the narratives, primary sources, video clips and other digital resources.
In doing this, AOTG will equip teachers to encourage students to take responsibility for their learning and, at the same time, not elevate teachers to being the “owner of knowledge” as the banking concept of education would promote. Instead, teachers would use the curriculum to facilitate the development of students as independent learners who are with the world and not just in the world.
We all have identities that inform decision-making for our lives in the same way it informed the lives of historical figures. As such, Amistad On The GO! encourages teachers and students to humanize these historical events by creating a dialogical process, which enriches the understanding of past events for both teacher and student. AOTG accomplishes this by utilizing multiple resources including videos, worksheets, primary sources, and narratives among others. The AOTG educational toolkit is set to launch early 2018.
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