District 7 Celebrates Black History Month
Throughout February, District #7 recognized and celebrated Black History Month with a variety of events and activities that celebrated the accomplishments of African Americans.
A summary of these activities and events include:
4th grade students in Mrs. Hall’s, Mrs. Law’s, and Mrs. Tebbe’s classes worked on a collaborative poster Albert Cassens Elementary. The 72+ students had one square to color according to a key. They had no idea what it would look like until all 3 classes put the squares in the correct location!
For the second straight year, Glen Carbon Elementary hosted a Black History Month mini museum.
Students “toured” the museum throughout the day on Monday, with many seeing some of their own artwork, along with items that were donated either from staff or the community.
Second grade teacher Tanya Holmes helped organize the event again after coming up with the idea last year.
“The idea really sprung because of COVID. Normally, we’d do assemblies or have guest speakers and with not being able to do that last year, we wanted to do something different and something the students could see visually.”
Each classroom puts together an artwork quilt, while many students also created bottle buddies with their families to display.
“It’s really a Glen Carbon Elementary mini-museum as well and the kids enjoy coming through and seeing their own work.”
Elementary art teacher Kristi Dickens had her students learn about a variety of African-American artists and then created art projects on those individuals.
At Goshen Elementary School, kindergartners learned about Beverly Buchanan, while at Hamel Elementary School, 2nd graders made Alma Thomas inspired paper mosaics.
Vickie Hellmann’s kindergarten class at Goshen Elementary read the book Tar Beach and learned about Faith Ringgold, the American artist, who likes to use many different mediums in her work. She especially loved making quilts and telling stories using quilts. Their mural is a quilt of her dreaming about flying over the George Washington Bridge in New York City. Her daddy worked on the bridge, hoisting cables. She believed if she could fly over it, then it would be hers.
Nelson Elementary celebrated Black History Month every day during February during its morning meeting by having one of its students read a short paragraph about an important African-American person in history.
Hilary Duncan’s social studies class at Lincoln created collaborative posters with quotes from MLK, Jr. and Amanda Gorman that were put up around school.
