As a lead-in project to an all-school assembly for Black History Month, the “agents of change” lesson led students through a history walk. Working together, teachers created biographies of 16 important people throughout history - people like inventor George Washington Carver, human rights activist Malala Yousafzai, Martin Luther King Jr., Helen Keller and baseball player Jackie Robinson. Local people were also featured including Mary K. Hoodhood, a social worker and activist who founded Kids Food Basket, Classmates Care, a TK student-led organization providing used coats and winter clothing to students, and Lani Forbes, executive director of Barry County United Way.
Posters with brief information about each special person were put up around the cafeteria and hallway. Students visited each station on their history walk. Using their laptops, they scanned a QR code on each poster to watch a video and hear actual recordings from each person.
“These are all real people who found a way to make a difference,” said Vikki Boersma, a third-grade teacher who helped spearhead the project. “How exciting is it for students to scan the QR code and then actually hear that person’s voices and see what they looked like? It just really brings history to life.”
Boersma said it was a huge project with all teachers helping out. “It was a total team effort,” she said.
At the final agent of change poster, students were asked how they could be an agent of change in their school or community. Some suggestions - “to be kinder to everyone,” “to help people in wheelchairs be able to have better access,” “stop global warming,” “protect the environment,” “recycle more,” and “believing in yourself and what you can do even if you don’t think it’s very important.”
Building on that theme of being an agent of change and in honor of Black History Month, the school used a grant from Thornapple Area Enrichment Foundation to bring in Bright Star Theater Production to really make history come alive.
“We want to thank the TAEF for this opportunity to bring this live show for our students to really relate and understand history,” said Boersma.
The performance featured only two actors - one playing the role of a student trying to write a report about a famous person but struggling to decide who to write about. The second actor portrayed the roles of several Black Americans in history who were agents of change - people like George Washington Carver, who walked 10 miles to the nearest school that would allow him to attend. But Carver never gave up and knew how important an education would be for him. Later he became an agricultural scientist, inventor, and developed hundreds of products using peanuts. He told students, “When we use our imaginations, the possibilities are endless.”
Other key figures throughout the show were Jackie Robinson - the first African American baseball player to play in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. “Never give up on yourself and always follow your dreams,” he told students as he swung at an imaginary pitch.
They heard about George Crum who created the potato chip, Sara “Madam C.J.” Breedlove Walker with a successful line of makeup products. “Hard work is the key to success,” the actor said as he donned a wig and oversized coat portraying Madame CJ Walker.
There was also an appearance of Dr. Daniel Williams, the first African American to perform an open heart surgery in 1893 in Chicago and Dennis Weatherby, a scientist who created Cascade dishwashing soap among other things, Willis Johnson who built the eggbeater, and Booker T. Washington who founded Tuskegee University in Alabama, and Thurgood Marshall who was the attorney in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case and later became the first African American to serve on the United States Supreme Court.
Students left the performance not only knowing so much more about many famous African Americans, but also understanding the importance of education and never giving up.