Bring Africa to the Classroom
The Committee on African Studies is committed to serving as a resource to educators for ideas on how to infuse African Studies into teaching and learning objectives. CAS believes that African Studies can be made relevant across subjects and across grades, and is dedicated to providing resources to assist with its integration into K-12 learning.
ONLINE MODULES
The Committee has been working with Harvard affiliates on focused modules around topics in African Studies that may be relevant to a variety of K-12 classes. These are meant to be content-driven documents that educators can refer to for inspiration on how to integrate African Studies into other courses you are already teaching. Through these online modules, CAS hopes to give teachers the opportunity to bring Africa into their classrooms in a more manageable way, providing suggestions for activities, media resources, discussion questions, and online resources around these chosen areas. If you have suggestions for future module topics, please let us know!
- South African Apartheid and the Transition to Democracy
- Islam in Africa
- The Epic of Sunjata, First Emperor of Ancient Mali
- Kenya and the (Boston) Marathon
- Introduction to Africa: Geography and Culture
- Democracy and Elections in Senegal, Mali, and Ghana
Recommended Resources
Recommended Resources for Educators combines CAS’ own list with recommendations from local area educators who provided ideas at CAS’ 2012 Teacher Workshop. The list includes a variety of educational resources for use in the classroom, ranging from websites and videos, to books and news articles, and is periodically updated. Additional online resources are linked below, from Harvard as well as the greater Africanist community. Please let CAS know if you have additional resources you would recommend for educators’ use to bring African Studies into the classroom.
- Pyramid Schemes – Harvard student produced videos on ancient Egyptian topics
- Mali Crisis Resources and Timeline
- Berkeley’s Center for African Studies – Mali Resource Recommendations
- The Outreach Programme on the Rwanda Genocide and the United Nations is an information and educational outreach programme run by the United Nations Department of Public Information.
Opportunities abroad for your students!
The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State hopes that you will help us share these opportunities for your students to spend time studying abroad! These opportunities are for high school students and their participation in these programs could help enrich their global awareness – an area many of you are working to strengthen in your own classrooms! There are many experience available in Africa!
Harvard and Citizen Schools
In the fall of 2012, CAS worked with Citizen Schools to provide an African Studies after-school course to middle school students at the Dever-McCormack K-8 School in Dorchester, MA. CAS Staff and Harvard students worked together to teach a course themed around “Education in Africa” every Thursday afternoon. To read more about this class experience, check out this blog entry! For more information on becoming a volunteer teacher with Citizen Schools, visit their website. If you are a Harvard affiliate interested in participating in similar outreach efforts in the Greater Boston community, or if you are interested in creating a similar program at your school or in your city, please contact Elise Noël at enoel@fas.harvard.edu.
CAS Intern, Tre Hunt ’15, at Citizen Schools Volunteer Training
