African-American class enriches students' lives

By Sanaia Jenkins

Photo Editor

Crete-Monee High School introduced blended learning classes and the Collaborative Learning Lab this school year. The brand-new African-American Studies class benefits from this.

African-American Studies is taught by Mr. O’Connor and Ms. Godbout. The teachers said that this is not your average class. This year CMHS strived to introduce blended classes. The blended class means this class is all project and computer-based. It is project-based blended learning for several reasons.

That makes integrating technology much easier. It is structured this way because the students wanted the course to be more experiential, more relevant to the real world by learning real-world skills alongside the history, and because philosophically, Mr. O’Connor and Ms. Godbout aspired to explore different ways of engaging students that were not of the traditional take notes, do a study guide, take a test learning styles. Instead, they wanted to focus on deep thinking and questioning with high expectations for student independence and level of work.

“We have the class to fill in the gaps in our history offerings related to black history. It was only one section because we wanted to start small. Because this course is not only a new subject, but also a new method of teaching and learning, we wanted to be able to focus on doing it well for one group of students to make sure our plan worked the way we thought it would. Next year it will expand to two sections,” said Godbout, who also serves as the literacy coach.

The class each week spends a few days at the new Collaborative Learning Lab to work on countless projects from poster boards to even personal podcasts.

The first unit was about the real beginning of West African Roots, and then went more in-depth about the Empires of Mali, Ghana, Songlai, and West African Folktale.

On the first day, some classmates were astonished to see that their teachers for the class were Caucasian. Mr. O’Conner and Ms. Godbout stressed to their students that they had to learn about African-American history before teaching them in order to avoid giving them false information. These teachers do not beat around the bush about African- American history, and the students like it this way to relate past problems to real life.

“I thought the teachers that were going to teach this class would be black, but I’m glad I have

Ms. Godbout and Mr. O’Connor because they are great teachers and give no sugar-coated information,” said senior Vivian King.

“Before taking this class, I expected black teachers teaching an African-American class, but now that I have these teachers, they will give me factual answers,” said Jadeci Leflore.

Recently the class has started a unit on the Middle Passage and American Chattel Slavery.

A special guest named Mrs. Thompson, a music teacher for Chicago schools, taught songs about sorrow, freedom and hidden messages.