She started thinking about how to quickly bring all of these resources together, from information about the New England Aquarium’s daily animal demonstrations to live-streamed story readings by authors and illustrators, in one place for teachers. from kindergarten to 12th grade.
On Monday, March 16, they started posting resources and tagging them by category. They invited teachers and principals they knew to join the page – and it took off. Within 72 hours, the group had grown to 1,700 members, with hundreds more joining every day.
“That honestly could be my full-time job now,” says Scribner-MacLean. “There’s just a ton of stuff there. I wanted to put everything in one place so teachers could find it. Parents also join.
Photo by K. Webster
“I see the need for these resources,” she says. “I’m watching closely and I know what parents and teachers are trying to do during this difficult time. We plan to help them.
Working under a $163,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that brings together teachers from across the country for week-long workshops to learn practical teaching methods this summer, the center is also bolstering its site website.
Their presentations will be enriched with new digital collections of materials on the connection between slavery on the southern cotton plantations and the cotton mills of Lowell, as well as Native American life in the Merrimack Valley before the arrival white settlers, says Kirschbaum. On a tour of Lowell’s “Acre,” educators will also learn about the landscape of 19th-century immigrant communities and related public health issues.
“The people of Lowell during this period gained a heightened awareness of how work and landscape intersect,” says Kirschbaum. “We were not only a leader of industrialization in Lowell and around the world, but we learned hard lessons about public health and pollution, and that forces us to examine how Indigenous peoples lived and viewed the land. before the arrival of white settlers.
Photo by K. Webster
For their undergraduates, education faculty members will take turns hosting daily open virtual office hours for undergraduates – and escalate their concerns to the other faculty.
“For first-year students in particular, we want to be there and answer their questions. First and foremost, we want to show them that we support them and that we are going to be flexible,” says Scribner-MacLean. “First you go from high school to college, then you’re asked to pack up and leave your dorm and, by the way, take all your classes online. It’s traumatic. »
“Teachers have always had an open-door policy, and now they have a ‘call me anytime’ policy,” Marrero says.
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