Lisa Buchanan, associate professor of education in the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education, collaborated with UNC Chapel Hill's Carolina K-12 Programming to develop a 5-part hybrid professional development series for 28 classroom teachers in North Carolina.
Lisa Buchanan, associate professor of education in the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education, collaborated with UNC-Chapel Hill’s Carolina K-12 Programming to develop a five-part hybrid professional development series for 28 classroom teachers in North Carolina.
The series titled “Democracy on the Line: Hope, Hostility and the Lasting Legacies of 1898 Wilmington,” is a part of an ongoing series on teaching hard history through UNC-Chapel Hill. The series was funded by the North Caroliniana Society.
Buchanan and Cara Ward from UNC Wilmington joined with Christie Norris, director of Carolina K-12, to design the series for classroom teachers in North Carolina. Teachers received several print and digital resources through the programming. The series includes four synchronous online teaching sessions and an on-site session held at St. Stephen’s AME Church in Wilmington.
St. Stephen’s AME was a thriving cornerstone of the Black community in 1898, when white supremacists carried out a riot and coup d’etat against the Reconstruction elected officials.
St Stephen’s AME is actively involved in community efforts around the 1898 massacre today. In addition to the collaborating on the series’ development, Buchanan and Ward led a session on using the history lab model to teach 1898 and an on-site gallery lab with teachers as they visited multiple sites in downtown Wilmington which were key locations of the events of 1898. This series offers a full continuing education credit for classroom teachers in North Carolina.
A full description of the professional development can be found here. This professional development is part of a multi-year series of professional development for teachers focused on 1898 by Cara Ward, Lisa Buchanan, Donyell Roseboro (UNC Wilmington), and Denise Ousley (UNC Wilmington).