Posted by Nichole Brown on Thursday, February 4th, 2016

Are you looking for a twist to writing your Black History Report?

Yesterday while talking to my friend who is a teacher she was bemoaning how bored she was with Black History and how she wished she could just "cancel the whole thing." 

To say I wasn't thrilled with her comments was an understatement.

But trying to give my soon to be ex-friend the benefit of the doubt, I asked her to clarify her statements. She continues by saying that although she enjoys celebrating Black History and loves the oratorical  competitions, she absolutely HATES reading 25 biographies about President Obama, 5 about Michele Obama and maybe 3 about a current Black celebrity or athlete. 

And just when I was about to shout 

she finished her diatribe with a very interesting statement: "I want to encourage the children to learn about someone or something  new when completing the Black History reports, not go with the easy topics just to get the homework done."

Let's just say I had a 

 and asked my new BFF a follow-up question: "You want your students to become engaged in the homework assigment as a part of celebrating Black History?" 

"YES!" She exclaimed. "And learn about someone they never heard of, and become inspired and ...."

"Well I'd love to help you with that." I told her. She looked at me skeptically and asked "How? I can't ditch the written report requirement, I have curriculum standards to adhere to ya know."

My reply was simple,

After brainstorming several ideas my Bestie's 5th grade Black History report assignment has been modified. Instead of writing about a biographical report about a historically significant Black American person, they will be writing about a significant EVENT or ORGANIZATION in Black  history. Some of which include:

• Negro Baseball League
• Port Chicago Mutiny
• NAACP
• Pullman Porters
• Freedom Rides
• Black Panther Party
• Tuskegee Airmen
• Tuskegee  Experiment
• Buffalo Soldiers 
• Harlem Renaissance
• Divine Nine
• The Great Migration
• HBCUs
• 1968 Olympics

Once we were done she said, "hey, you are really good at this!" And I'm like " uh yeah! I'm a librarian, it's what I do."  

So if you need help with your student's Black History reports come to any branch of the OPL library and we will help you too. It's what we do!