Earlier this month, a small group of teacher-scholars gathered at Alnoba, a workshop and retreat venue in Kensington, to share their critical and creative approaches to centering diverse narratives of place in their teaching. These educators were all participants in last summer’s NEH-funded workshop, From the Fragments: Places and People in Colonized New England, hosted by the UNH Center for the Humanities. Since their last visit to Durham, 13 educators from the East and Midwest United States have formed a small participatory action research group that has continued to meet online. They have shared reflections, memos, resources and experiences and helped each other sustain momentum toward making curricular and pedagogical changes in their schools and libraries.
Elaine Marhefka, an instructor in UNH’s education department, has been leading the group members in exploring ways they can incorporate their learning about New Hampshire’s enslaved Africans, indentured Scots, the Pennacook-Abenaki peoples and English colonists into their own curricular designs. They are also considering how the place-based approaches highlighted at the institute can be structured in their various educational settings as they uncover history in their own regions to use as the basis for immersive experiences for their students.
The two-day retreat at Alnoba afforded the group space and time to think through the successes and challenges of this past year of research and pedagogical action. After a year online, they were grateful for the chance to meet in-person to share stories, laughs, obstacles and new knowledge.
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Written By:
Katie Umans | UNH Center for the Humanities | katie.umans@999lsm.net | 603-862-4356
