by Shanequa Williams, Maurice Pritchett Academy’s 2026 Teacher of the Year
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Place-based learning is an educational approach that uses a student’s community and real world experiences outside the classroom to create an enhanced, immersive educational experience. I have been privileged my entire primary and secondary education to experience place-based learning in history and science classes in a way that brings them alive and adds meaning to the concept or topic being taught. As an educator, I have been granted access to greater opportunities through which I got to walk the streets and literally smell the air of history, feel and see the physical symbols and objects that tell the story of who we are as a people, even when the story is not the most palatable.
Place-based learning brings the humanity, or lack thereof, alive; it adds a dimension of understanding, elicits emotions that may never have been stirred from reading a textbook.
In July of 2023 I found myself in the town of Smithfield, New York at Petersboro Cemetery, standing in a field next to a graveyard, getting a history lesson. The descendants of a colored Union soldier serenaded us with an original song that hugged us with its warmth. His song did not soften the impact of him sharing that the very field in which we were standing held the unmarked graves of former black soldiers in the Union army, which were unmarked only because of the societal conditions of the time that deemed them not worthy of the distinction and recognition they had earned. This experience bothered me, but it brought a unique perspective to the Civil War that I had not yet been taught, experienced, or given insight to.
I knew that my students, who can sometimes find history frustrating or boring, would appreciate learning through the power of place and people like I had. As I continued to grow and develop as an educator, I started seeking out opportunities for my students to not just learn but experience history. Initially, I used funds from my school district, but then, as I became more inspired and wanted to expand experiences for my students, I started seeking outside funding opportunities and grants to support my students’ experiences and have not regretted it.
Through these efforts, my students have experienced what it was like for a Union soldier to be in a muster line at Fort Delaware and how much a black smith or laundress would earn or be able to support the soldiers even if they were not in infantry. My students, who are always confident and absolutely not scared of anything, jumped so high and ran when they witnessed a gram of gunpowder exploding at Hagley museum. They now questioned why any of the DuPont men would want to keep working in the mill, when such a small amount of gunpowder could be so vicious. They learned about the death of Alexis DuPont and the many mill workers who were just trying to support their families.
History has become more than an exaggerated fairytale that they constantly questioned—how do we know this is true, or did that really happen? Now they ask deeper questions like, why couldn’t they get a less dangerous job, or how much money did they make putting their lives at risk like that? Then came one of my most impactful trips of the year, which I extended to students beyond the eighth grade to include all of middle school, since they should be learning about the Holocaust to be compliant with House Bill 318. Thanks to support from the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee, we took over 100 scholars to Washington D.C. to experience the National Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The trip was not the beginning of their learning nor was it the end. In January, eighth graders were introduced to the term “genocide” and the most notorious of all genocides, the Holocaust. They were taught the United Nations definition of genocide, and asked to consider if certain events in American History, such as the Sand Creek Massacre, met the five elements of Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Seventh graders also learned about genocide and the Holocaust. The sixth grade social studies teacher, Dr. J, even took the time to discuss the museum, what they would encounter, and how it relates to World History. When we arrived at the museum, several students wanted to hear about Daniel’s story, or see the room with the shoes, because they researched the museum and learned about what they may experience when they arrived.
As students moved through the museum, initially they progressed quickly from room to room, some slipping into a nook to catch a video clip of a moment in history, others occasionally pausing to read the quote of survivors that were on the walls. There were students who were learning to adjust below a library whisper and some who gave a nervous laugh at times, not sure of how to process what they were seeing. Despite being prepped in the classroom, students were still stunned when confronted with the images and testimony before them.
The first moment when I noticed the power of place taking over was when I saw a student sitting silently just staring. Curious, I went over and noticed the bed. I was initially unsure as to why this bed was so compelling, and even more perplexed as other students whispered for others to come see this old rusty white hospital bed with no mattress. They were no longer reading a passage or looking at a picture, there was a real object in which a real person laid.
Then there was the train. They had learned about it prior to coming to the museum, seeing it in person brought its own darkness to the reality of human history.
There was the crematorium, where some students paused to turn back and look for reassurance that we as human beings could not be so callous in our treatment of people, even if they were dead.
They lingered at the pile of shoes, where they saw an array of sizes, including some that were significantly smaller than their own—shoes that belonged to children who would have been in school just like them, shoes that were on feet that may have never made it to middle or high school. Shoes that belonged to mothers, fathers, pop-pops, and mum-mums.
I occasionally heard whispers of this place being sad; some students started to move faster, others became mesmerized with the various photos and displays, like the wall of tattooed arms, the hall of portraits, and the testimonies. They took the time to be present, to be still with the evidence. They were no longer learning about the Holocaust, they were walking through history and experiencing it moment by moment. This unforgettable historical lesson and experience continued even beyond our day in D.C.
This ongoing experience has been championed by Steve Gonzer of the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee, director of the documentary No Denying and developer of House Bill 318 which requires the teaching of the Holocaust to students in grades 6–12. Steve offered me resources, lessons, and materials to provide ongoing educational materials as well as to prep my students for this trip, and books and graphic novels in Spanish and English to add to my class library. He invited me to a film screening and came to debrief each grade level about their experience at the museum.
Eighth grade scholar Jahcere Williams shared how he was bothered by how skinny and damaged some of the prisoners were, because a person who has humanity in them should not be capable of hurting another human being like that. A seventh-grade scholar, Lycette Tanguep, shared with us how she was impacted by the image of people being harassed and a mother being allowed to die while her child would grow up an orphan. It reminded her that surviving still meant suffering, and hatred can cause people to have bad thinking and act horribly towards each other. This field trip reminded Lycette of the responsibility of knowledge. She stated, that, “by learning about this now, I will be able to work to prevent things like this from happening in the future.”
Eighth grader Khamani Thomas shared how he learned that Jewish people and African Americans have both faced discrimination, violence, and attempts to deny them their rights, yet they still show strength as they continue to face challenges. Like Lycette, Khamani shared his understanding that he has to speak out against discrimination, because—when people remain silent—prejudice, discrimination, and hatred will slowly become accepted. These scholars understand that voice gives you agency, and that the museum served as a medium for those who could not speak.
To close out the school year, Khamani and Jahcere, along with the rest of their eighth grade graduating class, read the poems and observed the artwork of the students at the Terezin Camp. They learned about the history of the camp, the power of art to heal, and the quiet resistance of the teachers who taught them. Students were then given their own butterflies, which they decorated on one side and wrote poems or stories on the other side. They could have written about the Holocaust, or the struggles their communities may have faced. Others chose the route of resilience and sought to highlight the power of themselves, and their community to overcome and persevere, in spite of current realities.
Dandelions are yellow
And I’m feeling mellow
I look around without a frown Admiring the sun
And the fields in town
But the waters look brown People bat their eyes without a care
On the trail is full of trash
The sun blazing
As the climate changing
Because of horrible reasons
But people could care less about the treasons
Wits reasons
People got mauled
While others had balls
Some were starved and famished
While others were full and heavy
—Eighth grade graduate of Maurice Pritchette Sr. Academy
