For Black History Month, Mr. Alan’s AP World students took on a joint-class project recognizing unknown black heroes. Department heads Lynnea Montgomery, Zaida White, Nya Brown, Sawyer Goitia, Penelope Hermosillo-Elrod, Jayvion Cameron, Hanoh McKnight, and Davis Benham collaborated to put together a display of unrecognition in African American cultures. It showcases figures such as Mansa Musa, Gaspar Yanga, Isabel De Olvera, and Estevanico.
These projects assigned by Mr. Alan are completely student-run; the jobs of head of project, aesthetics head, street team head, and research head were assigned to one student per each class period.
Jayvion Cameron, the 2nd-period head of research, took peers under his wing and had them conduct research on Mansa Musa and Gaspar Yanga. Students had to pull from multiple sources – paper and online – to produce a short biography. They made sure to highlight each hero’s roots and most important accomplishments. The papers include snippets like, “Mansa Musa, the African emperor of the 14th century is widely regarded as the richest man to ever live on earth, with an estimated fortune of almost $400 billion USD adjusted to inflation.”
Sawyer Goitia, the 1st-period head of the street team, learned lots from this project; she shared, “I think my team worked really well, and I think it was cool to see the class come together. We all did find what we needed to do, and we got it done. I think it was also very cool to do the project and learn these things, because, you know, to design it, we had to know it ourselves, so we had to learn it, and then we all worked together to create something, which was a really great project.”
Penelope Hermosillo-Elrod, the 2nd-period head of aesthetics, took the time to look at everyone’s strengths and distribute the work based on that. The main color scheme was based on the color of the African American flag. Another key part of the design was also the textual aspect. Penelope says, “We wanted empowering words and we wanted to incorporate student quotes to show literal history and how students at our school feel about it.”
Zaida White, the 1st-period head of the project, incorporated peer help and an intricate schedule to help peers stay on track. She commented, “I had my two assistants Annabelle [Rivette] and Malaika [Willie] and we would go to each department and check on them once in a while to make sure they were doing everything. And I wrote a plan of what I wanted done each day.”
This project delves into the social part of social studies; it explores the disregard of African American contributions in history – an extremely important topic in Black History Month. The exhibit sheds light on some of the more unknown trailblazers in the community and provides them with the recognition they originally deserved. Thankfully, the project met Mr. Alan’s standards! He said, “It’s visually appealing, it’s celebrating people who don’t get the spotlight; I’m very pleased.”
