Four Rivers Celebrates First Black History Month

Over halfway through the month, festivities are not all that student hoped they would be.

FOUR RIVERS IS CELEBRATING its first Black History Month this February. Pretty inexcusably, this is the first time there has been any official, school-wide acknowledgement of the month, and the faculty that wanted to make at least something happen this year had less than a month to plan. Because of this, the general expectation going into February was that BHM at Four Rivers would not be all that it could or should have been.

Lee Collins, who helped make BHM happen at Four Rivers this year, says students and young people have to be “guided through celebrating marginalized cultures in general. The importance of instilling empathy and not waiting for good virtues to crop up in young people out of nowhere cannot be understated.” BHM is a time constructed for this kind of work, and as a school it is vital that we dedicate all that we can to it.

As of this point, the BHM programming that has taken place has been independent to each grade and class. Div 3 teachers are sharing Black music and poetry in crew. A handful of different discussions are taking place across classes in Div 2 around topics such as putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. The 8th grade is learning about author Octavia Butler and watching EdPuzzles about Black History Month and Black authors. The general theme seems to be that individual teachers are taking steps to incorporate Black History Month into their teaching and crew time, but, at time of publication, and at least from the students’ perspectives, there have been no cohesive efforts as a whole school to make anything happen.

It’s better than nothing, but most students can’t help but wish there was more. As Carlie Kempf, (12th), writes, “[it’s] disappointing because I was hoping we would celebrate before going back to doing things such as case studies on slavery.” Kempf has developed an antiracist book project and pitched it to the school, but so far little has been done on part of the school to maintain momentum for the project.

Four Rivers, on this new side of the leaf, has got to make a bigger deal about BHM and take full advantage of the educational opportunities it provides. Collins writes, “If the school admin says the direction” the school is going in “is anti-racist/anti-bias work then it...absolutely must recognize not only Black History Month but engage in other celebrations of marginalized peoples.” And it has to be something the school takes on in a unified manner, planning programming across grades and divisions. “Only applying this to some history classes is not enough. Issues from recruiting black teachers to fully recognizing black student voices could not be worked on until this problem was fixed, in my opinion.” This problem being the fact that Four Rivers had not had an official school wide acknowledgement of Black History Month until this year.

The fact that we are doing anything at all is, of course, an improvement. And some of the programming that has taken place, although not enough, has been successful. Evie Bird, (8th), writes, “we did an assignment called ‘Famous Black Americans: Quotes that Speak to Us’... looking into different quotes that inspired us.” She liked the assignment because of its independence and opportunity to learn about a lot of people she hadn’t known much about. Reading and discussing the work of Octavia Butler in the 8th grade, particularly her book Kindred, has also been very rewarding, Bird shares.

Collins feels that planning programming for this year has been motivating, writing, “It has been my hope to help lift student voices, especially ones that have not had the opportunity to be heard. I know that the Franklin County RSJ community is very pleased that this school is taking these steps.” The next step, hopefully, is planning and carrying out a unified celebration of Black History Month, so rather than relying on individual teachers, we put in the effort as a whole community to empower Black voices, tell Black stories, and continue the work of being anti-racist.