Westwood Community School District

This initiative created the first Wayne County Teaching Diverse Histories Summit. This event convened by Westwood Schools and Wayne RESA occured August 13-14, 2025 and included a two-day professional learning experience designed to strengthen educators' capacity to teach inclusive, comprehensive, and community-centered histories. The summit addressed critical educational challenges in Wayne County including low student engagement, gaps in K-5 social studies instructional time, teacher un-familiarity with the C3 Framework, low-confidence among educators teaching unfamilar or uncomfortable historical topics. With 250 participants from over 60 Michigan districts, the event featured a keynote address by Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, tailored breakout sessions, and immersive, place-based experiences at local historical and cultural sites. Backed by robust partnerships with external experts and a community resource fair, the summit provided teachers with curated professional texts, media, and lesson plans to support classroom implementation of complex history teaching. Evaluation data revealed immense success and increased teacher confidence as a result of this event.

 

Resources that supported this project: 

  • The Spirit - Waleed Johnson  - and lesson plan 
  • Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement - Edited by Hasan Kwame
    Jeffries
  • A People’s Atlas of Detroit - Edited by Linda Campbell, Andrew Newman, Sara Safransky,
    and Tim Stallmann
  • Place-Based Social Studies Education: Learning from Flint, Michigan - Annie Whitlock
  • A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River
    Borderland -     Edited by Karolyn Smardz Frost and Veta Smith Tucker
  • Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching - Jarvis R.
    Givens
  • Black Bottom Saints - Alice Randall
  • Detroit in 50 Maps - Alex B. Hill
  • How to Lie with Maps - Mark Monmonier
  • Tabbed copy of the Disciplinary Literacy Essentials
  • College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards

 

Partners:

  • Mari Treece - Executive Director of Educational Services, Wayne RESA
  • John Farris - Social Studies Consultant, Wayne RESA
  • Jeffrey Austin - Literacy Consultant, Wayne RESA
  • Dr. Rosalyn Shahid - Literacy Consultant, Wayne RESA
  • Heather Rottermond - Assessment and Instruction Consultant Coordinator of MTSS and Program Impact, Wayne RESA
  • Melanie Depray Learst - Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction, and Accountability, Westwood Schools

 

Summit Session Presenters and Topics:

  • Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries - Keynote
  • Angelica Esquivel - Zines and Democracy
  • Carole Hawke-Diop - Migration and Religion: Two Tales from Detroit
  • Lisa Voelker and Nigora Erkaeva (SEMIS Coalition) - Lifting Untold Stories from our Landscape Using Place-Based, EcoJustice Education
  • Rania Hammoud - Teaching Arab History with Accuracy and Empathy
  • Scott Koenig - Teaching Social Studies in Michigan: It’s A Mission
  • Darin Stockdill - Freedom-Seeking and Resistance in Detroit: Designing Place-Based Case Studies for Inquiry-Based Learning
  • Ruth Le and Najaree Nixon - True Inclusion is Revolutionary: Combating Ableism
  • Andrew Jarema - The Backbeat Rewritten: Detroit’s Musical History and the Black American Musical Lineage
  • Osvaldo Rivera (VOCES) - A Community’s Effort to Document It’s Rich and Colorful History
  • Wendy Gilliard, Sydnie Dumas, and Kendall Moser - Native American Authors: Incorporating Native American Texts in Grades 6-12
  • Rick Schaffner and Kait Albert - Teaching Difficult Histories: Inquiry and Museum-Based Learning at The Zekelman Holocaust Center
  •  Marcia Black - Black Bottom Archives
  •  Lauren Jasinski and Joel Burkey - The Scent of Fear: Impacts of the Lavender Scare on the Federal Workforce
  • Stacie Sheldon Chitwaadewegekwe - Our Language Is In the Stars and In Our Bones
  • Richard Mui - Everything You Needed to Know about Asian Pacific Americans
  • Jamon Jordan - We Are Our Own Heroes: How the Fight for Freedom Became the Foundation for Detroit’s African American Community
  • Gabrielle Likavec and Jasmine Easterly - Mapping Equity, Amplifying Voices: Exploring Redlining in Detroit
  • Jamal Easley - Freedom Dreaming and the Struggle for Equal Rights
  • Jeremy Hein and Jill Jenkins - Bringing History to Life: Project-Based Learning Experiences for Teaching a People’s History of Wayne County
  • David Hales - History Day: Collaborating with Local Museums to Lift Hidden Histories
  • Amy Perkins - Food for Thought: How Our Diets Reflect Migration, Conquest, & Resilience
  • Alima Trapp and Ali Wheeler - Art of the Ages: The Evolution of the Portrayal of Black Americans in the Media (1910-1990)
  • Seena Skelton - Teaching Disability History: The Journey from Disability Rights to Disability Justice
  • Jessica Care Moore - Your Crown Shines: How to Use Poetry as a Powerful and Revolutionary Tool Inside the Classroom
  • Kimberly Simmons - Midnight: A History of the Detroit River
  • Dave Serio and the Arab American National Museum - Using Primary Sources to Tell the Story of Arab American
  • Rodney Deal and the Detroit Historical Society - Using the Detroit Historical Society’s “Origins” and “Gallery of Culture” Exhibitions to Teach Diverse and Inclusive Histories
  • Joanne Coutts - “You are Here!” Creating Feminist, Decolonial, and Community Maps
  • Detroit Public Theatre - Detroit ‘67: A Performance from the Detroit Public Theatre
  • Annie Whitlock and the Reuther Library - Redlining and Social Movements in Detroit: Place-Based Inquiry in Teaching Diverse Histories
  • Denice Blair and Mark Bowden - Honor in Action: Celebrating the Community History of Detroit’s Black Bottom Neighborhood

 

Community Resource Fair Exhibits:

 

Additional resources coming soon.