The New Jersey Amistad Commission, within the New Jersey Department of State, was established by the Amistad Bill (A1301), introduced by Assemblyman William D. Payne, and became law in 2002. This legislated mandate requires that all New Jersey schools incorporate African-American history into their Social Studies curriculum. This legislation also created the Amistad Commission, a 23-member body charged with ensuring that African Americans' contributions and experiences are historically infused and adequately taught in ALL of the state’s classrooms.
WHAT WE DO
The New Jersey Amistad Commission has been diligently striving to fulfill the directives of the Amistad legislation. This state-level Commission surveys, designs, and promotes the implementation of public educational awareness programs in New Jersey concerned with the African slave trade, slavery in America, the vestiges of slavery in our country, and the contributions of African Americans in building our country.
The mandate requires that all New Jersey schools incorporate African-American history into their Social Studies curriculum, ensuring that African-Americans’ history, contributions and experiences are intrinsically taught in the state’s classrooms on a daily basis and fully infused within classroom lessons, assessment tools, primary and secondary sources, and presentations.
The primary focus of the Amistad staff is the continued development of the Amistad curriculum, as well as the dissemination of curriculum materials to every school in the state. Within this curriculum the Commission has formulated a course of action that has revised Social Studies instruction throughout the state’s 619 school districts. According to the auspices of the legislation, we will not design a separate African-American Studies course for New Jersey’s school districts, but will make sure that African-American content is fully infused into all levels of Social Studies and the Humanities.
PROGRAM COMPONENTS
CURRICULUM MATERIALS
The Amistad Commission has undertaken the development of a comprehensive Amistad web-based curriculum in response to the public’s appeal for a sample curriculum that fully illuminates the legislated Social Studies course of study. The curriculum chronicles the K-12 Social Studies curriculum for the state, inclusive of African-American influence, history, and accomplishments. With twelve (12) units of study, divided by time periods as specified in the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards for Social Studies, our curriculum includes historical overviews, lesson plans, PowerPoints, biographies, interactive maps, timelines, primary source documents and classroom activities for students in each respective grade. Later phases will include videos, audios, and music. All of these elements will be laid out in a consistent, user-friendly format. The Amistad Commission will provide United States History course and content pacing, lesson plan templates, sample lesson plans, and rubrics for replication. The activities and resources should be used in all Social Studies classes, as well as interdisciplinary courses, elementary, middle school and high school, which can include American History courses, Language Arts courses, Art courses, Music courses, etc., in all 619 school districts. This comprehensive password-protected web resource is available to every teacher in New Jersey, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week free of charge. The address for the Amistad web-based curriculum site is: www.NJAmistadCurriculum.com
TEACHING RESOURCES
The Amistad Commission strives to be responsive to the resource needs of educators throughout the state. Our web site includes a vast array of information that can be utilized by K-12 teachers in support of the Amistad mandate. On the Amistad web site, educators will find: a downloadable Amistad lesson plan template, upcoming events and professional development activities throughout the state, web links for African-American resources, and a literacy list for elementary read-aloud programs. Research shows that children need to have access to books that reflect their own ethnicities to develop healthy self-esteem, and children also need to have access to books with characters of other ethnicities in order to develop a respect for society’s rich diversity. In response to this, the Amistad Commission has a list of titles that should be integrated in classrooms and libraries throughout the state. These books are excellent examples that reflect African and African-American characters and/or their history in positive, authentic ways. The Amistad Commission web site is: www.nj.gov/state/divisions/amistad/
TRAINING AND SEMINARS
The Amistad mandate requires the necessity for extensive professional development opportunities for teachers, in partnership with the presentation of the curriculum. Over the last several years, the Amistad Commission has offered continuous professional development opportunities and training for teachers in their respective districts as well as conferences, civic, community, and public events. The Amistad Commission will extend its offerings of face-to-face professional development opportunities for educators throughout the state. It is our desire to develop extensive elementary/secondary and higher education partnerships that will serve to underscore this effort and provide both a forum and a brain trust for educational conferences. Institutional professional development offerings for the Amistad Commission center around the continuation and expansion of the weeklong residential Summer Curriculum Institute for educators. We are aware that the majority of history and social science instructors, as well as K-8 teachers, have never taken related courses and are not trained or sufficiently knowledgeable to teach African-American history. The Amistad Summer Institutes align with curriculum development activities for educators and offer educators the opportunity to receive professional development and/or graduate credit hours to enhance their knowledge and ability in teaching African-American history. Educators are provided with primary and secondary materials, lesson plans, curriculum development methodology and pedagogy, as well as instructional notes. It is a unique resource for K-12 educators throughout the state, where they can further develop primary/secondary/higher education partnerships with university and college history department professors. The Amistad Commission will offer one (1) summer opportunity for educators in 2009 at the Montclair University Summer Institute. In concert with the premiere of the web-based curriculum, the Amistad Commission will offer twenty-one (21) countywide Amistad Curriculum Training in partnership with the American Institute for History Education, during the 2009-2010 school year. The Commission will systematically hold professional development sessions in each county in New Jersey. Because this legislation requires statewide implementation, which necessitates a strategic training and awareness campaign, these training sessions will serve to train educators on the usage of our curriculum web site, extend educator’s comfort with the content knowledge, provide teachers with the latest in teaching methodologies via hands-on sessions, and promote awareness and utilization of this valuable resource in all the districts.
GRANT OPPORTUNITIES
To ensure that New Jersey teachers are supported to effectively teach the revised social studies core curriculum content standards via the Amistad curriculum, and to provide funding and programmatic assistance to teachers, we offer the Amistad Annual Exemplary Awards. Up to ten (10) recipients are selected each year to receive the $5,000 grant to enhance their programmatic initiatives in the classroom. The New Jersey Amistad Commission will identify and catalog EXEMPLARY PRACTICES in schools across the state that incorporate and infuse African-American history into the schools’ curricula and lesson deliveries. The purpose of this program is to recognize and celebrate the excellence achieved by New Jersey’s public schools and to make information available describing designated exemplary practices readily accessible to educators throughout the state. Exemplary practices are those exemplary and/or innovative strategies that (1) infuse African-American history into the school’s curriculum; (2) promote high student achievement; (3) address specific educational needs of students and the Core Curriculum Content Standards; (4) yield documented results meeting set objectives, and (5) can be replicated. Any New Jersey teacher, group of teachers, or school is eligible to participate. The competition is open to public schools serving students in pre-kindergarten to grade 12. The practice must have been in place for a minimum of one year prior to submission. Only one application per applicant may be submitted. Commercially developed practices will not be considered. In addition practices that are solely implemented around Black History Month will not be considered. There is no limit to the number of teachers within a school or district that may propose a practice for consideration. The 2010-2011 Grant applications are due to the Commission in March 2010 and notification of awards is announced to the semifinalists in May and recognized at our annual ceremony in June 2010.
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
In addition, this Commission is responsible for the coordination of events on a regular basis, throughout the state that provide the appropriate memorialization of events concerning the African Diaspora contribution and their descendants in America, especially in relation to educational initiatives and curriculum development. Past titles have included: “American Reconstruction Reconsidered,” “Race — A Justification for Segregation,” and “the Amistad Web-based Curriculum — An Inclusive Journey through American History.” This yearly conference is open to the public. Educators will always receive professional development credit through the Amistad Commission for their attendance.
Rethinking History for a New Curriculum: Methodology, Interpretation and Perspective
By: Lillie Johnson Edwards, Ph.D.
What is history, what is its purpose and how do historians achieve it? History is an interpretation of the past, shaped into a story or narrative that uses verifiable data or information, primarily taken from the time period being studied. Most students mistakenly assume that the facts such as names, dates, places and events play a singular role in the writing of history.
