Historic Cherry Hill has announced Multivocal Learning: Albany’s History for Albany’s Students, a school program collaboration with Albany County Historical Association’s Ten Broeck Mansion and the Underground Railroad Education Center at the Myers Residence and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (ARP).
Based upon feedback from local schoolteachers, this partnership is expected to result in thematically linked programs which build a stronger understanding of historical issues and the diversity of voices and opinions that have made and are making history in the United States. With connections to the New York State curricula, the new programs will allow upper elementary and middle school classrooms to travel to multiple Albany sites in the same day, saving school resources and creating rich, hands-on educational experiences.
This project will also include the digitization of primary source materials, in partnership with Siena College’s Digital Scholarship Lab. Dozens of collection items from each institution will become accessible to schools, researchers and the public on New York Heritage’s website. With grant funding, Historic Cherry Hill has digitized two other collections on New York Heritage– Historical African American Experiences at Cherry Hill in 2020, with supporting online teaching units for grades 4 through 12, and Cherry Hill Receipt Books in 2021.
Newly digitized collection items from all three institutions will support resources for teachers to use in the classroom, before and after their onsite visits. Together, these digital materials and on-site, in-person programs — available to classrooms by early 2023 – will build students’ subject-matter competencies, radical empathy, and sense of their own agency in education and civic life.
For more information email shawna@historiccherryhill.org.
Photo of Cherry Hill courtesy Wikimedia user Matt H Wade.
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