Frederick Douglass Ireland Curriculum

You are invited!

As part of #DouglassWeek 2021, a variety of initiatives took place to make Frederick Douglass’s story accessible to Irish students of all ages and the public. These events, talks, workshops and performances were all aligned with Frederick Douglass’ commitment to equality, education, and social justice and offered parallels from the nineteenth-century abolition movement to the present day. One of the projects that emerged from the many successes of #DouglassWeek is the desire to develop an Ireland-focused Frederick Douglass curriculum. Since then, a core sub-committee of educators from Ireland, the UK and the US has been established.

We are now reaching out to educators around the world who have an interest in teaching Frederick Douglass and in collaborating with us to adapt the Frederick Douglass “History, Human Rights and the Power of the One” educational curriculum—developed by the Frederick Douglass Family Initiative in the US—for an Irish context and audience. We aim to expand our existing material and to focus on bridging the gap between past and present, Ireland and the US, and historical and contemporary issues related to Douglass’s life and legacy. We are currently in the process of setting up a website for the curriculum on which all resources will be accessible and all projects and work at different schools around Ireland will be highlighted.

Goals and themes of the workshop:

  • Brainstorming sessions to develop an Ireland-focused educational curriculum

  • Expand on the main themes (equality, diversity, inclusion, awareness, knowledge) and collect ideas to creatively express and teach these themes through arts and pop-cultural approaches

  • Collating inspirational and interesting methods where connections can be made between past and present

  • Brainstorm and establish educational resources and material, existing and new material that needs to be created; for example, discussing questions like:

    • What should resources look like/how should they be created and shared?

    • How can resources be split into meaningful sections such as politics, art, social justice, literature etc.?

    • Which categorizations would be useful and why?

    • Is it important to create subsections of subjects like history, geography, citizenship, PSHE (or equivalent), Philosophy and Ethics and others?

  • Interact with/discuss potential teaching ideas, concerns (with the material, time constraints, incorporating subject matter into lessons with support of SLT and management

  • How to build further connections and make use of current partnerships

In collaboration with Nano Nagle Place Cork Migrant Centre, Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray, Dr. Adrian Mulligan, Dr. Caroline Schroeter and many others we are hosting a workshop during #DouglassWeek to establish a working group. You are invited to this virtual workshop on the 15th of Feb, 3pm GMT/10am EST, to co-create the FREDERICK DOUGLASS IRELAND CURRICULUM! You can sign up here.