K-12 Resources

In partnership with Carolina K-12 (formerly the NC Civic Education Consortium), a program under UNC’s Carolina Public Humanities, CHW seeks to advance the university’s institutional mission of extending its resources to other parts of the state. Using the stories CHW gathered from the Rocky Mount community, Carolina K-12 and Rocky Mount-area educators have developed lesson plans on state and local history for social studies instructors. This initiative, “History Unfiltered: Exploring the Southern Textile Industry in Rocky Mount, NC,” offers both classroom activities and professional development for teachers.

Carolina K-12 led a free workshop at Braswell Memorial Library on October 6, 2018 where 15 middle and high school educators listened to scholarly presentations about the labor history of the textile industry in North Carolina and the history of Rocky Mount Mills followed by a discussion on how to utilize and apply local primary sources to help students engage with the concept that “history happens HERE.” Participants also enjoyed a performance of “From Slavery to Freedom” by the incredible gospel singer Mary D. Williams. Teachers left with access to resources for teaching about RMM, 1.0 CEUs, and received a $100 stipend post-attendance for creating their own brief teaching activity on RMM or related local history.

CHW would like to extend thanks to the Carolina K-12 staff and the two Carolina K-12 teacher fellows, Renny Taylor of Nash Central High School (Rocky Mount, NC) and Elijah Kane of Pattillo Middle School (Tarboro, NC), for their hard work in going through all of CHW’s materials to find what would be most useful in a classroom context and for framing them in such a manner as to help guide other K-12 teachers in creating their own lesson plans.

The lesson plans borne from that workshop can be found in “Lesson Plans and Activities.”

And to see an example of how local history can be integrated into your classroom, check out a documentary Mr. Taylor’s class created on Rocky Mount Mills using CHW’s materials and additional sources.