In Summer 2022, the Mississippi Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Mississippi Department of Archives, will host a National Summer Teacher Institute. The Institute will be presented in conjunction with A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, an exhibition that will unveil newly commissioned works by 12 of the most acclaimed African American artists working today examining the profound impact of the Great Migration on the social and cultural life of the United States. The exhibition opens in Jackson, Mississippi in April 2022 and will travel to the Baltimore Museum of Art in October 2022. After that, the exhibition will continue its journey to destination cities of the Great Migration, including New York City, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Commissioned artists will be drawing on a variety of source material–family oral histories, documents, photographs–to examine their own relationship to the Great Migration through a variety of investigations and platforms. Building on this process, the Institute will invite local teachers as well as educators from cities where the exhibition will travel to engage with the ideas and process of the exhibition–those of the history of the Great Migration as well as ideas about public memory, self-determination, and resilience –through the lens of primary source materials. Teachers will actively explore questions such as: What can we learn by investigating the documents, photographs, and other items within archives and collections? What is missing from these materials? How do we understand these absences? How can these materials be used in the classroom to teach critical thinking, problem-solving, and creative response skills? What does it mean to understand the present by exploring the past?
Through an intensive week spent in Jackson, MS, teachers will investigate ways in which engagement with primary sources can be embedded within classroom learning. Using the Mississippi Museum of Art as a home base, teachers will spend time at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, at the Museum of Mississippi History, as well as with local and national experts around related topics. As a culminating project for the week, teachers will develop a thematic unit that will become part of a TGM resource guide for educators.
About the Institute
- Learn about the historical context surrounding the Great Migration at the Two Mississippi Museums—Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
- Explore A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, the exhibit at the Mississippi Museum of Art featuring twelve of the most acclaimed African American artists working today. These commissioned works examine the profound impact of the Great Migration on the social and cultural life of the United States.
- Experience The Negro Motorist Green Book, on display at the Two Mississippi Museums July 2–September 25, 2022.
- Conduct research at the state archives, and discover primary sources to share with your students.
- Create materials that introduce themes of the Great Migration to your students.
- Workshops will be led by staff from both museums, as well as educators from Facing History and Ourselves. Facing History and Ourselves will connect the Great Migration to identity, memory, and legacy.
- Meet acclaimed writer and educator Eve Ewing. She is the award-winning author of four books: the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, and most recently a novel for young readers, Maya and the Robot. Ewing is also an assistant professor at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago. She uses archival materials in her work to connect and engage readers with history, including the Great Migration when her own grandmother moved from Mississippi to Chicago.
Applicants
This workshop will welcome twenty K–12 teachers made up of both in-state and national educators. Teachers from Mississippi, as well as Baltimore, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and other cities where Mississippians settled during the Great Migration, will receive priority.
- Dates: July 18-22, 2022
- In-state stipend: $500
- Out-of-state stipend: $1200
- Hotels and lunches covered by institute
- CEUs will be offered.
- Application opens January 12 and closes February 28, 2022.
