Teaching with Laurel Grove School

Abstract

The Laurel Grove School was a one-room school for African American children in northern Virginia from the 1880s-1932. In the 1990s, the Fried Company restored the building, and it now operates as a museum along the African American heritage trail. Under the direction of the Laurel Grove School Association, and with several grants from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, an interdisciplinary team of community members, curriculum experts, teachers, historians, and museum curators recovered the history of this school from oral histories and local archives and refurbished the classroom. This team also crafted a fourth grade history curriculum to teach about slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and life under Jim Crow--a curriculum that later was adapted to middle and high school history. The Laurel Grove School lessons are available at this website, created with Omega. This project was funded by the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and CALIBRE, Inc. Hosted at chnm.gmu.edu/laurelgrove.