The Museum's Teaching and Learning Unit creates programs and resources for students and educators in grades 3-12 designed to strengthen pedagogy skills, cultivate cultural literacy knowledge, and encourage multiple perspective taking while building change agents in today’s world. The Early Childhood Education Initiative (ECEI) provides resources and support to parents, caregivers, and educators of early learners. ECEI programs and initiatives seek to empower, enrich, and educate young children from birth to 8 years old.

Interpreting the African American Story

Our programs and resources explore stories of achievement, perseverance, and ingenuity across multiple disciplines with an emphasis on history, the visual arts, and the fields of STEM.

History

Studying history can empower people to better understand themselves, their communities, and the world. Our programming provides educators opportunities to learn diverse narratives of history, practice perspective-taking, and hone other historical thinking skills. Educators utilize the museum's vast collection of historical artifacts to model object-based learning strategies in the classroom. Through our continued learning initiatives, we hope to inspire educators to explore, question, and create history as they become change agents in their own worlds.

history

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Visit the Searchable Museum online to explore history and culture through an African American lens.
Newly Cleared Farmland in the Colonial Chesapeake

The Chesapeake: Making Race

As the Chesapeake region began to take shape, ideas of race and class were less defined. Enslaved Africans, European indentured servants, and Native American groups such as the Pamunkey, Monacan, Piscataway, and Lenape worked alongside one another as they cultivated tobacco and other crops. They also intermarried, socialized, ran away, and rebelled together.
Start Your Journey about The Chesapeake: Making Race
Enslaved people on J. J. Smith's plantation, South Carolina. Timothy O'Sullivan, 1862

The Roots of Modern Inequality

Many of the nations, industries, and institutions we know today are rooted in the long history of colonial expansion and racial slavery. From agricultural practices to racial hierarchies, these systems shaped the structures of our modern world and created massive inequality.
Start Your Journey about The Roots of Modern Inequality
Map of Philadelphia’s Free African American Households, 1790

Crossing the Color Line to Freedom

William and Ellen Craft were a married couple whose escape from enslavement in Macon, Georgia, is remembered for its genius, danger, and daring.The Crafts wrote of their escape from slavery in their autobiography, published in 1860.
Start Your Journey about Crossing the Color Line to Freedom

Visual Arts Integration

Did you know that NMAAHC has a visual arts collection? At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, we believe that art engages in a conversation with history while acting as a visual expression of contemporary thoughts and ideas. Through close reading of art works and contextual analysis, our arts programs seek to explore the links between history and art while celebrating the contribution of African Americans to the American art canon.

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Alma Thomas

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)

African Americans have contributed to enterprises in STEM since the nation’s beginning, yet their names and contributions have been routinely overlooked. NMAAHC’s STEM Education initiative counters this by sharing the forgotten and unknown stories of African Americans and their contributions to the STEM fields. Our research-based and culturally-responsive programs incorporate best practices in STEM pedagogy and classroom strategies. STEM at NMAAHC strives to encourage knowledge of STEM principles, enhance STEM literacy, and empower K-12 educators to share stories of African American STEM professionals in their classrooms.

Learn More about STEM at NMAAHC

STEM at NMAAHC
Education is our passport to the future for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. Malcolm X Activist
Educators participating in a science experiment during STEM teacher workshop, 2019/Doug Sanford
Participant in Myths and Monuments educator workshop, 2019/Doug Sanford
Educator working with a student during Young Historians Institute, 2019/Doug Sanford
Students exploring the History galleries during Young Historians Institute, 2019/Doug Sanford
Educator participating in science experiment during STEM teacher workshop, 2019/Doug Sanford
Students entering the museum's cultural gallery through the Cultural Expressions exhibition

Students exploring the Culture galleries during Power of the Written Word student workshop, 2019/Doug Sanford

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