How Seagull Speech is Celebrating Black History Month
Commander Victor J. Glover Jr.
February is almost over, but we at Seagull Speech have been targeting a variety of speech/language objectives while celebrating Black History Month. The digital learning lab at the Smithsonian Institute provided us with a plethora of resources to learn about, celebrate and gain inspiration from current and historical figures that have positively contributed to society; many while battling racism.
Here are some samples from our students and clients who’ve practiced different areas of language while expressing their thoughts and ideas about the many Black people we’ve celebrated:
Learning how to use conjunctions in sentences: “Dr. Charles Johnson is working on a project so that he can get his answers and learn more”
Practicing summarization and recall of details: “ Commander Glover is going to be the first African American to live on the International Space Station. He’s good at his job and he’s a very smart person because he earned a lot of degrees. He’s also a test pilot and Naval aviator”.
“Victor Glover is the first African American astronaut to travel on the International Space Station. He went to college and is really smart because he has several degrees in engineering. Victor Glover was a Naval aviator and worked in the Senate. Then he was chosen by NASA to be an astronaut.”
Making inferences from historical text, postcards, interviews and photos: “ Although Prince Whipple came from a rich family in Africa, many racist things did happen to him, like being put up for slavery in America. Prince Whipple respects people”.
“James Baldwin dealt with a lot of racism in NY and America where he lived most of the time. He traveled a lot. He was independent as an adult but he still loved his mother because he wrote to her. He had a wife but still let her know about the places he was traveling to. James Baldwin dealt with racism in other countries based on his postcards. This made him very angry. He is a writer and he likes art.”
“He’s standing in front of his grocery store waiting for customers. He’s happy; he’s got a smile. I think he feels pride because it probably took him a while to get his store up and running and now he can sell food to his own community”
We love finding new and exciting ways to celebrate Black History Month that have an impact. We are grateful for the Smithsonian Institute’s interesting “online museum”. Everyone enjoyed looking at artwork and old historical photos, reading old postcards and watching a video of Victor Glover answer kids’ questions from the International Space Station!