Some students at New Tech Academy got the chance to express their creativity, while also learning about significant moments in American history.
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WFFT) – New Tech Academy students expressed their creativity while learning about significant moments in American history Thursday.
Students in Robert Haddad’s Government and Economics class created exhibits for the “Say Their Names” anti-racist art, music and action response project.
Haddad showed his students “The 13th Documentary,” which tells the story of pivotal post-slavery court cases in America that were significant in the fight for social justice.
New Tech Academy senior Stephanie Rodriguez and her group members created a poster inspired by Angela Davis’ case.
Davis was a social justice activist who was found innocent on murder charges in the 1970s.
“We wanted to showcase different pictures of her protesting [as well as] her Afro which was her signature style,” Rodriguez said. Within the piece, you can see empowering words such as “determined” and “beautiful” that the senior said properly described Davis and her story.
The New Tech Academy student feels motivated to speak on the social injustice of not only the black community but also other minority groups such as Latinos.
“As Hispanics, [we] don’t get as much ‘attention’ but we don’t get advocated as much. Now with legal laws that are coming up, I can speak for my people and say ‘Hey. I wanna speak on us now. Let’s all fight together, let’s fight for equality,” Rodriguez said.
There were no limits on what the students could create.
The exhibit features collages, sculptures, spoken word poetry and even original songs inspired by the lesson.
Khalise Collins created an original song telling the story of the Central Park Five.
Five Black teenagers were wrongfully convicted in the assault and rape of Trisha Meili in 1989. The five would remain behind bars until 2002 when the actual criminal came forward and admitted to his crimes.
Collins says he appreciates the effort to incorporate this into the lesson plan. She feels that making space for these types of topics impacts not only the students of her class now, but also future classes as well.
“It needs to be talked about, it needs to be seen and then seeing other kids doing it will make the younger generation want to do it as well. Sometimes it’s really cool to see what happened and what’s different now and what changed and what hasn’t,” Collins said.
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