Thirty-one students at Brooklyn High School recently applied their passion and creativity to create video presentations spotlighting the contributions of African Americans in recognition of Black History Month. The volunteer assignment was developed and overseen by the High School Social Studies Department which wanted to provide all students, in-person and remote, the opportunity to complete an engaging assignment that could be easily shared with the Brooklyn community.

To help students get started, social studies teachers distributed project descriptions, examples, and the website resource, www.biography.com, to interested students. Student Council Junior Class President Daylun Armstrong was excited to participate and played an active role with promoting the project to fellow peers. A few teachers also incorporated the activity into their class curriculum, including Spanish teacher Jackie Holko, AVID teacher Melanie Fleisher, and Technology/Computer teacher Mr. Timas. Each participating student selected a historical or current African American figure to spotlight, including Harriet Tubman, Aretha Franklin, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Tarana Burke. Using the Adobe Spark program, students created a multi-media presentation featuring photography, music, written and narrated information to spotlight each individual’s contributions to further the cause of equality. Many students signed up to produce multiple presentations. To help make the presentations available to the greater community, Principal Brian Hare will be releasing 1-2 student videos daily through the month of February on his school Twitter account which can be accessed here.

A special thank you to the Brooklyn High School Social Studies Department, including, Kevin Sedlacek, Scott Urig, Mark Tanski, and Nikolas Chernushin for their efforts to make this project possible. Finally, congratulations to all participating students on a job well done!