ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Local teachers were given access to a resource to help create lesson plans about past racist policies in Rochester and the Greater Rochester area.
The Anti-Racist Curriculum Project helps teachers talk about the history of Rochester from redlining and racial covenants to points of resistance and the racist policies that shaped it.
“Have a huge jumping off point for understanding a huge part of our community’s story that’s often been hard to find, or see, or has purposefully not been taught,” said Shane Wiegand, the co-director of the Antiracist Curriculum.
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Wiegand, a former elementary school teacher, said he kicked off the project after a fourth grader asked if Martin Luther King Jr. ever came to Rochester. Wiegand didn’t know but later found out that he did and worked locally for civil justice which is how he decided the community needed more information.
“Take this out of our silos,” Wiegand said. “Let’s work with professors, students, high school students, elders, and let’s come together and build a site that can never be put on a shelf.