One of the unique features of Living Stones Academy is a commitment to “embrace diversity with particular emphasis on its cultural, economic, and racial forms.”  With the goal of enhancing teachers’ ability to carry out this mission in their classrooms, the entire staff of Living Stones traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, in October to gain a better understanding of the civil rights movement.

The experience gave teachers the opportunity to learn together as a community, to hear the story of a participant in the Sanitation Workers March, and to view the ongoing struggle for civil rights through the displays and narrations In the National Civil Rights Museum located in the Lorraine Motel.

Using a well-crafted field work journal to record their experience each teacher walked away from the museum with a better understanding of the varied efforts of the civil rights movement, i.e. police brutality, sit-ins, lynching, Jim Crow laws, bus boycotts, freedom riders, bloody Sunday, and the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The final debriefing session was a meaningful and powerful time as teachers openly and honestly talked about their own racial journey and how the impact of being on location in Memphis where Martin Luther King was shot enhanced their learning. It was truly an example of the power of experiential learning, listening to real people, and being in an authentic space.

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