Tracing Lineages: Pro-Black Early Childhood Curriculum Development Fellowship

The project’s primary goal is to support pre-kindergarten to 2nd grade educators across the state of Illinois towards developing culturally sustainable and developmentally appropriate cross-disciplinary curriculum unit plans that explore the lineages, stories, and histories of Black community members utilizing primary sources from the Library of Congress and oral history interviews. As part of this 9-month virtual fellowship, fellows will participate in ten 90-minute virtual workshops that explore how engagement with primary sources from the Library and oral histories gathered from local Black community members disrupt curricular and pedagogical anti-Blackness often found in hegemonic early childhood curriculum, while also supporting young children’s exploration of African diasporic literacies, histories, and cultural heritage. The fellowship will culminate with an in-person conference focused on culturally sustainable and inclusive early childhood education pedagogy and praxis and the creation of a publicly available online repository of the curriculum unit plans.