#Screenagers: Hosting a Community #PBL Event

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This project-based learning class began their journey with the challenge to identify and understand the most pressing issues for their generation. This is a truly student-centered approach, and I have not found many other examples of this type of ground zero for #PBL. So if you know of classroom online, please let us know. After researching and writing upon these topics, some of which are teen mental health issues, ocean pollution, e-waste, hidden poverty, and automation, the students curated their learning on our classroom blog. Then the group was challenged to create a community project where they would be able to share their learning and show how they learned it. With this #PBL mantra in mind, the class navigated towards the compelling documentary Screenagers. We then researched the movie and conference called the office before we brainstormed the idea to partner with our freshmen leadership colleagues. The students are now in the exciting and challenging stages of preparing curriculum for this community program. Follow our progress on Twitter: https://twitter.com/caisct_pbl and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caisct_pbl/

Suffield Academy Students Present: WWI Homefront

When the American Studies class began its investigation in December with a trip to the Suffield Academy archives, students were very curious to find young students one hundred years ago were wearing military uniforms. After researching our local and national history, the students are ready to share insights about the preparedness movement in Suffield, the region, and nationwide to help explain how Suffield School (now Suffield Academy) was one of the first schools in the area to start such a military prep program that provided students military uniforms and training. While following the research methods of Connecticut Historian, Stacey K. Close, the American Studies students used his chapter in African American Connecticut Explored as a model to look for patterns of the Great Migration here in Suffield. Close’s chapter, titled “Black Southern Migration and the Transformation of Connecticut, 1917-1941,” centers around migration trends in Simsbury. Please join us to learn how the American Studies students discovered similar patterns in Suffield. The class will present during the Suffield Historical Society meeting, which is open to the public, on Tuesday night, April 24th, 7-8pm at the Suffield Senior Center on 145 Bridge St, Suffield, Ct. Finally, like everyone in Connecticut who is excited to learn about the story of Sargent Stubby and see the newly released film, Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero, find out about four of the WWI veterans from Suffield who served in the famous 102nd of the Yankee Division, alongside “Stubby,” the first service or therapy dog. For more on the movie that was just released, click here: http://www.stubbymovie.com/

Suffield.Academy.Presentation.Flyer4.24.18

Suffield Academy Students Present at Suffield Historical Society Meeting on April 18th

Boston Tea Party Painting from US Capitol

What Happened in Suffield during 1774?

A free lecture from 7:00-8:00pm on April 18^th at Suffield’s Senior Center, 145 Bridge Street. Suffield Academy Students will present about the complexities of 1774 during the Suffield Historical Society Meeting.

In response to the Boston Tea Party (1773), Parliament drafted the Coercive Acts in 1774, and residents throughout the thirteen colonies protested these acts in various ways. In the western town of Sheffield, Massachusetts, Colonel Ashley hosted citizens at his house, and that group composed the Sheffield Resolves. Interestingly, one of his slaves, Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Mum Bett, was inspired by these conversations of protest and later sued successfully for her own freedom.

What happened in Suffield during the pivotal year of 1774? What part of the population supported the growing patriot cause in Boston? What portion of citizens accepted the dictates of the British Parliament? Who was neutral? The year 1774 also marked the highest recorded number of slaves in Connecticut, 6,464. What effect did these turbulent times have on the 37 enslaved Africans in Suffield?

Suffield Academy’s American Studies class looks forward to sharing what they learned about the complexities of freedom and slavery in Suffield during 1774. All Society meetings are open to the public, and newcomers are most welcome. SA.Presentation.Flyer-4-18-2017

Our Press Release: The Other Underground Railroad

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACTS & CALENDAR LISTINGS: Click SA.Presentation.4.19.2016

Bill Sullivan, American Studies Teacher, Suffield Academy bsullivan@suffieldacademy.org

Title: The Other Underground Railroad

A Free Lecture from 7:00-8:00pm on April 19^th at Suffield’s Senior Center, 145 Bridge Street. Suffield Academy Students present 18^th Century Kidnapping Case During Suffield Historical Society Meeting.

In 1845 Reverend Daniel Hemenway, a West Suffield minister and school teacher, wrote a letter to John Hooker, our state’s leading abolitionist, to enlist his help for freeing certain slaves in Virginia. They were descendants of Flora, an eighteenth century free African-American woman from West Suffield. Hooker and Hemenway then argued that Captain Hanchett, a Revolutionary War Hero and tavern owner in West Suffield, kidnapped Flora and her two children, transported them down the Hudson River, and sold them into slavery. The American Studies class of Suffield Academy will present information from new research about this complex case: this includes kidnapping, the “other” direction of the Underground Railroad, Flora and Exeter’s colonial life, recently discovered documents relating to Reverend Hemenway and his Select School in Suffield, as well as additional implications concerning the nineteenth century Underground Railroad in our town.

Come out and learn the fate of the four sets of Flora’s 19^th century children and grandchildren whose fight for freedom involved seven county trials as well as a culminating case heard by Virginia’s Supreme Court. All Society meetings are open to the public, and newcomers are most welcome.

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“Kidnapping” by Alexander Rider

Delineating the learning process about Vicky Chen’s art work for out flyer, she juxtaposed this image of a nineteenth century kidnapping with some of the text from the nineteenth century depositions that described Hanchett and another man forceably taking Flora away. We have some of the depositions on our blog, and the State Library of Virginia as well as the Rockbridge Advocate newspaper have other documents. The most interesting discovery we had as a class was to learn more about early nineteenth century Philadelphia physician, Jesse Torrey, who researched and compiled a book on narratives in his area. Click here to learn more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h324.html