By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
Teacher Cadet students at Darlington High School got a taste of what teaching will be like Friday, April 8 when Teaching Fellows from USC visited the school. The fellows brought with them a traveling Anne Frank exhibit, which has been displayed across the state.
The exhibit is a multi-year collaboration of USC’s College of Education Center for Educational Partnerships, the Anne Frank House and the Anne Frank Center of New York. The Teaching Fellows lead local students through exercises that train them to serve as a guide through the exhibit. The goal is to develop in the students an awareness of social justice issues and give them the tools to discuss these issues with their peers and other members of the community who may tour the exhibit.
Derrick Hines, the Teaching Fellows Campus Director, said that the partnership came about because of a USC professor who does work in the field of social justice.
“The exhibit itself is museum quality obviously and was originally based out of Amsterdam at the Anne Frank House Museum,” Hines said. “We learned about it through one of our professors at USC who has done a lot of work on social justices issues, the Holocaust and Anne Frank. He approached myself this past summer about potentially forming a partnership with my program, the Teaching Fellows, to help advance the initiative to bring this exhibit to rural schools or schools that may not necessarily have access to material readily.”
Hines said that approval from his supervisor set the ball in motion.
“I approached my supervisor and we were able to fund this program for the next several years,” Hines said. “We like to have a grow-your-own model where students currently enrolled in our programs reach out to their home schools to see if they are interested in having the exhibit and the training. We have trained five schools this year, three middle schools and two high schools. The exhibit has been in South Carolina itself for three years but this is the first large-scale effort with a large program like Teaching Fellows and the university.”
Emily Childers works with Teacher Cadets on peer guide skills.
Darlington County School District graduate Emily Childers helped push for the exhibit to come to Darlington. She also helped lead the exercises to prepare the DHS teacher cadets for guiding groups through the exhibit.
“The students each have a panel that they have gone through and understand and they are going to be presenting it to the group,” Childers said. “We will also be talking to them about how they need to present themselves when they are serving as a peer guide.”
After student groups had a chance to talk amongst themselves about the things, internally and externally that would help them serve as a good guide, the group came back together to bounce those ideas off of one another.
Some of the items that they mentioned included having good posture, speaking clearly and loud enough for everyone to hear and understand, face the group you are speaking to, smile and be relatable.
Childers said that having graduated from Darlington County she was excited to have the opportunity to give back.
“I grew up in this area and I know the issues and a lot of the things that are bothering our area,” Childers said. “It is really interesting for me to go to a college that is still in our state but in a whole different district and see how they are dealing with similar situations. All of our professors are doing research in this field of course; they are all trying to find their cures for the issues. It is interesting for me to be able to go there, get all of the issues and come back and say, “Here is what I learned. How can I implement this at home?” I knew we never had anything like this and it is really fun for me to be able to bring this back and help provide where there is a shortage in the community.”
Hines said that meeting that need is precisely why the Teaching Fellows program was created.
“Teaching Fellows program started as a way for the South Carolina education system to grow their own teachers,” Hines said, “The Teaching Fellows program incentivizes high achieving high school students who wish to pursue a career in education by offering them a set amount of money for four years in exchange for a year of service in a South Carolina public school.”
The community is invited to tour the Anne Frank exhibit during Falcon Fest Thursday, April 13, from 5–7 p.m.
