By encouraging students to become local historians, AAPS is ensuring that the stories of Ann Arbor’s schools—and those who learned and taught in them—are honored
An ambitious educational initiative is bringing the history of AAPS to life. As the city continues to celebrate its bicentennial, a group of teachers headed by AAPS District Chair for Secondary Social Studies Jared Aumen have embarked on a School History project to help students dive deep into the stories of their local schools.
The project, a collaborative effort between AAPS and the Ann Arbor District Library, aims to transform how students learn about local history. AADL is marking Ann Arbor’s 200th anniversary this year with 200 digital content releases that explore Ann Arbor’s history.
By creating curriculum templates that encourage historical inquiry and focusing on local stories, AAPS educators are helping students see their community through a new lens.
“We think there is so much local and school history that goes unnoticed by our community, both for kids and adults,” says AAPS District Chair for Secondary Social Studies Jared Aumen, who is overseeing the project for the district. “But in the last few years, we’ve seen how several teachers at the elementary and secondary level have begun to engage their students with local, school-based histories in really meaningful ways. So, we saw the city’s bicentennial as an opportunity to gather a cohort of teachers who wanted to dive into the archives related to our schools and work to build historical inquiry templates.”
Collaborative efforts and rich resources
From elementary classrooms to high school history courses, students are now becoming local historians, investigating archives, examining photographs, and piecing together the narratives of their educational institutions.
The project wouldn’t have been possible without extensive collaboration. AADL archives staff led by Andrew MacLaren, spent months digitizing photographs from the Ann Arbor News archive, said Aumen, adding that these photos became the foundation for curriculum development across different grade levels.
“The Ann Arbor District Library has been an amazing partner on this project as well as on other initiatives within our district,” says Aumen. “The archives staff at the AADL led by Andrew MacLaren spent months selecting and digitizing photos from the Ann Arbor News archive for our teachers to use in our curriculum development. This effort provided the foundation for our lessons and sparked interest among our teachers to track down further sources about local history.”
Each school level has a unique approach to investigation
At the core of the initiative at the elementary level is a simple question: “How has my school changed and stayed the same?”
Elementary students explore concepts of continuity and change, examining school buildings, activities, and the people who populated them. The sources curated in the template then typically include photos of the school’s construction or additions, the program of the school’s dedication if there is access to it, photos of school events over decades, photos of staff and student activities, and any articles about the school thought to be pertinent.
“At the end of each template, we include suggested activities or projects like creating a walking tour of the school, inviting former students and staff to talk about the school, or recreating an old photo,” Aumen said.
Middle school students delve deeper while high school students connect local history to broader national narratives.
For instance, Huron teachers Jeff DeMoss and Kirk Suchowesky developed two units specific to Huron. One was about Title IX and women in sports and the other featured Keshia Thomas as a local activist for civil rights.
Skyline’s Kathy Mackercher helped build a unit around environmental issues and how they have played out at several points throughout the school’s history. Terry Carpenter developed a unit exploring alternative education in AAPS and considering what that might look like in the future.
And at Community High, Joslyn Hunscher-Young and her students in the inaugural History of Racism and Resistance course wrote a lesson to explore desegregation in AAPS and center the impact of the closing of Jones School.
Connecting this bigger historical concept of school desegregation to local actions and decisions in Ann Arbor was incredibly powerful for students, said Hunscher-Young.
“It made their inquiry more intrinsic and knowledge-building more meaningful,” she said. “My students felt this was so important that they decided to build a lesson plan and set of materials from what they learned because they wanted to be sure other AAPS students could learn this in their U.S. History classes.”
She said she hopes this and the work of other teachers to connect students to local history helps foster more critical investigation into the past to understand better how the local community became what it is today.
Aumen said that teachers across all levels say they’ve enjoyed the fun and creative ways they’ve been motivated by the school history work. For instance, teachers have already taken the initiative to adapt the templates for their students with new sources such as yearbooks from their school libraries. Others have worked with students to begin constructing narrative histories of their neighborhoods.
“And we’ve now seen multiple panels of alumni and former staff coming back to schools to talk about their time at the school,” said Aumen. “All of this tells us that our initiative to feature school and local history more prominently within our schools is taking root.”
Inspiring projects and future directions
The project’s success is evident in the enthusiasm it has generated. Teachers have begun adapting templates with additional sources like yearbooks, and alumni panels have started sharing their experiences with current students, Jared noted.
Looking forward, the team plans to expand their local history projects, with a focus on amplifying Indigenous perspectives throughout the curriculum.
“First, we hope our teachers and students enjoy investigating their school histories,” says Aumen. “Once the “fun of history” sets in, we hope teachers and students can begin to help us identify more sources and expand the templates. We also hope that teachers and students will begin to contribute examples of their projects to showcase their great historical work. We were particularly excited when the Ann Arbor City Council honored Scarlett Middle School students for research projects on the history of Ann Arbor.“
Aumen sees the school history work as a model for developing more local history projects.
“For example,” he noted, “this year we have a cohort of secondary teachers working to learn about Michigan Indigenous history, culture, and governance so that we can amplify native perspectives throughout our curriculum.”
The project was the result of the hard work of people who dedicated and contributed many hours and lots of energy to this project, said Aumen, who credits:
- AADL Archives staff: Andrew MacLaren & Heidi Morse
- U-M Bentley Library staff: Meghan Courtney
- AAPS Local History Working Group teachers: Austin Bryan, Terry Carpenter, Jeff DeMoss, Jake Engels, Brendan Hatt, Nathan Hatt, Joslyn Hunscher-Young, Kathy Mackercher, Karma Nordstrom, Scott Opfermann, Kristen Smith, Kirk Suchowesky, and Corey Williams
- AAPS Environmental Education teachers: Coert Ambrosino and David Szczygiel
2023 AAPS District News story: AAPS Local History Education Group is working with the AADL to help make history come alive for students
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