Train, Inspire, Cultivate
Our fellowship program has created a community of skilled educators who collaborate with the Center to create educational materials that meet standards and can be easily incorporated into classroom curriculum. To be accepted into the program, teachers must demonstrate excellence in the classroom, and participate in community and professional organizations. They must also teach about Jackson in their classroom, but more importantly, inspire their students to follow his example by exposing injustice in their communities and world.
While the program was started as a vehicle to advance Justice Jackson’s ideals and preserve his legacy it has expanded into lasting relationships with area educations who now serve as “Jackson Ambassadors” promoting the mission of the Center to their students, colleagues, and community.
Over the course of the program, the teachers studied the life and work of Justice Jackson. After participating in four days of training at the Center, the 2015 participants have created valuable and engaging project profiles. The final lesson plans/projects will be available on the Center’s website September 2015.
Kim Joslyn
Kim Joslyn is a pre-K-12th grade library media specialist at Chautauqua Lake Central School. Kim received her Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education from Buffalo State College and her Master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Buffalo. She is passionate about using the library to promote research, provide resources, and assist teachers in their instruction. This summer, Kim is a teacher fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center, where her focus is introducing Jackson and his teacher, Mary Willard to the lower elementary grades through the library classroom. The story about “little Bob” and Mary is a perfect way to introduce Jackson to Elementary age students. They can see themselves in “little Bob”, and identify someone in their lives, who like Mary, serves as a mentor and role model.
Wendy Dyment & Melissa Miller
Wendy M. Dyment is the senior member of the Cassadaga Valley Central School District’s social studies department. She has taught Global History to both 9th and 10th graders, provided AIS support services in Global and American History, and is fortunate to be able to teach history electives to juniors and seniors. She is developing an elective on Genocide for the 2016 – 2017 school year. Wendy earned a BA in History with a concentration in Classics from Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY. After graduating with honors, Wendy began her Master’s work at the University of Oregon. She returned to NY State to accept a teaching position at CVCS and completed her MS in Social Studies Education at Buffalo State College.
Melissa Wadsworth-Miller is a high school and middle school English teacher at the city of Tonawanda Middle/High School in Erie County, New York. For the past fifteen years, Melissa has incorporated the study of human rights and social justice into her curriculum. Her lessons combine literature and nonfiction to analyze the Holocaust and Darfur genocides, and discuss the roles average people can play in preventing atrocities like these from happening in the future.
Melissa and Wendy are working together to create a inquiry-based lesson on Nuremberg and international justice.
Laura Wilson & Greg Birner
Gregory Birner is an 18 year veteran social studies teacher at Westfield Academy and Central School. Gregory has taught Sociology, Psychology, U.S. Military History, Criminal Justice, Economics, Participation in Government, U.S. History and Government, “We The People” (an advanced government class) as well AP American Government and Politics. Gregory was a member of the Teaching American History Grant that introduced him to “We The People”, where his students have finished as high as 3rd in State Competition and were invited to and have competed at the national level. The Grant also introduced Gregory to the Robert H. Jackson Center, and the Law Youth Citizen organization that sent him on a weeklong study of Navajo culture and law in Arizona with a focus on individual rights of Native Americans.
Laura Wilson is an English teacher at Westfield Academy and Central School, an adjunct professor through the College Connections Program at Jamestown Community College, and the new teacher mentor. A graduate of SUNY Fredonia, Laura received her Master’s Degree in English Education. In 2014, Laura received the Educator of Excellence Award from the New York State English Council. Of her accomplishments, she is most proud of the over twenty boxes of supplies her students collected to send to the troops in Iraq and the $2,500 dollars a small group of advanced eighth graders raised to send to the organization Water for South Sudan after reading the book A Long Walk to Water. Mrs. Wilson believes that literature should be used as a springboard to understanding the world around us.
Greg and Laura will work together to create two lesson plans utilizing the new documentary, Liberty Under Law: The Robert H. Jackson Story and materials from the Center’s archives. The lesson plans will incorporate new standards set in the New York State Common Core Social Studies Framework for grades 9-12.
