Highville Charter School, New Haven CT
Navigate cultural and historic landscapes of Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana to learn about STEM achievements, biosystems, and Africans’ response to climate change, dispel negative stereotypes about the inferiority of Africa and promote STEM competence for urban youth.
This arc marks the last location where my ancestors were held before being forcefully transported to the Americas from Benin. During our tour, we visited several such points of no return.
This is a statue of a Dahomey woman warrior in Benin. Dahomey women are renowned for bravely protecting their people's independence.
Students at Presbyterian Boys High Senior School in Ghana. This school educates thousands of boys each year, and the students have won international science competitions.
Image of my mother, Ms. Jackson and I with two Ghanaian conservationists from the Kwame Nkrumah Institute of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana.
Understanding the trauma that my ancestors survived lets me know how strong we truly are. Here is an image of a heartbreaking yet uplifting day in Cape Coast Slave Dungeon.
This image is of a shea butter and black soap manufacturer sharing the science of making those commodities. I am working on a culturally relevant lab to allow students to transform shea butter into black soap.
My main takeaway from the trip to West Africa is that African potential is boundless, yet African reality is limited by access to capital. Although I saw so much innovation, creativity, and discipline in Africans, the ability to translate those attributes into big projects or companies is minimal, it is limited by low investment or extraction of African resources. The urban community where my school is located, and many other communities containing diasporan Africans share this plight.
The African experience mirrors my own experience in education. I have modest resources, bright minds, but there is much-untapped potential due to the manifestations of poverty, instability and trauma. Yet I continue to hold high expectations, lending high support. The Presbyterian Boy’s Senior High School in Kumasi also has modest facilities with high expectations. Students are required to spend long hours each weekday on schoolwork. This discipline makes them globally renowned STEM scholars.
One thing that surprised me about Africa is that everywhere I went there was some amount of construction going on. From being in Accra and seeing skyscrapers being built with completely African crews to rural areas where there were houses built of cinderblock under construction. For some of the buildings it is obvious that the construction was started years ago they are being finished a little bit at a time as the owner gets money.
Dispeling stereotypes: I will post and discuss images of sophisticated skylines and elegant hotels and restaurants in Ghana, Togo and Benin. I will share information about African iron smelting, medicine and technology. I will create a lesson on the chemistry of Shea butter, and Black soap, important African exports. I wear and display African artifacts and explain their relevance. I will show the inhumane conditions of the slave dungeons and outdoor holding pens and explain our resilience.
Africa is known for the quality of its cocoa butter, shea butter and black soap exports, these products are widely used among my students. I am working on a lesson in the chemistry of fatty acids, and soaps, including information I learned when I visited a manufacturing facility in Kumasi Ghana. I am developing a lab procedure for my students to convert Shea butter to black soap. I will invite the community into my lab to do the same experiment during Black History Month.
I plan to hold a seminar on the chemistry and the beneficial properties of cocoa butter, shea butter and black soap and their significance to West African economies followed by a hands-on experiment to make black soap from Shea butter during black history month.