Editorial: St. John's should do more for Black History Month
February is Black History month, and St. John’s has been doing several small lessons and activities in order to celebrate its history. However, the month has come to a close and nothing else has been done to show awareness for the month, and there is definitely more that could be done school wide to celebrate the month.
Some more ways that St. John’s could have celebrated Black History Month is by having more lessons about black history and prominent African American people in history classes. We could have studied primary source documents, leaders, and artwork that greatly impacted African Americans.
We could have learned more about movements like Black Lives Matter and compared them to previous protests in the past.
We could have had a week dedicated to learning about different impacts like the legacy of slavery, the first black president of the United States, black veterans and so much more. Possibly even had an assembly led by student leaders saying what this month means to them.
In today’s day and age we think it is very important to celebrate Black excellence while not forgetting the dark past. We have come a long way but there is a reason that February is Black History Month and it is necessary to acknowledge it and continue to work towards equality.
While we believe the SJC community should have done more, members of the school community did celebrate the month. Over the announcements, students have told the stories of various African American figures throughout history. Several teachers in the school did feature mini lessons throughout February to honor the history of the month. Mr. Sheridan’s religion class featured a display of cards on the white board that each tell the history of a different African American figure during the Civil War era. Mr. Cooper spends every day doing a “feast day” for different historical figures, and for the month of February has been doing African American historical figures every day. During the last week of February, he talked exclusively about African American women throughout history. Additionally, Ms. Leonard featured a couple of notecards on her board during the month that served the same purpose.
