BY ANNA BOGEN
PhD candidate (English) and GAHDT GAA

For the teachers participating in this year’s Difficult Subjects: K-12 Teaching Institute community of practice on American slavery, Justin Emrich’s demonstration lesson in the final in-person meeting was unforgettable. 

Emrich passed around photos of objects significant to the story of American slavery — a cotton gin, an auction block, a handmade bag — and finally, a weather-beaten, nail-studded board.  Unlike the photographs, the board itself was physically present, and as the teacher-participants passed it around the room and felt its rough, weathered texture, Emrich told them of its origins — part of a cabin made for and by enslaved people on a Louisiana plantation. He also shared its current resting place: on Emrich’s shelf, where he looks at it every day. It serves as a powerful reminder of Emrich’s mission: educating his students — and the wider world — about the history of American slavery.

Emrich has shared the board in his own classroom many times — never, he says, without at least one student being moved to tears. This year’s cohort of fellow educators was no exception: as one participant put it, “the significance of that one material object magnified all these connections…that’s what we want kids to do, too.” 

Emrich has been teaching for 19 years, 16 of them focused on eighth-grade American history. In 2016, he was awarded the distinction of Ohio History Teacher of the Year. Despite this success, Emrich came to realize that his lessons, however engaging, weren’t challenging students to come to grips with the difficult parts of American history. He had a realization: “I’m not doing right by my students of color, but I’m also not doing right by my white students, in that I’m only giving them heroes that look like them.”  

To “do right” by his students also required “doing right” by himself, and that meant finding the information and stories that he himself had never been taught. When the chance arose to participate in the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme’s Difficult Subjects: K-12 Teaching Institute on American slavery, Emrich knew this was exactly what he needed to continue his journey. 

While Emrich had been researching on his own for some time, the Difficult Subjects institute took things to another level. Led by Faculty Director and Associate Professor of History Hasan Kwame Jeffries, the Difficult Subjects: K-12 Teaching Institute brings together elementary, middle and high school teachers from Central Ohio for an exploration of multidisciplinary approaches to understanding and teaching difficult subjects in America’s past and present. 

Emrich shows students — and reminds himself — that slavery is interwoven throughout the entirety of our national story: “But the truth is that it's there at all times.”

At the Institute, Emrich was able to meet and talk with historians like Edward E. Baptist, author of The Half That Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making Of American Capitalism and Bethany Jay — at least one of whose books Emrich argues every college student should be required to read before graduation. Just as valuably, Emrich says, he was able to share with and learn from other teachers across the education system. It was this collaboration that Emrich found the most valuable for his own teaching practice: “Sitting down with 12,15 other teachers and discussing: how does this look in the classroom? You need to talk it out with other people.” 

Since then, Emrich has continued to talk it out with others, both his own students and the participants at the Difficult Subjects institute, where he returns each year to share lessons, advice and solidarity. 

Most importantly, his own teaching has transformed as a result of his quest to “do right by [his] students.” For one thing, he no longer teaches slavery as an isolated subject, taught early in the year as part of the middle passage, then forgotten for months until the Civil War rolls around in spring semester. Now, Emrich shows students — and reminds himself — that slavery is interwoven throughout the entirety of our national story: “But the truth is that it's there at all times.”

Emrich’s classroom often hosts tough conversations, an element that he argues is key to real student learning: “We  have a responsibility to learn this…it happened, and it left this lasting legacy on our country.”

Emrich’s lesson plans rely on as many primary sources as possible — his students, too, have passed around the board from the slave cabin — in an effort to get them to recognize the humanity and individuality of enslaved people: “I want my students to see what happened to these individuals. I want multiple perspectives brought in… we need to make sure we're using the words of the people that were enslaved.” This means that Emrich’s classroom often hosts tough conversations, an element that he argues is key to real student learning: “We  have a responsibility to learn this…it happened, and it left this lasting legacy on our country.”

Hands-on lessons informed by the Difficult Subjects institute, designed to elicit and stretch student empathy, can have a major impact on students’ future lives — what he calls “making students better people through history.” His goal is nothing less than a better society for all: “I want to think that I planted seeds that grew into a tree that made this country better, better for all.” And his students’ reactions bear these efforts out. As one told him at the end of the year, “Every day I knew I'd learn something new and be smarter, not just in history but as a person.” 

A 50-minute eighth grade history period might seem like “just” middle school, but the stakes are really that high. As Emrich puts it, the goal of any good teacher is to change the world. And with help from the Difficult Subjects institute and the constant reminder of the weathered gray board on his shelf, Emrich is continuing to do just that.