'I want to understand this better': Crestwood teacher to study mistreatment in American West
When Crestwood Middle School students are on summer break, one of their teachers will be learning new things about American history to take back into the classroom next school year.
Kimberly Marfy, a teacher at Crestwood Middle School, will participate in a workshop for educators sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. She will spend six days in Wyoming this summer, learning about mistreatment of marginalized groups in the American West.
Marfy was one of 72 educators selected from among 175 applicants for the program. She will receive a $1,300 stipend to cover her travel and lodging costs.
Marfy, who has been a teacher for 33 years, teaches eighth grade American history. Her lessons focus on 1492 to the post-Civil War reconstruction era of 1877.
She said she annually tries to spend her summers learning something that she can take back to her classroom.
"Every summer, I try to do something that makes me a better teacher," she said.
She said she applied to "every workshop that looks like it would apply" to her lessons, including this one, and hasn't gotten in previously. This time, she said, she believes her application was successful after she explained that she wanted to present an accurate picture of history to students.
"I want to understand this better," she said. "It's important to understand history for what it is."
"Echoes of History: Mistreatment and Incarceration in the American West" will teach educators about the mistreatment of marginalized groups in the American West, primarily Native Americans, German immigrants during World War I and Japanese Americans during World War II. About 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, were incarcerated at Heart Mountain, Wyo., and nine other camps around the country.
During the workshop, which takes place June 18 through June 24, the educators will spend six days learning about the Japanese experience in the United States. The workshop, the endowment states, focuses on "the racism and prejudice faced by the immigrants, how their paths intersected with Wyoming's Native American communities and the multigenerational mental health trauma that many members of the incarcerees' families still suffer today."
Marfy, who lives in Tallmadge, said she never heard much about Japanese internment camps growing up. Because her history lessons focus on an earlier era of American history, she said she hasn't yet taught it to her students.
But she anticipates she will find a way to convey her experience this summer to Crestwood students, just as she passed on to them the lessons she learned when she toured the White House previously.
"You just learn so much when you go there," she said.
Reporter Diane Smith can be reached at 330-298-1139 or dsmith@recordpub.com.
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Crestwood teacher to study history of mistreatment in American West
