Dr. Terrence Roberts, Little Rock Nine Member, Addresses Bedford Students

Superintendent Jon Sills, Dr. Terrence Roberts, JGMS principal Kevin Tracey, and assistant principal ___ before the presentation. — Standing in front of a slide showing a young Terrence Roberts and the Little Rock Nine following an Alabama National Guard soldier into school in 1957, Superintendent Jon Sills, Dr. Terrence Roberts, JGMS principal Kevin Tracey, and assistant principal Matthew Mehler gathered before the presentation.

Submitted in partnership by Facing History and Ourselves and the Bedford Public Schools

Dr. Roberts addressing students from Bedford High School's law class and JGMS civics students — *Dr. Roberts addressing students from Bedford High School’s law class and JGMS civics students*

On Tuesday, November 18, Facing History and Ourselves and the John Glenn Middle School co-hosted an assembly for JGMS students and the BHS law class to hear Dr. Terrence Roberts, a member of the Little Rock Nine.

In 1957, Terrence Roberts was 15 years old when he joined eight other students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. What followed, for him and the other members of the Little Rock Nine, were days of fear, courage and uncertainty. Dr. Roberts travels around the country sharing his powerful story of individual choices, civic participation and sharing the legacy of his experience integrating Arkansas schools in the 1950s.

In his introduction, Principal Kevin Tracey thanked Superintendent Sills and Christine Butler, Brian Fong of Facing History and Ourselves, and JGMS’s o 8^th grade social studies teachers, Jim Nagle and Joe Casey, for their work in making this presentation a reality.

Impacted by last year’s series of anti-Semitic incidents, the Bedford Public Schools’ faculty elected to reinvigorate its commitment to multiculturalism, which for decades has been manifest in multiple professional development, curricular, and achievement gap-closing initiatives. After reviewing its curriculum, however, and determining that a more systematic approach is needed to engender anti-bias dispositions, the schools have begun to implement a number of new programs, among them, Teaching Tolerance curricula in the elementary grades and Facing History curricula in the 8^th grade.

The new 8^th grade social studies curriculum is divided into a half year of civics, which culminates in the annual Washington, D.C. field trip, and a half year of Facing History and Ourselves units that explore the interrelated themes of individual and group identity, the challenges of inclusion and exclusion for a healthy democracy, the lessons of passive abdication of individual responsibility in the Holocaust case study, and human agency and responsibility in the case study of the American Civil Rights movement.

To learn more

about Facing History and Ourselves, as well as additional resources available to educators please visit facinghistory.org.
about John Glenn Middle School, visit www.bedford.k21.ma.us.