Educators Excited to Use Genealogy in Classrooms After Workshop at UVI

On Saturday, 31 eager educators from St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix flocked to the 13D Research and Strategy Innovation Center at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas campus, to attend a genealogy workshop and garner new tools and resources for their classrooms. The educators can then use these tools and resources to make personal connections with students in learning about history.

The workshop, “Using Genealogy to Teach Inclusive History,” was created in collaboration with American Ancestors, the Caribbean Genealogy Library, the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Virgin Islands Children Museum.

Sophia Aubin, president of the Genealogy Library, Dee Baecher-Brown, president of the CFVI, Rhonda R. McClure, senior genealogist at American Ancestors, and Dustin Axe, American Ancestors youth genealogy curriculum coordinator, led presentations for the workshop. According to Kim Porter-Fluellen, media coordinator, the workshop was first piloted in Maine to help students learn genealogy and receive an entry point into 10 Million Names (an initiative launched by American Ancestors intended to help the 44 million descendants of slavery trace their family stories back to the 10 million people who were enslaved in pre- and post-colonial America between the 1500s and 1865).