FOR EDUCATORS
The David Ruggles Center for History and Education has a longstanding commitment to education, with hundreds visiting our museum for programs and walking tours each year. We work with elementary, middle and high school students as well as colleges and adult learners.
February 2023
Dear Fellow Educators,
The David Ruggles Center is pleased to say that its educational program is back in full swing. Fall 2022 was filled with school visits ranging across all grade levels.
For middle and high school, we offer our Interactive Curriculum. Students dive deep into our history with active, project-based learning. They evaluate and interpret the same original sources we use to create their own narratives of what happened in Florence in the 1840s. Students become critical thinkers, historians and tour guides: they work collaboratively to create spoken presentations on what they have learned.
This past fall we welcomed students back to the Ruggles Center. They taught one another the history of the abolitionists who founded a utopian community here based on the principle of “radical equality”: one person/one vote regardless of race, gender, religion or social standing. The founders organized themselves under a constitution in order to implement their core values — a lesson in “civics education”. We partnered with Amherst Middle School on a “Civics Teaching and Learning Grant” and invite other school districts to partner with us this year.
We developed a grade school curriculum that is also based on hands-on learning. This includes activities in our garden program in cooperation with Grow Food Northampton. Every fifth grader in Northampton public schools took part in this program in October.
Our Interactive Curriculum is open source and fully accessible online. Our staff is available for in-person or remote classroom visits and professional development workshops. Contact us at info@davidrugglescenter.org, attention: education.
Best Wishes for the New Year,
David Ruggles Center Education Committee
Tom Goldscheider
Kim Gerould
Kevin McQuillan
Irene Rosenthal
SCHOOL VISITS
We host a broad spectrum of visiting school groups including elementary, middle and high school classes from public, private, charter and alternative schools. We bring critical learning to life using our local history and primary source materials that engage students at all levels.
Our programming is tailored to the needs of your classroom. We offer a variety of options including half/full days, walking tours, museum classes and interactive project-based learning. For more information on scheduling your classroom visit, contact us at info@davidrugglescenter.org.
Our programming supports the revised Massachusetts Social Studies Frameworks.
Group visits and walking tours cost $7.00 per student with a minimum fee of $70.00. Adult chaperones are asked to make a contribution to the museum.
INTERACTIVE CURRICULUM
We now offer a free-source curriculum package on our history for classroom use. Your students work with our collection of primary sources and then teach one another the history. Their work culminates in a visit to Florence where they lead their own tour of the village. Important concepts surrounding the struggle to end slavery are brought to life through a vivid cast of local characters. For more click below.
CHILDS GARDEN
Your visit may now include a stop at the Florence Community Garden where we grow heirloom crops on what was Association farmland. We offer hands-on activities connected to our plot named for famed abolitionists David and Lydia Maria Child who worked this land. You park by the Austin Ross Homestead, a designated Underground Railroad site surrounded by open playing fields.
“We took a group of 130 students from the Amherst Regional Middle School to Florence to work with the David Ruggles Center. The amount of time, effort, and preparation put in by the members of the David Ruggles Center was evident and impressive. Students had an opportunity to be in the field, doing real history work where the history took place. It was a great experience, one that more students should have an opportunity to have.”
“My second/third grade classroom took a field trip to the David Ruggles Center as part of our unit on the Underground Railroad. The visit was a highlight of our studies. In the museum we were treated to a captivating lecture on David Ruggles’ life, as well as some of the other local heroes of the abolitionist movement: Sojourner Truth, Lydia Maria Child, William Lloyd Garrison, and Frederick Douglass who lived or visited right here in Florence! The students then spent time working in pairs, exploring the museum by answering questions on a self-guided scavenger hunt. The visit complemented our classroom lessons beautifully and made history come alive for the students. The David Ruggles Center is a treasure and a destination every student should experience.”
“Having students lead the walking tour of Florence was the culmination of our collaboration with the David Ruggles Center and Tom Goldscheider. Tom was great — he came to class twice and was readily accessible for questions on line. The task of presenting in this way was a great challenge — it made it real and added a little push in the direction of preparedness. We worked for two weeks using the source materials that were available on the website. Having everything at our fingertips is wonderful, though not necessarily easy, work to discern so it really activates critical thinking. This history and documentation are a great way for students to learn to read and interpret information that is largely unfamiliar to them. I believe that knowing they would actually share what they had researched and narrating the life stories of radical local citizens of the 1840s fostered a sense a pride in themselves and our local community.”
“The David Ruggles Center offers a very comprehensive experience. As an educator, I learned a great deal about the abolitionist movement and how the people associated with community lived their politics, by producing silk and harvesting sugar beets. A great learning experience — finding out about David Ruggles’ role in the Underground Railroad, his work with runaway slaves in New York City, and then the water cure in Florence.”
“In the spring of 2022, I brought two classrooms of third graders to the David Ruggles Center with the hopes of getting kids excited about the amazing history in their backyards. It was fantastic. Our docents set us on a scavenger hunt of artifacts in the center and then took us on a walking tour. Highlights included our time in the Park Street Cemetery and walking by Sojourner Truth’s home. We talked about the trip for weeks afterward and made a display for the whole school; it was definitely a highlight of their third grade year.”
“I recently brought my ninth grade history class to visit the David Ruggles Center. Our class drew on the recent violence at protests to the removal of the monument to Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia to explore questions about what the history of the U.S. has been, and how we remember it. Our visit to the David Ruggles Center perfectly supported our discussions of chattel slavery and organized resistances against it. Tom Goldscheider, our guide, provided us access to copies of some striking primary documents, such as a document from a slave auction indicating prices for enslaved people. We also had the chance to explore the museum. Despite its small size, there was a wealth of information about David Ruggles’ life, his experiences as a radical abolitionist, the people, more famous than he, whom he helped and influenced, such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. Students were surprised that they hadn’t heard before of this important and inspirational activist. They were proud to learn that he worked in the same community that some of them now live in. And we were all inspired by his audacious work.
Mr. Goldscheider also offered a tour of the neighborhood, where we were able to see a number of houses that had once been stops on the Underground Rail Road, or where formerly enslaved people lived while they worked in nearby factories.
Our visit to the Ruggles Center was incredibly informative and inspirational. I look forward to future visits.”