This site was created by a group of pre-service elementary school teachers during the spring of 2023 as part of their .5-credit course Teaching Social Studies in the Elementary School. One component of the course is using primary sources to teach social studies topics to children. Students were asked to create a “journey box:” a collection of primary sources that they and other educators could use to teach about a particular person, topic, movement, or event. They chose topics that invite educators and children to grapple with the realities of people who are marginalized because of their social identities, and/or address a topic typically not included in elementary curriculum. The assignment is adapted from work by Dr. Cinthia Salinas and Dr. Sherry Field at the University of Texas-Austin. 

Each primary source includes a caption and set of open-ended questions that should be helpful to children as they learn from a primary source. Students also end their page with children’s books they recommended for teaching the journey box topic. The creators hope that by making their work public, other educators will find them useful for teaching liberatory social studies curriculum and be inspired to bring primary sources into their own teaching. While students indicate the grade levels they have in mind for each journey box, many are adaptable for any grade level, including beyond elementary. 

Students worked with Dr. Jen Andrella and Kyra Kellogg (undergraduate lab assistant) of the Abolition for All Time Humanities Lab to curate their journey boxes into public-facing, immersive web pages. As a digital project, students had to think critically about website construction and how to make this knowledge most accessible to educators. This website was built using WordPress.

Students will continue to have access to our site for editing and updating their work – and may continue adding to their journey boxes beyond the spring of 2023. If you have any comments or suggestions, please reach out to Dr. Jennifer McCarthy Foubert at jlfoubert [at] knox.edu.