History with History Teachers: Our First Mobile Learning Lab Workshop in Alexandria
Thanks to generous support from Virginia Humanities, we recently partnered with the Freedom House Museum in Alexandria for the first event in our Mobile Learning Lab Workshop series.
The Shockoe Institute’s Expanding Freedom exhibit may not open to the public until 2026, but we’re still making our way across the Commonwealth.
Thanks to the generous support of our friends at Virginia Humanities and in keeping with our mission to reveal the enduring impact of racial slavery on our shared American experience, the Shockoe Institute recently partnered with Freedom House Museum for the first event in our Mobile Learning Lab Workshop series. The Freedom House Museum in Alexandria, Virginia, is located in the remaining building of a business complex that trafficked thousands of Black men, women, and children to the Deep South between 1828 and 1861, a business which had strong ties to traffickers in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom.
This collaborative event was designed with a specific audience in mind: history educators. Presentations not only explored key themes central to the Institute’s mission but also sought feedback from participants on how our Learning Lab can best serve the Commonwealth’s students. So, on a bright morning in early August, 18 history teachers met Shockoe Institute and Freedom House staff at the Freedom House Museum for a day of learning, discussion, and exploration.
Shockoe Institute President & CEO Marland Buckner opened the event by asking the participants to examine an enduring American contradiction: the commitment to expanding human freedom as enshrined in our nation’s founding documents, alongside the stark reality of a hierarchy of human value that viewed human bondage as an economic necessity.
The teachers then began their journey with an introduction to the Freedom House Museum site. The museum staff described the role that Alexandria traffickers played in the development of a highly integrated, national network that moved thousands of enslaved people into the Deep South during the early 19th century.
Next, Dr. Gregg D. Kimball, the Shockoe Institute’s Senior Consulting Historian, used the Institute’s original research, scholarship, and resources to directly connect the Alexandria story to Richmond’s rise as the center of the Upper South’s trade in enslaved people in the last decades of the Antebellum era. The Institute’s location, in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom, was a center of the trade in enslaved people in America’s Upper South and became a key driver of economic growth nationally.
The teachers were also invited to take part in a hands-on, creative activity that sparked important discussions about how students learn and ways in which their classrooms could benefit from similar activities.
In addition to introducing these educators to the Shockoe Institute’s interdisciplinary approach and identifying the “enduring impact” evident in our country today, Buckner requested something truly indispensable:
Their candid feedback.
We wanted to know how these educators viewed the current approach to American slavery in Virginia classrooms, what they saw as effective (and ineffective) ways to engage students, what their needs were when teaching this topic, and how the Shockoe Institute could become a go-to resource for classroom teachers.
And we learned a lot:
Students respond to personalized, localized stories. They want to see how individuals and local stories connect to big, historical events. Teachers want to be able to convey the vast scale of the trade and its defining role as an economic engine. They want to see students respond with empathy. To connect with students, teachers like to draw comparisons between current events and the past as well as use reliable, trusted resources.
The feedback that we received from these passionate educators will be essential as we continue to improve the Shockoe Institute’s Learning Lab, identify the most effective ways for students to continue their learning journeys, and ultimately develop an immersive, impactful, and powerful experience that inspires all students and visitors to the Shockoe Institute to learn, reflect, and act.
