Post Tagged with: "Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King"

ACS Students Learn About the Legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mrs. Fosbenner’s 3rd graders created special projects this week on the life and work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I have a dream.” Those memorable words are the centerpiece of a special history project that students in Mrs. Fosbenner’s 3rd grade class completed this week ahead of Monday’s national holiday honoring the late civil rights leader and minister, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The students created portraits of Dr. King, accompanied by excerpts from his famous “I Have a Dream” National Mall speech to a crowd of some 250,000 people at the 1963 March on Washington. The students were also challenged to list five ways they can help others in the spirit of Dr. King’s message. In addition to creating the portraits, the students are reading a Scholastic News article about Dr. King’s life and impact on society.

The 3rd grade class projects will hang in the hallway near their classroom throughout this month. Dr. King’s biography is also on display on a bulletin board in the hallway near the school library. The display promotes the theme: Speak Love, Think Love, Show Love based on 1 Corinthians 13:1-8.

Over the next week, our elementary students will be reading, writing, and watching videos about Dr. King. As one example, Mrs. McCarthy’s 2B class will be reading “Martin’s Big Words” and completing a writing piece entitled “Martin Had Big Dreams and So Do I?” Our Upper School students learn about the life and legacy of Dr. King throughout the school year as part of their history/social studies curriculum.

ACS is grateful for courageous leaders like Dr. King who have helped us understand and apply the biblical truth that in Christ, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one.” (Galatians 3:28)

4th Graders Hear First-Hand Account of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Life and Work

ACS 4th grade students had the unique opportunity this week to learn about the important work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King as a key leader in the civil rights movement from an ACS grandparent who met and interviewed Dr. King in the 1960s.  February is Black History Month and 4th grade teacher Eric Tardif invited Mr. John Frasier, who is 4th grader Xavier Johnson’s grandfather, to speak to the students on Thursday about his encounter with Dr. King and the impact of his work.

Mr. Frasier, who lives in Atlantic City, had a 34-year-long career in broadcasting and had the memorable opportunity as a reporter with radio station KPRS-AM in Kansas City to interview Dr. King in 1963.  Mr. Frasier showed the students a framed newspaper article from 1963 with a photo of him with Dr. King and a paper containing Dr. King’s autograph. “Dr. King believed in peaceful resistance and that’s what made him so different,” said Mr. Frasier. “He prayed and spoke about us all being together as one.”  Mr. Frasier talked about Dr. King’ s life-long efforts to eliminate segregation and racist policies in America, working tirelessly until his assassination in 1968. “As I look around this classroom and see the many students sitting together here from different ethnicities I can tell you that you are what Dr. King lived and died for; you are his dream come true,” Mr. Frasier said.