Mali Magic: Educator Workshop

In this online workshop, we invite teachers to explore ways they can use the Mali Magic digital platform to dive into questions of history and preservation, for middle school students and beyond.  Come together with other educators and get creative.

Our workshop leaders will lead us in navigating the multi-media contents of the site and a broader discussion on the work of historians and historical preservation.

We will:

• Explore different facets of the website, brainstorm ways they can be used in teaching/learning experiences. These include digitized manuscripts from the 1400s. While here, we will brainstorm and workshop ideas for lessons and lesson enhancement using Mali Magic.
• Learn about Dr. Abdel Kader Haidara, who rescued over 450,000 Malian manuscripts. We will share recorded BPL Programs, excerpts from books including the Badass Librarians of Timbuktu and peruse stories of Dr. Haidara featured on the Mali Magic platform. Together we will discuss some of the complex challenges he faced in preserving these documents
• Enhance students’ understanding of the work that historians do, the work of preservation, and the challenges historians face. What does it mean to be a historian and what are the stakes of preservation? In turn, how can young people be stewards of history?

About our Workshop Leaders

Fadwa Abbas was born and raised in Sudan and immigrated to the United States at the age of fourteen.  She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, and works as an educator.  She has taught students ranging from the age of five to the age of eighty years old. 

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a learner from East Palo Alto, CA, living in Brooklyn, NY. She is an artist with a sprawling, multiform practice, and an educator who offered Brooklyn Public Library patrons of all ages a site-specific body of work as 2019 Katowitz-Radin Artist-in-Residence, Scoring the Stacks. To learn more, please visit: kameelahr.com