ROCKPORT — Two members of the Camden Hills Regional High School community will be facilitating a workshop for English teachers in Maine next month on the importance of introducing race, culture and identity into the classroom, though they need some financial assistance to do so. 

During the fall semester, Camden Hills English teacher Patti Forster challenged her students to explore race and identity of themselves and others through contemporary fiction novels, as well as the journey and interviews of Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi, authors of the non-fiction book Tell Me Who You Are. 

“Because we are a predominantly white school and state, I believe it is important to expose our students to races and identities beyond the Maine status quo,” said Forster. “I asked my students if more teachers should explore race and identity and use this book in their classrooms, and it was a 100% yes.”

With a vote of approval, Forster and Iris Eichenlaub, the school’s librarian, proposed a workshop idea for the Maine Council for English Language Arts state conference scheduled for March 20 in Portland. The conference is a way to share texts and ideas with teachers from around the state. 

The workshop, entitled “We Don’t Have All of the Answers, But We Know We’ve Got to Talk About Race, Culture & Identity With Our Students”, for high school and university students was accepted. 

The workshop will have participants clarify their own experiences with race, culture, and identity while providing them strategies, sources, and texts to help students explore race, culture, and identity.

As part of the workshop, Forster and Eichenlaub will share their own learning experiences of learning to be anti-racist educations, while sharing books, articles, podcasts and educators they have learned from. The duo will also share book recommendations and resources for English teachers to use with their students in the classroom. 

Last year, Forster and Eichenlaub taught a workshop at the same conference on student choice novel studies, in which students transfer their learning from whole class novel studies to a book of their choosing. 

For that workshop, all 34 workshop participants received a book from Forster and Eichenlaub, thanks to a donation from Forster’s son. 

“We gave away current fictional novels that the students enjoy and teaching pedagogy books that we appreciated,” said Forster. “This year I wanted to be able to give every teacher the book Tell Me Who You Are because it has over 100 interviews across the United States that provide a window for our students into the lives of folks they may not be exposed to here.”

After spending more than $1,000 of her own money on books for her classroom this year, a common practice among state educators Forster noted, Forster decided to start a GoFundMe page to see if enough small donations could be raised to gift the books to workshop participants. 

As of publishing time, the campaign has raised $580 of its $1,000 goal. On the fundraising page, Forster notes one book can be purchased for every $20 donation. 

Those interested in donating can click here. 

“Our goal with gifting this text to teachers is to support teachers in their work with Maine students,” said Forster.

Reach George Harvey at: sports@penbaypilot.com.