Discover Harriet Beecher Stowe!
Harriet is an important American icon who influenced literature, history, and culture worldwide in her lifetime. She was also a courageous social activist. The legacy of her sentimental novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin continues to have impact today.
Harriet lived during a time when women were not encouraged to speak up; especially not in public. Despite this fact, she found a way to use her voice to influence positive change: she wrote a book with enough power to change people’s minds!
At the Stowe Center we like the phrase: One person can only do so much!
We know that one person’s actions CAN make a positive difference. Here is a list of ways to make a difference. What else would you add to the list?
- Organize school activities that support self-confidence, leadership, and positive student interactions.
- Start a club at your school, library, or community center that raises awareness about a social issue.
- Participate in Salons at Stowe.
- Learn how to organize and facilitate community conversations at school: Tell your teacher about Stowe Center School Programs and Outreach.
Helpful links for more information:
TEACHITCT.ORG.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center has also uploaded three unique lesson plans for teachers in collaboration with CT Humanities. These classroom exercises and activities, available at TeachItCT.org, can be used in conjunction with a visit before or after an on-site visit or virtual visit.
Words Change the World: Teaching About Racial Injustice Through the Work of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Ta-Nehisi Coates (To what extent can fiction and non-fiction both help us learn, change, and adapt our understanding of an historic or contemporary moment?)
Learning by Looking: Reading a Post-Civil War Photograph (This is a deep looking exercise using one photograph from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center collection.)
Cruel and Unusual: An Interdisciplinary Study of Incarceration Across Two Centuries (Uses Albert Woodfox’s Solitary, the virtual reality experience in the Stowe Center multi-media gallery, and Newgate Prison records from the Stowe Archive to create a series of inquiries for students around solitary confinement and the 8th amendment, and the idea that “words can change the world.”)
writing by United States high school and college students that is making a tangible impact on a social justice issue critical to contemporary society.
Learn more about the Harriet Beecher Stowe educational programing HERE
