Beyond the Walls: A Virtual Tour of the Worton Point African American School House
The Worton Point School House is an important landmark in the African American history of Kent County. The school house served students from the Worton Point, Melitota, and Fairlee African American communities from 1890 to 1958, when students were transferred to Chestertown. The school house building was later purchased by St. George's United Methodist Church. Since then, the building has served many purposes- a temporary worship space during the construction of the adjacent church building, a space for fellowship meetings and celebrations, and an exhibit space for local African American history and culture.
In 2020 and 2021 students at Washington College interviewed 5 former students of the Worton Point school house who shared what it was like to attend the school. These interviews informed the creation of the above virtual tour, interactive interpretive exhibit panels, 3D models and educational materials below. This research was supported by a Chesapeake Heartland: An African American Humanities Project fellowship.
Interactive
Interpretive
Panels
Hannah Flayhart and Leah Morris, students in Dr. Sara Clarke-De Reza's Spring 2021 Designing and Measuring Learning Experiences course used the museum's digital object and oral history collection to design three exhibit panels. Printed versions of these panels will serve as the basis of a traveling exhibit aimed at K-12 students, while interactive virtual versions will link viewers back to oral history clips, 3D models, and other digital museum objects.
*Click on any panel above to be redirected to the interactive ThingLink version.
3D Models
Material culture objects such as an enamel cup, box of dominoes or an old textbook can give us a glimpse into daily life not only in the school house but also into the daily lives of individuals living in rural Kent County during the years the building served as a school.
Students in Raven Bishop and Dr. Courtney E. Rydel's Orientation Explore program, as well as student Digital Imaging Consultants from VARDIS-the Virtual/Augmented Reality Digital Imaging Studio @ Miller Library worked to create this collection of 3D models of artifacts from the school house's collection.
Click on a model to learn more about each object and view it in 3D.
Airlee Ringgold Johnson, CH_CA_2021_SC_014_281
Elinore Black-Waits, CH_CA_2021_SC_014_283
Sylvester Sewell, CH_CA_2021_SC_014_285
Carolyn Brooks, CH_CA_2021_SC_014_282
Irene Moore, CH_CA_2021_SC_014_284
Joyce Hopkins, CH_CA_2021_SC_014_286
Oral History Interviews
Students in Dr. Julie Markin’s fall 2020 Museum Studies and spring 2021 Archaeological Methods courses conducted six oral history interviews with five Worton Point Schoolhouse alumni and one former Colemans school student. Resulting in over seven hours of oral history content, these interviews formed the basis for the development of the interpretive work associated with this project, with students curating selected clips to be used in the virtual tour and interactive interpretive panels.
Educational Materials
In Summer 2021, a team of Washington College faculty and staff will support Kent County teachers and Washington College students in a series of workshops to design curriculum that uses the Worton Point school house collection, as well as other pieces of the Chesapeake Heartland Archive, to create interdisciplinary K-12 materials.
Coming Summer 2022!
Related Objects
Browse the Chesapeake Heartland Digital Archive for other items related to “school.”
