Dr. Boutte’s project focuses on the revitalization of indigenous African knowledges among people in the African Diaspora. The curriculum project focuses on content that will be used in Africancentric Saturday schools and for a P-12 curriculum on Teaching African and African American History. Key themes include helping children and educators engage in leaning about African Diasporic history as a healing antidote against oppression. Dr. Boutte emphasizes that teaching children and ourselves the rich legacies of African thought and morality can be a restorative and healing process-not only for African people, but for humanity at large.

Dr. Hopkins’ involvement in the Kamtok project is two-fold. First, Professor Hopkins seeks to focus
on language and area studies to build knowledge, develop international relationships, and collect materials for curriculum development of college courses, particularly in Elementary Education and Child and Family studies. Secondly, he will facilitate informational sessions for college recruitment, encouraging Cameroonian students to enroll as full-time students at Voorhees College in Denmark, South Carolina, USA.

Dr. Greene’s project is focused on the pedagogical enhancement of critical and Diaspora literacy
development as a means for raising students’ consciousness through writing. She will collect
readings, writing, research, artifacts, and photos to share in an English course at Benedict College.
These materials will be used as aids for developing students’ power to use contextual language to
facilitate critical thinking. Of particular interest is the development of a dialogue series involving
students and faculty as a means for achieving a full scope of the critical literacy development
intent.

Outside of the classroom, it is imperative that students that do not understand and comprehend mathematics receive tutoring. Ishmael’s project will focus on the importance of peer tutoring of the native people in Cameroon while communicating in the most widespread language of the country, Cameroonian Pidgin English.

The purpose of Saudah’s project (Kamtok? Whatcha Talkin About?: Exploring African Diaspora Literacy with Elementary Students) is to increase elementary students’ African diaspora literacy utilizing knowledge, resources, and artifacts acquired during the Kamtok experience. Students will demonstrate their knowledge and understanding through the creation of digital, written, and drawn journal entries, lineage inquiries, artistic presentations, and other means as determined by the students. A digital and print resource collection will be maintained and shared with students, families, educators, and community members.

Julia will build a teacher education unit that uses historical background and critical race theory to illuminate the ways that white and wealth supremacies have created largely monolingual South Carolina classrooms where speakers of African American Language (AAL) and all non-mainstream English languages and dialects are psychologically and academically assaulted. The unit will give educators tools such as text sets, activities, & projects. The project will recruit a collective of educators committed to AAL-rooted multilingual instructional strategies that feed multilingualism, student self-determination and liberation. This collective will organize within and between schools, co-creating education as a practice of individual and collective liberation/decolonization/healing to uproot education as a tool of assimilation and assault.

Dr. Hightower will conduct a comparative analysis of Cameroonian educator preparation programs with regards to preparing prospective educators in the teaching of reading. Upon return, the knowledge gained will help to inform curriculum revisions in coursework to be implemented in the fall of 2018 and reading instruction at the Benedict College Child Development Center.

As the technology expert, Michael will develop a comprehensive online tool that will chronicle the Kamtok Project. He plans to list each participants project, including photos, video and narrative that will become a repository and future resource for schools in the Columbia area and potentially throughout the US. Additionally, Michael will assess the technical ability of the country to see if there are any opportunities to connect with schools while we are abroad. The website will take full advantage of all social media outlets as well as other digital technology to achieve this goal and extend its usefulness as far as possible.

Dr. Johnson’s project focuses on the revitalization of indigenous African knowledges among people in the African Diaspora. The curriculum project focuses on content that will be used in Africancentric Saturday schools and for a P-12 curriculum on Teaching African and African American History. Key themes include helping children and educators engage in leaning about African Diasporic history as a healing antidote against oppression. Dr. Johnson emphasizes that teaching children and ourselves the rich legacies of African thought and morality can be a restorative and healing process-not only for African people, but for humanity at large.

Dr. Johnson’s project, Telling Our Stories; Sharing Our Lives: Storytelling as the Heart of Resistance, is a curriculum unit which uses culturally relevant literature, specifically trickster tales, to engage students in critical thinking, collaboration, and authentic writing. Almost every oral tradition in the world has trickster figures, and African and African American culture are no exception. Passed from generation to generation, trickster tales illuminate resiliency of the human spirit. These stories’ form provides a perfect platform to study archetype analysis, literary functions, and diverse narrative structures. Since the tales are rich in the oral tradition, students can analyze how storytelling is used as a tool for survival, a way of remembering, and a call to action.

Martay’s project, The Sound of Music, is an interdisciplinary unit exploring connections between Cameroonian and African American culture, music and literature. She plans to incorporate music with a fourth grade unit on sound.

Ricardo’s project will explore issues in the Cameroonian education related to recruiting and retaining  male teachers. He also plans to compare male teachers’ incorporation of the dimensions of African American Culture to that of female teachers.

Dr. Selassie's research project comparatively examines the cultural-rhetorical and linguistic expressions between African Americans' African American English Vernacular (AAVE) and Cameroonian's Kamtok.

Dr. Smith’s Project, Telling Our Stories; Sharing Our Lives: Storytelling as the Heart of Resistance, is a curriculum unit which uses culturally relevant literature, specifically trickster tales, to engage students in critical thinking, collaboration, and authentic writing. Almost every oral tradition in the world has trickster figures, and African and African American culture are no exception. Passed from generation to generation, trickster tales illuminate resiliency of the human spirit. These stories’ form provides a perfect platform to study archetype analysis, literary functions, and diverse narrative structures. Since the tales are rich in the oral tradition, students can analyze how storytelling is used as a tool for survival, a way of remembering, and a call to action.

Evaluating the plight of educating African American students, with emphasis on African American males, Dr. Ware’s project will be conducted through the lens of drug therapy regimens. It is plausible that a greater understanding of the properties of medications, including but not limited to active and inactive ingredients, shapes, and colors, can be instructive to the educational pilgrimage of African American students. Different components of medication therapies are incorporated to various degrees to create a safe and effective drug product for the end user. Similarly, a diversity of academic approaches to African American youth have to be proportionately inserted into their development to generate safe and effective products for society. Therefore, the objectives of this curriculum project are to parallel education and medication.