Summer-2020-Advisor

CEA RETIRED NEWS

SUMMER 2020 CEA ADVISOR 15

PASSION FOR COMMUNITY, RACIAL JUSTICE KEEPS RETIRED HISTORY TEACHER ENGAGED

Guilford educator helps shape inclusive curriculum, remembrances, community

After 25 years as an educator at Guilford’s Adams Middle School, Dennis Culliton retired last year. But the former eighth-grade history teacher has been as active as ever with projects to promote racial justice and support students, seniors, and members of his community and beyond. Confronting COVID-19 Less than a year into Culliton’s retirement, the state shut down in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Recognizing that many neighbors were at greater risk of complications from COVID-19, Culliton helped start Guilford Cares, a program that works with the town’s senior services, local grocery stores, and the Ethan Miller Song Foundation to deliver groceries to seniors. “We developed a shopping network for our senior residents,” he says. “Guilford Senior Services are the experts here, and they collected grocery lists and payments. I was the main dispatcher, and I organized a network of more than 100 volunteers who would do the grocery shopping and delivery, at times working two shifts per day.” At its peak, Guilford Cares organized as many as 90 shopping and delivery trips per week, logging over 1,000 trips since the project’s inception, on April 1. More recently, Culliton has turned his attention back to an initiative he started in 2017.

shared at a community ceremony for the installation of the Witness Stone, published in a commemorative pamphlet, and archived on our website,” says Culliton, who has also tracked down descendants of enslaved people in Connecticut. The project has been replicated in six communities and is growing statewide. “We hope for this to become a digital library of the research, knowledge, and memory that we acquire,” he says. Learn more at witnessstonesproject.org . Confronting—and changing— perpetuated in traditional history curricula, even today. Current and future educators, he says, need to look at American history differently. To ensure that happens, the retired history teacher serves on an advisory group tasked with developing a more inclusive social studies curriculum for Connecticut’s schools—one that looks at African American and Latino achievements, literature, culture, and art instead of limiting discussions to slavery and civil rights. The group turned in its recommendations this summer, and courses will become available at all Connecticut public high schools by the start of the 2021- 2022 school year. curriculum Systemic racism, Culliton points out, is often

“As soon as we started to see death by race from COVID, as well as the deaths of men and women like Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, I wanted to refocus my energy on the Witness Stones Project,” he says. Culliton is co-founder and

Retired teacher Dennis Culliton (far right) speaks with attendees at West Hartford’s first Witness Stones Project installation in 2018.

memory of that person through written records. Having done extensive research into slavery in Guilford, Madison, and other Connecticut towns and cities, Culliton points out that according to the 1774 Census, slavery existed in just about every community in the state. Students participating in the project install a commemorative Witness Stone—a cement and bronze marker that recalls an enslaved individual—at a site of significance, such as where that person lived, worked, or prayed. Engraved on the bronze cap is the person’s name, along with his or her trade and whether he or she was emancipated or died enslaved. “What we learn about

director of the nonprofit, whose aim is to restore the history and honor the humanity and contributions of enslaved individuals in Connecticut’s communities. Confronting the past “In order for our communities to grow, heal, and reflect our ideals of justice and equality,” he says, “it’s essential for us to acknowledge and confront the painful times in our history when we haven’t lived up to those ideals. We cannot change the past, but through remembrance and reconciliation, we give a voice to the voiceless by uncovering their stories.” The Witness Stones Project partners with local schools and historical societies to assist students in researching the history of an enslaved individual from their community and reconstructing the

Retired and making a difference in your community? Share your story with bmurraydanb@sbcglobal.net .

each person, through students’ research, is