By News 12 Staff
West Hempstead High School has been doing the same Black history project for more than 10 years, but recently made a change.
Each year, United States history teacher Michael Paul has encouraged his high school students to get creative and think of an idea to honor Black history. “Rather than writing a paper about it, they do the research and create a museum display and that's the idea behind it,” Paul said.
During the pandemic, they decided to create a virtual museum. Nicholas DiBenedetto worked on the project with Paul and Stephanie Borrelli. He compiled all the projects and created a virtual museum. They kept the virtual museum idea after the children returned from remote learning.
“Maybe they're not great at taking tests, but they're amazing at drawing artwork,” Borrelli said. “So it's rewarding to see these kids and their talent that we don't normally get to see on a daily basis.”
The projects include posters, dioramas and music videos. Students are given full rein when creating creative ways to represent important individuals in United States history.