If the phrase "social studies" takes you back to dusty textbooks filled with information that did not seem applicable to your life, MKE Roots is designed to make it relevant again.
MKE Roots is a project from Marquette University's Center for Urban Research, Teaching, and Outreach, designed to help Milwaukee-area teachers incorporate local history into their social studies curriculum. The program includes online resources for teachers, as well as a weeklong summer institute where Milwaukee-area teachers visit sites of local history and brainstorm ways to bring that history to their classrooms.
Last year, project Director Dr. Melissa Gibson said that the program's "hypothesis is that by engaging young people through their teachers ... that their understanding of themselves and their communities will be transformed," she said. "That will lead to some kind of measurable change in achievement, particularly in their history and civics knowledge."
But earlier this summer, MKE Roots’ federal grant funding was abruptly cut, along with about 20 programs nationwide. In its place, the Trump administration is now funding civics education that commemorates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
So what does this mean for MKE Roots and the future of civics education in Milwaukee?
A model for getting students engaged in social studies
In past years, Cepia-Grace Buchanan assigned her 7th and 8th grade students to develop research projects on a historical figure. After attending MKE Roots' summer institute last year, Buchanan now has her students complete a research project on a local historical figure of their choosing.
The difference in engagement was noticeable once the focus was on local figures.
"The same spark I had last summer was the spark they had when I introduced it to my class," she says. "They were totally geeked about it."
Buchanan says her students chose figures from both past and present, including civil rights leader Vel R. Phillips, Milwaukee founder Soloman Juneau, historian Sergio González and current Mayor Cavalier Johnson. Buchanan says she wanted to focus on local history because it is easier for students to see themselves in figures that made history here.
"When you teach them about the dead presidents, they're looking at you like 'Why is that relevant now?'" she says. "But when they started learning about these MKE figures ... they were working on their paper any minute that they could."
Buchanan went even further. In addition to reporting on the facts of their historical figure, students would research what their contemporaries said about them at the time. In other words, what was the gossip about them, and what really matters when considering someone's legacy?
"What's the 4-1-1, what's the information the internet's not just coming out and telling us," she says. "The students always associated being famous or world-renowned with popularity ... but these people weren't always popular yet still affected our community in great ways."
In Buchanan's case, MKE Roots seemed to be doing what it received federal grant funding to do. It sparked an interest in local history within a Milwaukee-area teacher, who then passed that spark onto her students.
In June, the program's funding abruptly ended.
"DEI" and educating students of color
MKE Roots' summer institute, a weeklong intensive bootcamp on local history for local teachers, is funded by a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Days before this year's institute, MKE Roots received a letter notifying them that their funding would end early.
Gibson remembers receiving the letter.
"They used a pretty formulaic letter that it turns out every discontinued program got," Gibson says. "The letter doesn't give specific information, but just says that the we no longer serve the priorities of the Trump administration."
MKE Roots was one of 20 programs that saw their funding cut. Kalyn Belsha, a senior reporter for Chalkbeat, says it is unusual for new presidential administrations to outright cancel grants that have already been awarded.
"It's not unusual for a new president and a new administration to say, 'These are my priorities.' But it is unusual to take away funding from something that was in the middle of their work," Belsha says.
Typically, programs would only see their federal funding pulled if there are documented cases of mismanagement. But this time, the reasoning was in-line of President Trump's overall political goals.
"In this particular case, the reason cited for the Biden-era grantees losing their money had to do with what the Trump administration says was diversity, equity and inclusion," Belsha says.
But this did not clarify much for programs like MKE Roots who lost their funding.
"A lot of [the defunded programs] did not see their work as connected to diversity, equity and inclusion, they just happened to be working with students of color, or the history of slavery was important to their work, or they were focused on helping students tell their own stories," Belsha says.
MKE Roots reported that of the schools represented by teachers in their program, 80% of students were students of color and 60% qualified for free or reduced lunch.
Commemorating 1776, with special preference for conservative academics
The Department of Education released a new grant to replace the grant that funded MKE Roots. Whereas the previous grant emphasized relevance to underserved students, this grant is looking for applications to design American history and civics programming that "directly commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States."
Gibson noticed major differences in the application language, and its emphasis on the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
"In the former version, preferences were focused on improving educational outcomes for underserved students," Gibson says. "The focus is now on commemorating the semiquincentennial and the founding principles and documents."
The word “semiquincentennial” in this context refers to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which will take place next year.
MKE Roots has reapplied for funding through the new grant. However, the application indicates that the Trump administration may already have plans for where that money will go.
"There were all sorts of preference priorities in the past, focused on specific subgroups of students and their achievement," Gibson says. "The only competitive preference right now is that your university has an independent center for civic thought that emphasizes the founding principles."
An independent center for civic thought is a relatively new phenomenon on college campuses. They tend to take politically conservative perspectives on American history, and bring Conservative speakers to college campuses. These include the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Civic Life and Leadership.
These centers often receive funding from Republican-controlled state legislatures or traditional Republican donors like the Charles Koch Foundation.
Belsha says these centers were created to be a home for conservative perspectives on college campuses, though not always by the university's choice.
"The foundation of these civic centers was in response to what conservative scholars saw as colleges being overly liberal," she says. "They're kind of seen as partisan, and not necessarily something the university wanted to start but that they were pushed to start."
Who belongs?
Dr. Robert Smith, professor of history at Marquette University and director of the department that houses MKE Roots, says that MKE Roots already embodied the founding principles by helping students see American history as relevant to them.
"The more voices we include the better we get," Smith says. "What we should be doing continually is opening up those pathways to get to more meaningful definitions of democracy."
Smith believes Milwaukee-area educators will still find a way to make history relevant to today's students, whether the subject is Milwaukee in 1967 or Philadelphia in 1776.
"We can do this however it needs to be done," Smith says. "So if we want to go back to 1776, I can't wait to have students read the Declaration of Independence and tell me what it means to them today."
For Milwaukee teachers like Cepia-Grace Buchanan, she will not easily forget what she learned from MKE Roots. She has seen what focusing on local history does for her 7th and 8th grade students, and how it helps them feel like they belong in American history.
"Everyone just needs to feel like they belong, and this particular project does that," she says. "Especially for this age range when some of them are kind of lost or don't know who they are, this project does that for them."
