Though the Selma City School System is predominantly composed of African-American students, some feel the curriculum does not reflect the demographics.

On Wednesday, Wallace Community College held the last of a three-day Infusion Seminar instructing teachers in the area on how to teach African history and culture in the proper way, with the proper mindset to this demographic.

The seminar had sessions for teachers on how to infuse the curriculum and also a portion for the students, teaching them more about their heritage.

Obi Egbuna, a teacher for an activity center in the Washington D.C. area, spoke on how to creatively infuse and teach African history.

“We want to use theatre as a vehicle to infuse African history into the school curriculums,” Egbuna said.

He said many people like W.E.D DuBois wrote plays that used African history as a tool to educate about their culture as well as those in the Harlem Renaissance like Marsden Hartley.

“We have a rich history of using theatre to infuse our history, but at this moment in history what we are trying to do is merge the experiences of slavery and colonialism and taking a pan African approach to history through children’s theatre.”

This week Egbuna and 25 children put on a play written by Egbuna, titled “The War In the Classroom.”

“This is a tribute to some of the icons in African ancestry who used the classroom to teach history and fight for justice,” Egbuna said.

Egbuna summarized the methodology he uses in his classroom and the methodology that he would like to see adopted in this area in education.

“When I teach in D.C. the only homework that I give the students is to go home and discuss what they learned in class and ask their parents if they have ever been exposed to that information,” Egbuna said. “If they haven’t, that means the student taught the parent because in African tradition the child is just as responsible for educating the nation as the adult.”

He said this methodology gives the students empowerment, discipline and self-esteem.

Another class taught by Dr. Robert White on how to develop the right mindset for students, mirrored the same idea as Egbuna; the idea that students will be empowered by their education.

“These students have not been taught the relationship between acquiring knowledge and success,” White said. “Our students do not understand the relationship between knowledge and liberation, and that is what narratives like Frederick Douglas’ reveal to you.”