Teaching Slavery in New England: Lessons for Your Classroom
Welcome to the final lesson plans created by the passionate educators of the inaugural Yale and Slavery Teachers Institute (YSTI). Held in July 2025, the program focused on Teaching Slavery in New England, giving K–12 educators a deeper understanding of the region’s history of enslavement through site visits in Rhode Island and Connecticut, expert-led workshops, and local resources.
During the program, educators were tasked to revise their lesson plans to incorporate these place-based insights. The resulting lessons span multiple grade levels and subjects, inviting students to think critically about the legacies of slavery and the individuals who shaped New England’s past.
We invite you to explore and adapt these lessons for your own classrooms. At the bottom of this page, you’ll also find highlights of educators bringing these lessons to life, along with reflections on how revising and teaching them shaped their understanding and practice.
Please note: These lesson and unit plans are living documents and may continue to evolve. All materials are current as of November 2025.
K-5 Lesson Plans
Amber Maly-Bingham
Old Saybrook, CT
Grade 2
Before She Was Harriet: Learning What Makes a Leader
During this unit, students will learn about power and slavery, resistance and the Underground Railroad and then use a core read aloud text to learn about Harriet Tubman.
Christina Griffin
New Haven, CT
Grade 3
Speaking in Code: Comparing Escape Language to Modern Slang
This lesson will focus on how the language of the enslaved people was used to communicate while excluding the oppressor.
Alejandra Corona-Ortega
New Haven, CT
Grades 4-5
This lesson plan invites students to analyze history of oppressed groups during the colonial period (1600-1750) by including narratives on a pre-existing timeline of U.S. History.
Tamara Anderson
West Haven, CT
Grade 2
Harriet Tubman: Her Life, Our History
In this lesson, second grade students will be able to dissect different components of Harriet Tubman’s identity using Lesa Cline-Ransome’s Before She Was Harriet.
Beth Milton
Manchester, CT
Grade 5
Freedom Braids: Slavery and Resistance in New England's Colonies
This lesson invites Grade 5 students to explore the often-overlooked history of slavery in colonial New England by examining how the region’s economy was connected to the transatlantic slave trade and how enslaved people resisted in both quiet and powerful ways.
Brook Taylor Stewart
West Haven, CT
Grade 5
In this lesson, students will be able to research information about an enslaved person to complete their own independent cosmogram projects which considers that person’s whole existence, including but also moving beyond the disruption of enslavement.
Gabrielle Bachoo &
Amy Puebla
East Hartford, CT
Grades 4-5
Rediscovering Home Before the Middle Passage
This lesson explores the consequences of slavery and the history of black resistance in the United States by using the picture book titled: The 1619 Project, Born on the Water. It guides students in understanding who they are individually and collectively while discovering historical truths.
Erika Blauch Rusley
Providence, RI
Grades 4-5
Black, Indigenous, and Enslaved People in the Revolutionary War
In this lesson, students will understand that Black, Indigenous, and enslaved people played vital roles in the Revolutionary War and New England history, recognize that slavery existed throughout all the colonies, explore the lives of those who served in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment and other enslaved participants, and grasp how the Constitution ultimately codified slavery despite the war’s ideals of freedom.
6-8 Lesson Plans
Diane Smith
Middletown, CT
Grades 7-12
Legacy of Crispus Attucks
In this lesson plan, students will engage in an inquiry-based exploration of Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre, focusing on both historical context and critical thinking skills.
Dena Vaillancourt
New Haven, CT
Grade 8
Contradictions of Liberty: Slavery and the American Revolution
In this lesson plan, students will be critically analyzing the Declaration of Independence, to see a more holistic history of the forming of the United States including its written promises and the reality of its actions.
Susannah Boersma
Greenwich, CT
Grade 7
Listening to Tituba's Voice: Lessons from The Crucible
This unit plan focuses on the voice and perspective of the character Tituba from The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Students will be asked to consider the voice that Tituba is given and reimagine her voice that could have been shared.
Maria Frederick
Redding, CT
Grade 8
Reading Between the Lines: Analyzing Fugitive Slave Ads and Laws
This lesson plan called Analyzing Fugitive Slave Ads focuses on the institution of slavery in Connecticut, with an emphasis on its connections to Fairfield County and the town of Redding. As a library media specialist, this lesson will be will be incorporated into a larger unit that the social studies teacher has already created for the Revolutionary War.
Alison Sylvester
Springfield, VT
Grade 7
A Brief History of Enslavement and Freedom Seekers in Springfield, Vermont
In this unit plan, students will be learning a brief overview of Chapter 1, Article 1 of the 1777 Vermont Constitution and the language used around “Rights of the Inhabitants of Vermont.” They will then will begin to think about and explore if there were stops on the Underground Railroad in Vermont and if enslaved people were in fact living in Vermont.
Joseph Guerrera
Bristol, CT
Grade 8
Shipped, Enslaved, and Insured. Connecticut's Role in Slavery.
Connecticut is often thought of as having a very small role in the institution of slavery this lesson aims to disprove that false narrative. It does this by showing records of slave ships built in Connecticut, runaway slave ads from towns and cities in Connecticut, and an insurance policy on a family of slaves made by a company based in Connecticut.
9-12 Lesson Plans
Jonathan Lopez
West Haven, CT
Grades 11-12
It Happened Here: The Hidden History of Slavery in New Haven
This 5-day unit invites students to explore the hidden history of slavery and Black resistance in New Haven through the lens of place-based inquiry.
Amanda McCarroll
West Hartford, CT
Grades 9-12
Indigenous Enslavement in Colonial Connecticut
In this lesson, students will engage with primary sources about the enslavement of Indigenous
peoples in the region, and potentially their own towns during the colonial period.
Colleen Simon
West Hartford, CT
Grades 8-12
This particular lesson follows lessons on the Pequot War and Treaty of Hartford. The students use primary and scholarly secondary documents to answer the question as in what ways did the enslavement of the Pequot after the Pequot War connect to the broader system of the transatlantic/intra-Atlantic slave trade.
Sara Reed
Lamoille, VT
Grade 9
Indigenous Slavery in New England: Stolen Lives
This lesson focuses on Indigenous slavery itself: a quick review of Indigenous slavery in New England; an examination of a primary source about two Indigenous slaves and their story; an exploration of the Stolen Relations database, which collects Indigenous slavery records; and a video of Loren Spears of the Narragansett Tribe explaining her perspective on that time period.
Stephanie Sperber
West Hartford, CT
Grades 9-12
Examining Black Agency, Resistance, and Empowerment in 19th Century Connecticut
This lesson explores the many forms of resistance and self-determination expressed by Black individuals and communities in New England, challenging the myth that slavery and its consequences were solely Southern phenomena.
Katherine Wilhelm
Providence, RI
Grade 9
This lesson plan focuses on slavery in Colonial Rhode Island, which built its entire economy around trade. Students will learn the history of this trade and will highlight the experiences of enslaved people during this time.
Christine MacGregor
Guildford, CT
Grade 11
Images of Resistance
This lesson will fall into a unit on the defining characteristics of the American identity by defining and analyzing the role of resistance to slavery through primary sources.
Rachel Torres
Newtown, CT
Grades 11-12
Newtown's Hidden History: Slavery in a Northern Town
This three to five day unit plan involves a deep dive into the existence of slavery in Newtown, CT where from 1790-1820 there were a total of 71 enslaved people. Students will reflect on how to responsibly construct stories from fragmentary evidence.
Nicole Leonard
Wolcott, CT
Grades 10-12
The Story of Slavery in Connecticut
In this lesson plan, Students will act as public historians or curators tasked with designing an educational product that tells the story of slavery in Connecticut. They will synthesize information from slave laws, economic data, census records, and personal narratives (or gaps in the record) to present a nuanced account.
Candi Fulcher
New Haven, CT
Grade 12
It’s Something to Be Free? Resistance Through Living, Legacy, and Liberation
The lessons, “It’s Something to Be Free? -Teaching Resistance Through Living, Legacy, and Liberation” will explore the role of Free Blacks in the North (Connecticut/Rhode Island) during slavery: how they built community, acquired wealth, resisted the narrative of Black people as less than human (i.e., "savages"), and supported freedom seekers and emancipated Blacks. The goal of this lesson is to highlight the power of existing, thriving, and surviving as a form of resistance.
Denise Martinchek
New Britain, CT
Grades 9-12
Lesson 1: The Whaling Industry as a Form of Resistance to Slavery
Lesson 2: The CT Colony and the Promise of America
Students will learn the historical context of the whaling industry in New England and engage in a source exploration to include black and indigenous voices in the story while also explaining how blacks and indigenous utilized the whaling industry as an act of resistance against slavery but also a continuation or inevatable contribution to the transatlantic slave trade.
YSTI 25, the Classroom, and the Community
Stephanie Sperber's APUSH class field trip to Yale's Campus
Read about their experience at Yale .
