As a White woman who has never been to Africa, it has always been extremely important to me to seek out sources of information that come directly from those with lived experiences. Otherwise, how else are we to know that the information we share with students is accurate and reflective of real people’s lives? Komla Dumor raises key points about why this is necessary and what it means to be an “expert.” I really appreciated what he said about not assuming someone is an expert on a particular place in Africa just because they speak the language. I question often how well the material I offer students reflects everyday lives and not generalities. 

Over the past 5 years, as my teaching partner and I have developed and refined our curriculum about Africa, we have steadily added more and more first-person sources. It has been challenging at times to find material that is age-appropriate for third graders and that doesn’t perpetuate stereotypes, and we often preface videos and articles with saying that this is one person’s/group’s perspective and does not speak for a whole people. YouTube has been a great source of videos featuring people who live in a particular place, as have the many new picture books written by African authors. One area that has been a challenge for us to navigate in keeping materials accessible to third graders while also being in-depth enough for them to learn something significant is bringing AI into our resource gathering. AI has been great at tracking down sources we might not otherwise find, but it can be tricky to double-check every piece of information it pulls together on a subject. At times it has filled a gap for us when we couldn’t find information about something; the video is a good reminder to peek behind the curtain of AI to go to the original source of the information.