K-12 Education Programs

Worry Dolls Project/Proyecto Muñecas Quitapenas

 

kingstonmulticulturalfestival.org/worry-dolls/

The Guatemalan legend says, "Tell your worries to the worry dolls before you go to bed and put them under your pillow. In the morning, the dolls will have taken your worries away!"

Worry is an emotion we all have all experienced this past year, regardless of our culture or identity. Let's come together to turn our worries into art as we celebrate immigrant culture. This community craft project honoring the tradition of the Muñeca Quitapenas, Guatemalan Worry Dolls, is presented by The Reher Center and the Cornell Creative Arts Center.

In April and May 2021, Karen Pillsworth, Kingston’s Storyteller Laureate, led this project with 33 classes at JFK and George Washington school.

Find our original story in English, Spanish, and Q'eqchi' (an indigenous language in Guatemala), as well as how-to instructions so that you can discover this tradition and make your own dolls at home!

Please share a photo of your doll with us at #WorryDollHV so we can include it on this page!

Join us at the Kingston Multicultural Festival and bring your worry doll! The festival will be held on the following Sundays: June 13th, June 20th, and June 27th 2021 at the Kingston Waterfront Farmers Market in TR Gallo Park.

Virtual Field Trips to the Reher Center

The Reher Center is pleased to offer virtual field trips free of charge to K-12 classes in Spring 2021. We will honor as many bookings for the following programs as our schedule allows, and will do our best to work with you to adapt these programs to suit your specific curricular needs.

To Book a Virtual Visit: Contact Sarah Litvin at Sarah@ReherCenter.org

"Immigration and Culture"

For younger audiences, a hybrid synchronous/asynchronous program called “Immigration and Culture” features a slideshow lecture and discussion of Frank Reher’s immigration story and the various components of culture. It leaves teachers with an asynchronous assignment to participate in a digital Cultural Quilt of the Hudson Valley. 

      • K-5th grade
      • Themes: Immigration, cultural identity, personal story
      • Hybrid Synchronous and Asynchronous
      • Synchronous Portion: 20 minutes (on platform of teacher’s choice)
Cameron and Kaegan Armstrong show off their Cultural Quilt squares. (Photo by Karen Pillsworth)

“My class of first, second, and third graders at George Washington Montessori School in Kingston loved our virtual visit with Sarah Litvin to the Reher Center. It brought the concepts of immigration to life, and was especially relevant because our class has many recent immigrants, even some who spoke no English when they started this year. My students loved the follow up activity of making a “Cultural Quilt Square,” and are proud to have their work posted on the Reher Center Instagram page.” --Tom Muro, 1st-3rd grade teacher, George Washington School, Kingston, New York.

“Out the Reher’s Windows”

For older students, we offer “Out the Reher’s Windows,” a synchronous program that explores our process of converting an historic building into a museum as well as the history of urban renewal in the Rondout neighborhood. It features close looking at historic photographs and engages students in several writing prompts about the Reher Family’s experience living and working at the same location over a century.

      • 8th-12th
      • Themes: urban change, the museum as and artifact, constructing a narrative
      • Synchronous 1 hour program
April 2020 Virtual Field Trip with Mamaroneck High School

“Ms. Litvin did an excellent job at weaving in our goals throughout the tour, highlighting the idea of choices in how we tell stories and how that parallels the choices in building a museum exhibit and writing history. I would say it a rich lesson for both learning about community, in a way that is deeply culturally relevant. It meets students where they are, honors that, and invites them to think about the world they want to live in and how to get there. –Aaron Shansky, 11th Grade Teacher, Mamaroneck High School”

To Book a Virtual Visit: Contact Sarah Litvin at Sarah@ReherCenter.org

Stitched Together

Students at Kingston Catholic School, Rhinebeck High, and Ulster BOCES worked with the Reher Center, in partnership with the Ulster County Archives and local seamstress Maria Cabrera, to research and interpret the stories of nine of the girls and women listed as employees of F. Jacobson and Sons Shirt Factory in a newspaper article from 1918.

Our combined work, an exhibit called "Stitched Together," is on display in the Reher Center courtyard and front windows from June-August, 2021.

This is part of a larger effort to collect and amplify the voices of female garment workers in our city past and present. Source: The Kingston Daily Freeman, September 21, 1918.

Maria Cabrera, a local dressmaker and pattern maker is creating reproduction 1910s blouses for Ulster Boces students to use for their part in our Sewing in Kingston exhibit at the Reher Center. Hear Maria describe her process of deciding which fabric, button, and sleeve styles are most appropriate to represent what working-class women from that time would have worn. Thank you Maria for so generously donating your time and skills to this program!
Kingston Catholic School students working to research the former employees of F. Jacobson and Sons Factory
This exhibition is made possible thanks to significant support from the Coby Foundation and support from Humanities New York.

         

The Reher Center is currently recruiting teachers to join a Teachers Advisory Committee and seeking funding to expand our K-12 education offerings.

Are you a 4th or 8th grade public school teacher interested in working with us to shape an immigration and local history curriculum for your classroom in line with the new Social and Emotional Learning benchmarks? Contact Sarah Litvin at sarah@rehercenter.org.

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