Easton Area High School concluded the first year of its Advanced Placement African American studies with a dance and music workshop for students to destress from taking last week’s exam.

The workshop, which was organized in collaboration with EAHS’s NAACP Youth Council, saw Sanchel Brown, owner of the dance studio Rebearth, visit the school to teach students about traditional West African dance and music styles as well as those developed during slavery and the Harlem Renaissance. Brown also taught the students contemporary music genres such as house and hip-hop.

“I don’t think many other classes or courses specifically get to do something like this, seeing their teaching actually in action,” said Sean Boylan, one of two teachers of the African American studies course who also teaches history.

Boylan said the workshop also acts as a way for students to further learn about what they have seen in their course materials through actively participating in what was only described to them previously through textbooks and videos.

Kendra Durrah, an assistant principal at EAHS and the adviser for the NAACP Youth Council, played an instrumental role in advocating for the offering of the African American studies course following requests from teacher Meredith Walters to implement the class.

“This is something that, when I was a young girl here at Easton, I would have loved to have had the opportunity to do,” Durrah said. “We probably had some courses that touched upon that history a little bit but now this is just such a great opportunity.”

Durrah said she is excited by the potential directions the African American studies course can take at EAHS and how to make the course more visible to students.

Walters, the other teacher in the African American studies program, who also teaches British literature, said there are 40 students enrolled, with a similar number expected to follow them next year.

“The AP African American studies is a daunting class because it’s an elective here at Easton, so it doesn’t take the place of any core graduation requirement classes, which is another reason having 40 or 50 kids enrolled is really exciting because they’re doing this purely from an elective standpoint, and it’s still, you know, the AP level class,” she said.

Walters said the course’s interdisciplinary nature was fascinating to her, through its integration of literature, arts and history into the course curriculum.

“We’re talking 5,000-odd years of history,” Walters said. “We’re starting with early African societies and then moving up toward about 2016 or so, so the depth and breadth of material is just staggering.”

Quamir Warren, a 17-year-old junior and a member of the NAACP Youth Council, said he chose to take the African American studies course to learn beyond “the traditional history we were learning.”

“We are an AP class, so a lot of people would think that it would, like all the other AP classes, become very competitive and they become about the grade and the weight and all of those things, but I feel like with African American studies, we created a community,” Warren said. “You’re in a room with people who think like you, look like you, act like you or they don’t, but they still have the same interest as you, and I really appreciate that.”

Warren said the workshop exhibited what made the course interesting to him.

“I would say what I took away from this is it’s just a reminder that the things that African Americans have to do to feel OK, like lean on religion and their culture and dance, was very meaningful,” Warren said, “You can still feel it today inside of the music and traditions we have now.”

Warren said he plans to take what he learned in the class into a career in government, and he would continue to advocate for the class to ensure that there remains a steady stream of interest and enrollment among the student body.

“One thing I took away from the course in general was personally, for me, it changed what I wanted to do in life and realizing where my interests actually are — what gives me butterflies — learning, writing, reading, presenting these topics,” Warren said. “If you’re interested in diving deep, in going under the nitty-gritty even though there’s even more nitty-gritty to go under that we didn’t, but I would say to definitely take the class, and I would say I’m the biggest advocate and I took a lot from it.”