Troutbeck Symposium 2023 Lead Image
Troutbeck Symposium 2023
The Troutbeck Symposium — the student-led historical educational forum — returns for its second year at Troutbeck in Amenia, New York. Middle and high school students from thirteen regional public and private schools will meet to listen, present, and discuss findings of their year-long research projects uncovering under-told histories of BIPOC communities nearby and nationally. With distinguished guests, including Dr. Hassan Kwame Jeffries, students gather at Troutbeck to learn in a safe space and experience the power of place thanks to Troutbeck's unique history as a gathering place for great minds — including John Burroughs, Thurgood Marshall, Sinclair Lewis, Lewis Mumford, Teddy Roosevelt, Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. Du Bois — for hundreds of years.
Sunday, April 30 — Educators Round Table
4:00pm - 5:00pm
Join us at Troutbeck for a facilitated discussion with Dr. Hasan Jeffries, Christina Proenza-Coles and other local educators on project-based learning, and investigating untold and hidden histories. Please sign up for this free event here.
Monday, May 1 — Student Presentations
On Monday, May 1st from 9:30am till 3:00pm, local students will present their work. Students from Salisbury School will be streaming the presentations live via their Instagram — @Coloringourpast
Tuesday, May 2 — Community Round Table
9:00am - 12:00pm
We invite all community businesses, associations, organizations and individuals that are interested in a discussion on how to make this collaborative work more accessible and enduring. Please sign up for this free event here.
To read about what took place at the 2022 Troutbeck Symposium visit here.
To learn how to get more involved or how to donate, please reach out to .
The Troutbeck Symposium was born out of a collaborative 2020 project between Salisbury School history teacher Rhonan Mokriski and Marvelwood School Film Studies teacher Ben Willis. Working within the limitations of Covid-19 lockdown, the teachers guided students to create of a series of short documentaries exploring under-told African American history in our area. For the next school year, the project expanded by inviting more schools to participate, for a total of nine, culminating in a multi-day meeting at Troutbeck showcasing the students’ work for the first Troutbeck Symposium.
Thanks to a decentralized approach, created and led by educators and students, multiple schools support, contribute, and collaborate with each other across disciplines with to generate meaningful and authentic projects that educate and build community. Essential to this research is the acknowledgement that history is "messy," and students are encouraged to be detectives, pull threads, rethink stories, and reexamine accepted statements through a critical lens. At 2022’s Troutbeck Symposium, students spoke passionately about local history buttressed by their dogged determination to contribute to the historical record by documenting Americans left out of the narrative — people who contributed to our community, but who remained unrecognized.
Inspired by the under-told story of the 1916 and 1933 Amenia Conferences — two critical early meetings of the NAACP that took place at Troutbeck, hosted by former owners and activists Joel and Amy Spingarn — Troutbeck supports local students and teachers through hosting and collaboration. Community projects such as this empower students to see the world as it is, to collaborate on critical research with their peers and to engage with historical narratives, all of which ultimately create investment in community and the future.
2023 PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS — (14) Salisbury School, Sharon Center School, Housatonic Valley Regional Highschool, Hotchkiss School, Indian Mountain School, Salisbury Central School, North Canaan Elementary School, Lee H. Kellogg School, Marvelwood School, Millbrook School, Berkshire School, Webutuck High School, Spackenkill and Cornwall Consolidated School
COMMUNITY PARTNERS — Troutbeck, Wassaic Project, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, Amenia Historical Society, Cornwall Historical Society, Sharon Historical Society, Litchfield Historical Society, Dutchess County Historical Society, Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area and Salisbury Association.