Biographies in the US HIstory Classroom

As the second year of Encounters and Exchanges draws to a close, the continuous theme of using biographies to teach history has inspired many of my lesson plans. From books focusing on the exciting lives of Kit Carson, and Harriet Jacobs (to name a few), field trips highlighting the lives of renown Massachusetts transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott, to Julie Winch’s book and presentation on James Forten and Gwedolyn Quezaire-Presutti’s performance as Maria W. Stewart at the Teaching American History annual conference, one can easily acknowledge the benefits of teaching history through biographies. Biographies have the ability to draw students into the history for the enjoyment of the narrative and appreciation for the significance of one man or woman’s actions, as opposed to an often cold and remote textbook.

After reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, for the book discussion group, I immediately recognized the compelling appeal of Jacobs’ life, and presented the first four chapters to my students. As time is high demand for all classrooms, however, even one of Jacobs’ chapters reveals an interesting and informative story to supplement the textbook. Take chapter one, for example: in order to guide reading and develop an understanding about the vast complexities of slavery, especially in regards to a young slave girl, students created Jacobs’ family tree through her recollections of her relatives. Once students attained this basic understanding of Jacobs’ life, they recorded examples of how Jacobs’ family impacted her life, which would help connect the events and unique circumstances of Jacobs’ trialed life. Finally, students made practical connections between Jacobs’ life and the broader history we studied as well as personal reflections on the impact of slavery on an individual’s life.

US History I teachers have no need to wait for a classroom set of Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography to utilize a slave biography in the classroom. Research and oral history projects have made enormous headway in documenting the lives of former slaves. The Library of Congress: American Memory’s “Voices from the Days of Slavery” collection contains the narratives of former slaves, available in audio and text form. Design generic, guiding questions that can be applied to all narratives. Have students make basic observation about the person’s life (family life, skills, living conditions), integrate their life into the broader history of the US, and finally, reflect what one can learn from an individual’s story.

The link for The Library of Congress: American Memory’s “Voices from the Days of Slavery,” is: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/vfssp.html

Great Sources for Slavery, Slave Narratives, Abolition and More!

The Book Discussion Groups and its books have certainly had quite a few plugs in these blogs. I know I've already written an entry with my praises for Hampton Sides' Blood and Thunder. Quite a few of the books in Year II of the grant have dealt with various themes related to African Americans, Slavery, Abolition, and the coming of the Civil War. Black Jacks by W. Jeffrey Bolster, The Approaching Fury, by Stephen B. Oates, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, were all excellent. I have been working on my final project for the Book Group, and have been utilizing some great sources.

One source is the PBS site Africans in America. (see link below) It has a collection of images, documents, stories, biographies and commentaries depicting America's journey through slavery. The site compliments the PBS documentary Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery. The 2 DVD set was a Peabody Award Winner, and was given to all participants of the Book Discussion Goup. Using the chapter search function, you can focus on certain topics quite easily. Since there are participants from all of the systems in the book groups, find a colleague and ask them to share this treasure!

Another great resource for slavery topics is a site with a series of slave narratives published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (see link below) It is rich with primary sources to compliment many units of study.

SlaveryInAmerica.org also is a useful site.(see link below) It has an image gallery, lesson plans, and narratives. Likewise, the Lost Museum (see link below) is a good find, too. It has a database of archived primary sources. You can search by key words or themes. This site was created by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning with the Graduate Center, City University of New York and George Mason University.

My greatest find was the site The Valley of the Shadow, which contained three excellent primary sources illustrating the Southern defense of slaveholding. These documents would really spark interesting discussions and help students of the 21st Century see the arguments and values of Southern whites.

I hope you find these sites useful. There's so much great stuff out there. Enjoy!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html Africans in America site by PBS.

http://docsouth.unc.eud/neh/texts.html University of North Carolina Slave Narratives

http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/resources/resources_gateway.htm Slavery in America There is an image gallery, lesson plans, and narratives

http://www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/home.html Lost Museum archives

http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/teaching/vclassroom/proslaveinst.html Primary sources for the Southern defense of slavery

Photograph Activity

I recently participated in a workshop on Reconstruction at Primary Source, an organization that I was introduced to as a grant participant last year. A fantastic teacher at the workshop presented an activity on analyzing photographs, and since I am always looking for new ways to analyze primary sources, I really latched on. The steps are as follows, and this activity could also work well with paintings.

1. Choose a person in the photograph to 'be'.

2. As that person, think about the following questions:

• What do you see?


• What do you think?


• What do you feel?

This forces the students to not only place themselves into the source, but to also to identify with different groups or people. The teacher at the workshop used a photograph taken at a lynching, and asked us to step inside the photograph and take the role of the men that had committed the murder, the man who was lynched, and the children that had been watching. You may even ask your students to take on the role of the photographer.

What would your students say about the image in this post?

Second Annual Encounters and Exchanges Conference

What a great opportunity many of us had the Friday before vacation to participate in the Encounters and Exchanges Annual Conference. It is a very satisfying feeling to participate in a day that you know enriches you both as a classroom teacher and as a professional.

The day began with an excellent presentation by Julie Winch, a professor of History at UMass Boston. Dr. Winch introduced the group to several biographies of Free African-Americans. Dr. Winch used many common primary sources to open up our minds to people who might have been otherwise lost to History. One of the most important goals of this conference/grant is to help improve content knowledge and pedagogy of history teachers. Dr. Winch's presentation did indeed cause me to rethink about my various approaches to teaching. I would love the chance to teach my fifth graders about history through the eyes of more everyday people. (So often I think we as teachers are bogged down with "covering" those famous people that the state of Massachusetts tells us that students must know.)

After Julie's presentation, I had the excellent opportunity to give my own presentation to other elementary colleagues. Over the last couple of years, I have had the chance to give a handful of presentations to adults, which is something that I have found that I really enjoy doing. Although it can be nerve-racking at first, sharing ideas with colleagues in this kind of format has been excellent.

Lunchtime proved to be another great part of the day! The weather was beautiful and I was able to go outside with a handful of other history teachers, some from Reading and some from other places. This kind of informal opportunities can prove to be some of the best times for networking and sharing of resource ideas.

My second session of the day was an excellent presentation by the Museum of Fine Arts. This presentation ended up being rather ironic for me. Last summer, I spent a great deal of time on the Internet attempting to find works of art that could be included in a series of lessons that I was creating for the Content Institute that I was taking through the grant. I found myself totally lost in the MFA website, and unable to get the images that I needed. Low and behold, the MFA has created a fabulous tool for teachers. www.educators.mfa.org Not only are you able to get access to almost their entire collection, but they also have a fabulous curriculum called VTS, Visual Thinking Strategies. Check it out! It will be worth your time.

The last section of the day saw a performance by Gwendolyn Quezaire-Presutti as Maria W. Stewart, a female African-American abolitionist from Massachusetts. I always find performers like Ms. Quezaire-Presutti to be fascinating. The amount of time that she has dedicated to perfecting her craft is impressive. Check her out at www.woventales.com

If you weren't able to join us last year, I hope that you will consider joining us and encouraging all of your colleagues to do the same!

Hi all,

The last time I posted, I wrote about how I was looking forward to starting to study the relationship between the Pilgrims and Wampanoags in my class.  Now, we have moved forward in history to the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and are studying every day life in a Puritan colonial town.   This transition has brought up some interesting discussions in my class, as students begin to understand the continuity of history.  Despite having "finished" studying the Pilgrims (in their interpretation), I am trying to have them understand that people were still living in Plymouth, and the community continued, even though our focus is now on Salem and Boston.  One way I have tried to encourage this continuity is to have students create a timeline of colonial history in Massachusetts.  Using a program called Timeliner, which is available in our computer lab, students are creating timelines showing various events.

As we have transitioned into the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, my class has been able to make several interesting connections.  Suprisingly, one connection is to a field trip we took in October to Salem Pioneer Village, in Salem.  The village is a recreation of the original colony set up in 1630, and in many respects is very similar (though much smaller in scale) to Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth.  The extraordinary thing about this field trip was that the entire day was an interactive experience for the students, with live actors allowing them to participate in various aspects of a "typical" day, including a prayer meeting, daily chores, lessons, and games.  This program was set up especially for our school, with the help of some theater students and actors from Gordon College.  During the visit, students had conversations with village elders, saw artifacts from the time period and_____.  Six months later, my students can recall this information, and it has 

Making History Relevant for Kids

Hi All-

I am in the midst of beginning my unit on the American Revolution. This is a topic that is often one of the most favorite for my students! They have some background information from their studies of third grade, but I find too that they also come in with many prejudices and misconceptions that I need to fix. Right away we begin with the meaning of the word, "revolution". Without fail, I am told by every class, every year, that the world "revolution" means "war". It makes for a great class conversation when we talk about the true meaning to be, "a sudden, and complete change". The students readily realize other revolutions that they are aware of that were not in fact wars (Artistic, Musical, and even the Industrial Revolution)

As adult historians, we recognize the significance of the role of taxation in the American Revolution. One of my favorite activities is to have students do a tax interview at home with an adult. The students need to ask someone to name three different taxes, where the money goes that is collected, and how they feel about the tax. This activity always has fascinating results. (It is frightening to see how many adults are unclear about the taxes that they pay.) Undoubtedly, at least one adult says that "taxation is a necessary evil", which also leads to an excellent conversation. It is also a great extension to encourage kids to read local papers and discover articles or letters to the editor about the topic of taxation. This is a beginning to helping kids understand that these issues that affected colonists long ago, still affect us even today.

It is extremely important to not teach a topic like the American Revolutin with bias. It could be very easy to play up the taxation by the British as completely unfair. I have learned over the years the importance of showing students all points of view on this important debate. I have read that approximately 1/3 of the colonists during the revolution were Patriots, 1/3 were Loyalists, and the other 1/3 tried to remain neutral in the middle. I am fortunate to use a fabulous resource that comes from the Old South Meeting House Education department. The Old South Meeting House was of course the site of the Tea Party Debate in Boston on the night of December 16, 1773. This resource is like a play or a readers' theater, with characters who range from real, famous Bostonians of the day to average Bostonians, both Patriot and Loyalist. No other resource has helped me express to my students the range of feelings during this time, and how both sides had valid points. This experience of being able to act out this debate and listen to each other's points, sticks in the students' minds. Kids will often refer to their classmates' points and how they relate to the different aspects of the revolution we are talking about. I have found that this debate isn't perfect historically (due to "Founding Myths") however it is fabulous resource that could be used well up through 8th grade! Visit http://www.oldsouthmeetinghouse.org/

Breathing Life Back Into History

A common misconception about history that I've encounter and struggle to correct is that history is static, an "it-happened-it's-over-who-cares" attitude. One method to disprove this dangerous syndrome and breathe life back into high school history classes is to create lessons that focus on decisions, conflicts, and conversations, even going so far as to have students role play scenarios highlighting these topics.

The TAH February discussion book, "The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm 1820-1861," allows for numerous life giving possibilities for your classroom. Author Stephen B. Oates crafts the story of the coming Civil War through thirteen key perspectives. Its first person narrative creates 'passion, freshness and immediacy'. The conflict of differing realities, each identity believing their perspective to be truth, as well their personal conflicts and friendships, embraces the reader intellectually and emotionally.

Within Oates' book, I traced several themes that will be of use in my classroom. One theme, in particular, that I'd like to share is the debated meaning of Jefferson's "all men are created equal" phrase from the Declaration of Independence. Key identities, such as Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Jefferson Davis, and George Fitzhugh, all have defendable interpretations of Jefferson's famous words, as well as critiques of others' interpretations. This theme alone can be managed through a varity of methods in the classroom addressing content and skills, as well as several of the American Historical Association's historical thinking benchmarks: understanding historical debate and controversy, analysis of how historians use evidence, understanding bias and points of view.

The first issue at hand would be to have the students organize the different interpretations on a spectrum or with a complex graphic organizer, that illustrates agreements, disagreements, and unique ideas. Once the interpretations are organized and understood, teachers can address the issue of compromise in light of several well-formed, yet opposing, arguments. A debate or Socratic Seminar would best facilitate this discussion with the hopes that students could come to life applicable and relevant solutions. On an individual level, students can write a reflective piece analyzing the arguments, whose they agree with most, whose they disagree with most, and, of course, why. Students can also use the debates and speeches in the book to analyze the qualities and structure of effective and ineffective arguments. This activity will help them form better arugments in their own history writing. Furthermore, with students who are capable of thinking about historiography, teachers can introduce a discussion based on Oates' creation of a first person narrative history; for example, answering the question, "What are its advantages and disadvantages to using Oates' book as a historical source?".

I highly recommend Oates' book, "The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm 1820-1861," to teachers of Antebellum American history. While remaining mindful that Oates created the first person narrative, the details into the conflict, debate, and discussion concerning race, liberty, and power will excite and renew your enjoyment of history. The possibilities of how this book can be used to bring life and action into a passive high school history classroom are abundant and sure to be challenging, meaningful, and rewarding.