Planning Ahead for Next Summer's Learning

If you are a teacher with a desire for some quality professional development (but your budget doesn't permit it), now is the time to do some research and start applying for summer seminars.  The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History offers a number of wonderful one week seminars on college campuses presented by historians.  You can apply for up to four, but can only accept one per summer.  I just finished applying for seminars on the Era of Theodore Roosevelt (one of my favorite presidents), American Protest Literature, the Gilded Age, and the Role of the Supreme Court.

If you're looking for something a little longer, consider applying for the National Endowment of Humanities summer programs.  These programs range from three to five weeks, and include a stipend as well.  I'm still looking over these super cool workshops, but the deadline isn't until March 1, so I have some time to decide what to apply for.

And of course, there is my favorite (because they chose me last year), Fund For Teachers.  The application is available now (October 1 it becomes available), so don't delay.  It was an amazing experience for me, and the curriculum I am creating following the experience has me and the students excited.

I'll come back and revise and add more as the invitations to apply to summer programs land in my email inbox.  :)  Follow this post for more info.  :)

What Can Student Learn from a Cemetery?

This summer's amazing learning experience had such an impact on me.  In particular, I was really struck by the cemetery in Oak Ridge, TN on the property of the Department of Energy.  In the fall of 1942, over a thousand families received notice that the United States government was applying eminent domain to take over 59,000 acres of property.  Families were given just a few weeks to pack up their belongings and move off of the land that their family had lived on for generations.  Only in 1945 did the government reveal that this was a part of a huge, secret endeavor to beat the Germans and create an atomic bomb.  Even now, in order to visit the cemeteries on the acquired property, families need to prove they have family there and have an escorted visit.  

After my amazing road trip, I had a goal of writing a minimum of one lesson plan that could be submitted to the Teaching with Historic Places site.  My co-teacher and I spent some time before school started discussing all of the possible places we could do some field research in history, and the ideas of cemeteries came up.  Sometimes, in our pre-planning of the year, ideas sort of run together, one of us coming up with an idea and the other piggy-backing off of it with another expansion on the idea, so I'm not really sure which of us came up with the idea of using the Tiger Flowers and Roselawn cemeteries for our project.  The cemetery is within walking distance of our school, and I'd read an article about how the two cemeteries, located directly next to each other, were segregated.  We went over right away and checked out the site, and right away saw the potential for not only a history project but also application of math and science and, possibly, a social action/service learning project.  When my co-teacher and I visited the site, we noticed right away the difference between the two sites.  One appears significantly better maintained.  

I began working on the project by communicating with the Florida Department of State Bureau of Historic Preservation.  I wanted to know more about the sites.  I was told that the Roselawn Cemetery is recorded at the state inventory of cultural resources, whereas the Tiger Flowers Cemetery has not been recorded yet.

I contacted LuAnn Mimms and Jayme Jamison at the Polk Genealogical Library, and we met for a few hours and discussed a possible trip so the students could learn how to do genealogical research.  We also discussed an extension of the project where our students will eventually choose one person to research independently or with a partner, will create an oral story telling presentation based on their research, and will create a portrait of their researched person to display at the history museum.  

On Tuesday, October 6th, after a short lesson on grave markers and some reminders on how to be respectful at a cemetery, we walked to Roselawn and Tiger Flowers.  The students received this handout detailing four tasks for the day.  Students were assigned to groups recording information in different sections of the cemetery so that they aren't all taking the same information.  They had a goal to record the data from 3-5 families, which will give us the most chances of them having at least one "hit" when it comes to researching later.

When they came back to the school, they held a community meeting, during which they shared observations including the condition of sites, the age of different sites (earliest date of birth vs. latest), and other things they noticed.  

The students were concerned that many of the vault graves at the Tiger Flowers Cemetery had significant time damage, and, in one case at least, had cracked.  They listed their other concerns and questions in their notebooks.  They wanted to know how these people died and were there common causes of death based on

their date of death, why small children died, when people became mothers, why some sites were well maintained whereas others were not.  

Then, they wrote down their personal mission with the project.  Some students wanted to recognize the veterans at the sites.  Others wanted to correct the fact that only one site is registered as a cultural site.  Other students were struck by the idea that people live on as long as their stories live on, and they wanted to tell the stories of the people who were buried at the cemeteries.  Many students were upset that graves might not be well maintained, even to the point of collapsing, and wanted to raise funds or awareness to correct that issue.  The room was abuzz with a very cool energy.  

After they brainstormed possible service projects they were interested in working on, they separated into groups to research the historical context of the lives of the people in "our cemeteries", finding out what was happening during major time periods, what major events occurred during their lifetime, what life was like.

On October 9, the students attended the Cracker Storytelling Festival in Homeland, FL.  As they listed to the story tellers, they paid particular note to which aspects of public storytelling they wanted to emulate, and which they wanted to avoid.  We discussed how they would have to change the style of storytelling because their audience would be different from the audience at the festival.  

On Friday, November 13, the students will begin phase two of the trip.  They will visit the Polk History Museum, sketch different time periods in preparation for their art work, take a tour of the well maintained Oak Hill Cemetery, and work with the research staff in the genealogical library to learn the principles of researching a person's past.  

I'm excited about the potential for this project, and I'm a little daunted, moving forward.  There is a challenge and a blessing in having a long term project with some set deadlines.  I'm also excited that we're developing a partnership with professionals who can show my students that history is not just something in the books.

John Brown: Hero or Traitor

Planning a mock trial is a daunting task.  I'll have to figure out how to include the entire class.  We did this before when we used a modified version of the Trial of Christopher Columbus lesson plan on the Zinn Education Project website.   When we did that trial, I presented the students with the materials Zinn as well as several primary source documents.  It was great, because the student used the words from the document in testimony, cross examination, etc.  There were several roles (Tainos, Columbus, his men, the king and queen, and the Empire).  

The roles were laid out for me in the Zinn lesson, but,  here, I have to figure out what kind of roles I want the students to have.  This is an essential part of involving everyone in a mock trial.   I've also been thinking about how to differentiate the materials.  Primary sources are challenging in this way. They require higher vocabulary.  I'll have to include pictures, narratives, and some secondary source material to help build background.  I'm thinking of setting it up as a defamation of character/slander civil suit.   This involves me doing a little research into what is involved in a case like this.

I have to figure out relevant roles for 30 students.  At this point, I am thinking I will give two teams of 8 the role of prosecution and defense. These groups will be given the whole set of evidence materials including newspaper articles, images, testimonies, etc.  There will be two lead council who will organize the prosecution or defense, deliver opening and closing arguments.  The associate attorneys will prepare for questioning specific witnesses.  This will allow me to differentiate and include more people in the reading side of things.  Then, I'll have a few students who will be the witnesses.  They will have to read carefully to decide on how to play their characters and make sure they provide an honest testimony.  Finally, I'll have a judge/jury team.  They will have to prepare by understanding the legal aspects of a case like this and explaining to us the legal vocabulary such as reasonable doubt, circumstantial evidence, etc.  They will also deliberate and give us a sentence.

I've been collecting links for great resources.  Here are a few of the documents I may give the students for our trial.  I'm still in the process of weeding through to create my packets, but there is so much out there.  

• John Brown: The Abolitionist and His History
• Lyrics and music for “John Brown’s Body
• Extended Timeline Activity Sheet (PDF)
• “Historic Character I Am” Poem - John Brown (PDF)
• Documents from Harper's Ferry
• West Virginia Archives and History
• Video and documents about the hanging of Brown
• Documents:
• Address of John Brown to the Virginia Court, University of Missouri, Kansas City
• The Capture of John Brown
• Semi-Annual Report of VMI [Virginia Military Institute] Superintendent Francis H. Smith Submitted to the Governor, 1860 January 16, Virginia Military Institute
• John T. L. Preston letter to his wife describing John Brown’s execution, December 2, 1859, Virginia Military Institute
• Letter from John Brown to his son, Owen, Gilder Lehrman Collection
• Newspaper articles printed at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid, Furman University
• “What Shall the South Do?” Wilmington, North Carolina, Daily Herald. December 5, 1859, Furman University
• “Address” [excerpt from sermon] by J. Sella Martin, December 2, 1859, George Mason University
• “The Fatal Friday” Chicago (Ill.) Press and Tribune, December 2, 1859, Furman University

Day 6-7: Harper's Ferry, WV

 

I am completely enchanted with this area of the country.  If it wasn't for the cold, cold winters, I would move to this slice of heaven in a heartbeat.  We spent the night in an adorable rustic cottage set into the hills.  We loved hiking up and down the hills.  In fact, we were supposed to stay here only for one night, but ended up changing our plans to two nights (partially because we loved the location, partially because of the predicted storms we didn't want to sleep through in a tent.  It poured through the night, but we were nice and dry with a fresh breeze.)

In the morning, I took a zip lining tour, taking in the breathtaking views of the mountains and the Potomac River.  The guide told us stories about George Washington surveying the area and finding the rapids of the river nearly impossible to pass.  (Ironically, people now tube down that very stretch with just an inner tube.)  Afterwards, I took a self guided tour of the lower city of Harper's Ferry.  I loved talking with the costumed volunteers.  I spoke with a shop worker in the dry goods general store who explained the "science of phrenology" (eeek) and the manager who explained the process of taking a bath (lots of carrying and heating up water which explains the infrequent bathing of people during this time period).  I spoke with two boys of 15 who had joined up for the Union army.  When I asked if they were old enough, they explained how they had written 16's on the soles of their shoes so that they could honestly swear an oath that they were over 16 when they joined.  I spoke with the man in the gun making factory who showed me the difference in the hand crafted vs. machine made muskets.

And then, there was the John Brown Tour. Honestly, I got so much out of this tour that I'll be able to create an amazing lesson plan.  John Brown was an abolitionist who believed that peaceful means for abolishing slavery weren't working so he took matters into his own hands, formed an army, spent months observing and plotting, and finally, on October 16-18, 1859,  raided the federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry in an attempt to arm a slave rebellion.   

I visited John Brown's Fort, a place where many historians argue the first shot of the Civil War was actually fired, and I spent some time in the John Brown Museum.  Then, we took a docent guided tour by a costumed historian.  We took a bus to Charles Town, VA (named for Charles Washington, brother of President George) where Brown was tried for treason against the state of Virginia.  (Remember that West Virginia didn't yet exist.  The mountaineer people of current West Virginia stayed with the Union in 1861 when Virginia seceded, and the state was admitted into the Union in 1863.)  I stood in the small courtroom where the injured Brown and his inadequate defense were dealt a hasty trial and swift sentencing to death by hanging.  I noted the primary sources on the walls of the courtroom so I can look them up for our own trial.  Then, we walked to where Brown was hung.  I found out that this was somewhat of a celebrity event, the hanging.  The Governor Wise feared an attempt would be made to free Brown, so he had 1500 soldiers at hand to prevent a jailbreak or other act of violence.  Although civilians were severely restricted, some notable people attended...Edmund Ruffin, who was later credited with firing the first shot of the Civil War at Ft. Sumter in another Charleston, South Carolina, John Wilkes Booth who posed as a soldier so he could attempt and who later assassinated President Lincoln, and young Stonewall Jackson, the well known Confederate commander.  

Execution of John Brown. New York Illustrated News, December 10, 1859.

Periodicals Collection, West Virginia State Archives

John Brown's final words were passed to in a note to a supporter on his way out to the field gallows.  They read:

Charlestown, Va. 2nd December, 1859.  

I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.

John Brown....Was he a hero?  Was he a traitor?  His actions began a snowball effect towards the emancipation of American slaves, but was this violence justified, and were his intentions as pure as he said?  Late in the trip, we'll visit Kansas, Bleeding Kansas, and we'll see that this act of violence was not the only one that Brown carried out.  I’m excited for the next leg of the trip, but even more, I’m excited thinking about what an amazing trial this will make in the classroom!! My next post will include some of the resources I picked up as well as some I've found along the way to built my case files.

Day 5: Greensboro, N

Please excuse typos.  I'll spell check when I am not typing on my phone.  :)

I feel as if this trip has been a trip to what I call "power places", places where brave people have done huge things that changed the course of history.  When you are in a power place, you can feel it, like a weight in the air or a special vibration.  It makes you feel stronger, just being in those kinds of places.  (I remember becoming awareof this the first time when I visited Anne Frank's House in Amsterdam.)  The International Civil Rights Center and Museum is one such place.

The museum is an amazing representation of the challenges that African Americans have faced in their struggle for the rights that many take for granted.  I took a guided tour, and it was wonderful (sad, but very full of education).  It began with a short video on what life was like for a slave, an emmancipated black during the reconstruction or during the time of Jim Crow laws.  Then, we entered another room, the "Walk of Shame."  Our guide eloquently told us, "Though the firehoses aimed at them were strong enough to actually peel back their skin, it was not enough to quench their zeal for equality or dignity."  The Walk of Shame showed pictures of many of the humiliations and attacks, big and small, that blacks suffered for simply wanting to be able to vote, have a good education, live in nice homes, and have their place on the bus or restaurant.  Included was the story of Emmett Till, the African American teenager whowas murdered in Mississippi in 1941 for allegedly flirting with a white woman on a dare from his friends.  I knew a little about young Emmett...I knew the Billy Holiday song Strange Fruit was about him, and that his murderers were aquitted, although they later admitted what they had done to him.  I did not know what they had done to him...he was beaten, had his eyes gouged out, shot in the head, and weighted down with barbed wire around his neck before being thrown in the river.  I did not know that the only thing that told investigators who he was was the ring his father had given him.  I did not know that his mother, although urged to have a closed casket,chose to have an open casket funeral so that everyone could see what had been done to her little 14 year old boy, and that tens of thousands of people attended the funeral.

The showcase of the museum, though, is the historic Woolworth diner where, on February 1, 1960, four young men, the A&T 4, staged a sit-in to protest the unfair practice of not being served in a "white establishment."  A few things I didn't know...there were actually black employees working the diner counter.  The four young men did not come in and sit together, but rather sat 2x2 because the restaurant was very busy.  Some of the customers were very hateful, but there were a few who actually voiced words of support.  The men were not arrested during the first sit-in, and were not served that day.  They worked out a shift schedule so that they could continue the campaign.  Hecklers of hate yelled at, hit, spilled hot coffee on, and spit on the peaceful protestors (many of whom brought homework to do while they waited,  or they read newspapers and books.  The protesters were arrested.  (In fact, they came ready to be arreted and unable to pay bail, using the "jail, no bail" strategy of overcrowding jails.  They would be released and they would get right back out there and do it again.  They did pausse for a little while during "negotiations", but, after a seven week truce,  when it was clear that this was just a stall tactic of the restaurant owners, theyy got back to doing the sit-ins.  During the summer, when college students went home, high school students from local (I think) Dudley high school, filled in for the college students.  The sit-ins spread to the neighboring Kress store lunch counter, included hundreds of people, spread across the country.  Ultimately, after several months of protesting, and a loss of over $200,000 for Wollworth's, store manager relented and changed the segregation policy of the store.  On Monday, July 25, 1960, store manager Clarence Harris asked three African American employees to change out of their work clothes and order a meal at the counter.  They were the first blaacks to be served with the new desegregation policy.  Powerful!  The room where this series of sit-in protests occured is preserved.

I took over 6 pages of notes during the tour, and could go on and on forever!!  I will add one final exhibit that really had a powerful impact on me.  I had the opportunity to take one of the "literacy tests" given to potential voters.  The questions that were asked were ridiculous!  How many jelly beans are in a jar?  How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?  History questions that even a history teacher couldn't answer and poll taxes poor blacks couldn't afford.  Not to mention being fired and blackballed if you even tried to register to vote.

I'll add more meat to this post once I get back from the trip.  SAdly, we spent so much time in the museum that we ended up deciding to skip our next two stops of the day (Appomattox Court House, where the Civil War was officially ended, and Monticello, the plantation home of former president and writer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson).  It was sad to skip those trips, but we were happy to arrive at our Treehouse Cabin in Rohhersville, MD in time for a gorgeous firefly light show.

Day #4 Charlotte, NC

Today, we went to the Latta Plantation.  It was a beautiful restoration of a home build before the Civil War.  We toured the grounds, exploring the former homes of enslaved people, the overseer, and the family.  We learned that the kitchen is in a buiding apart from the home since they frequently burned down.  Latta Plantation formerly housed as many as 35 slaves.  The Heritage Center had primary sources that showed their names, and who escaped or was sold.  Apparently, Latta tried hard to sell slaves as families, something unusual during this time.  

 The plantation boards many heritage livestock such as this curley haired sheep.

The old barn had tons of neat tooks. The tour guide told us the origin of the phrase "Good night.  Sleep tight.  Don't let the bedbugs bite."   Apparently, you had to crank the rope tight so your bed wouldn't fall through the rope.  Then, you'd flip the mattress so the bedbugs had farther to travel to bit you.  :)  Mattresses were stuffed with hay from the barn, so they were full of bugs.  More on this later.  Here are some beautiful pictre from the plantation.  

Day #3: Charleston, SC

Please excuse any errors for now.  Typing in my phone.  I'll pretty this up when we return from our trip.  

 Our first stop of the day was to Angel Oak, the reportedly oldest living tree on this side of the Mississippi. It was beautiful, with its topmost limbs supported by wire cables.

Our next stop was historic Charleston.  When I think of this southern city, I tend to think Civil War, Rhett Bulter and Scarlett (O'Hara) Butler and their dramatic love story.  However, in this carriage tour, I learned so much more.  I was remminded during the tour that the city dates back to the first wave of immigration.  King Charles bribed his supporters with claims in the New World.  In the 1670's, settlers moved to the northern part of the Carolinas, but by the 1680's, settlers moved into Charleston.  John Locke (according to the tour guide and yet to be fact checked) drafted up a charter which included religious freedom on three conditions:  #1 You had to believe in God.  #2 You had to worship God publicly.  #3 You could not be Catholic.  (Catholics were later given their guaranteed religious freedom with the ratification on the U.S. Constitution.

 I learned that at one time, during the early 1700's, the city was walled against wild animals, native Americans, pirates, the French and the Spanish.

 Afterwards, we took a tour of Fort Sumter.  We passed Sullivan Island, sometimes referred to as the Ellis Island of African Slaves.  Enslaved people were brought through Sullivan Island for a health check and were quarantined if they were not healthy.

 The tour of Fort Sumter was amazing.  I was so glad I took the tour.  Sometimes, it is referred to as the symbol of southerrn resistence and northern determination.  I'll add more history later, but suffice it to say, it was a powerful thing to stand on the place where the first shots of the deadliest wa in American history took place.  It is ironic to me that the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers contracted with slaveowners to build it, and yet it was a stepping stone to their freedon.

 On site were some of the renewed fortification put in place after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

 What I loved were the remains of the Civil War fort though.  The bricks were so beautiful, restored.

The grounds around the fort were also beautiful.  There was a storm coming in, so we had a wonderful ocean breeze.  It was nice to just sit with the sun on our backs, looking out to the sea from the first line of defense for the beautiful southern city.