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A Robust History of Ludlow, in Primary Sources

Published on Fri, 11/30/2012

Photo of products from Ludlow Manufacturing Company

Exploring Emerging America’s Windows on History Program

Since 2006, Emerging America’s Windows on History program has mobilized more than 30 research teams of K-12 students with their teachers and in partnership with historical societies, museums, town and college libraries, expert individuals, and other very local resources. Students learn to think historically as they track down primary sources to tell the story of their communities and their place in the world. This is the third in our series of close-ups on these sites.

The Common Core Can Boost History Education

Published on Wed, 08/22/2012

FDR and Hoover with top-hats riding to inauguration in 1933

Last summer, a distressed teacher friend shared an all too common story. Throughout the school year, she had sparked students’ skills and passions with a cross-curricular exploration of slavery. It was heady, demanding, and bang-on target for both state content standards and her 4th graders’ interests in fairness, difference, and understanding where we come from. At year’s end, her principal congratulated her overall success in boosting academic skills. Yet he added, “I’m concerned about the time you spent on social studies.

NY Common Core Sample Test Questions for ELA Lacking

Published on Sat, 06/23/2012

Chicano farmworkers with voting registration papers
The good news is that New York State just released sample questions that address the Common Core. Yet if this is what testing mastery of the Common Core looks like, then the standards themselves are in trouble. Let's look closely at one of the questions related to primary sources. The sample 5th grade question below follows a passage about civil rights organizer, Cesár Chavez, accompanied by the photo at left. (Used in the test with permission from the Cesar Chavez Foundation.) 8. According to the passage how were the farmers not treated with respect? A They were not given jobs because of their race. B They were not given suitable working conditions. C They were not allowed to vote. D They were not able to speak for themselves.

Elementary Level Inquiry: Colonial Era Social Relations

Published on Sat, 05/12/2012

Archivist shows documents to 5th graders
Fourth and fifth grade students at the Hilltown Cooperative Charter School published their research at: Colonial Voices of Williamsburg. The site lays out students' entire path of discovery, including: photos and discussions from visits to local archives, student-created traditional Colonial floor cloths, a historical timeline, and ultimately, the gravestone of Master, Jonathan Warner. Document Excerpt: …Bind the aforesaid John Curtis with his consent Apprintice to Jonathan Warner of Williamsburgh in the County of hampshire Yeoman to learn his art trade or mystery being a house Carpenter or Joiner after the manner of an apprintis to Serve him from the day of the Date hereof for and During the full term of four years three months and twenty days… Students began their investigation into a 1771 indenture document at the Williamsburg, Massachusetts Historical Society. Having seen the real thing, they knew where the document came from and when. Now they gave it a close reading, picking out characteristics (old yellowed paper, stained, old-fashioned cursive, lots of signatures, probably a legal document). Once they figured out that it bound an apprentice to his master, they explored what the master had to do (teach a trade, and provide him with room and board) and what the apprentice had to do (obey) and not do (marry, leave, gamble, drink, etc.). Students discussed what these obligations might say about social relations in the era. Then they brainstormed where they could find out about these two people and their era.

Black Agency: The African American Struggle for Equality: Part 1

Published on Sat, 04/21/2012

Martin Luther King and Malcom X together in 1964

In Fairbury, Nebraska–pop. 5,000–where I grew up in the 1960s, there lived literally zero black people. It was not by chance: the Klan and its allies had driven blacks out of much of the rural Midwest. (My parents' Civil Rights advocacy found scant welcome in my home town. But that's another story.) When I was in 6th grade, my older, wiser brother (a 9th grader) handed me the Autobiography of Malcolm X and set me on a journey that compels me still. More recently, two scholars in our Teaching American History (TAH) program reset my world view as powerfully as my brother did back in 1971.

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