English Dutch French German Italian Portuguese Russian Spanish

Search

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.

Double Victory

Published on Wed, 03/28/2012

Takaki
Guest Post: Rusty Annis, Belchertown, Massachusetts, Teacher World War II marked a watershed for American identity, equality and opportunity. Advocates called bastions of racism into question and for the first time effectively challenged many aspects of discrimination. The war gave minorities (including women) a chance to contribute in a noticeable way to American society. It was not an easy transition. Horrifying reactions occurred. Axis propagandists used America racism to knock America off its high horse of moral superiority. An excellent book utilizing personal accounts from this time period is Double Victory, by Professor Ronald Takaki (Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Co. New York). Takaki gives an overview of many ethnic stories of striving for American identity. The phrase double victory refers to a February 7, 1942 letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier from James G. Thompson, encouraging equality for people of color in the United States. “The first V for victory over our enemies from without, the second V for victory over our enemies from within.” Link to a wiki on the impact of the Double Victory Campaign. (The "Double V for Victory" button by the page title leads to a unique large photo of a Double V rally.)

Welcome to the Hilltowns

Published on Mon, 03/19/2012

gateway MS mill
Since before the American Revolution, it has been common knowledge in Western Massachusetts that there lies a tension between the wealthy centers of farming and trade along the Connecticut River and the steep, rocky, and isolated "Hilltowns." Yet these small towns, like communities everywhere, have sometimes played outsized roles at key turning points of our nation's history. Over the winter of 2010-2011, Dawne Piers-Gamble's eighth graders at Gateway Regional Middle School, in Huntington, Massachusetts set out to uncover and publish some of those stories at: Gateway Hilltown History. In addition to a host of primary sources, such as census data, maps, town histories, employment data, and images such as the one displayed here, students pored over such secondary sources as a 1982 Historical Commission survey, a 2004 study of New England mill towns, and a 1916 History of Paper Manufacturing. Students also hiked part of the route of the Boston to Albany Railroad and interviewed historical reenactors. Here are a few highlights from their retelling of this multi-layered American tale:

Social Media at EmergingAmerica.org: Vital New Tool

Published on Wed, 03/07/2012

Three soldiers take a long paper feed from a wireless machine

Emerging America embraces social media as a means to fulfill our mission to provide high-quality professional development to K-12 teachers on History, primary sources, and the Common Core State Standards. Quality professional development is more than just attending workshops and seminars. It requires a sustained process of learning and developing ideas about how our work impacts students. Social media offers a space where this kind of development can continue long after the workshops are over.

Through Facebook, Twitter, and regular updates to our blog, we will:

Civility in Politics

Published on Tue, 03/06/2012

arguments of the chivalry
"Civility in politics is a contradiction in terms," declared a historian colleague with a chuckle when I suggested the topic for a possible lecture series. Still, like most Americans, I find the current national political discourse worrisome. My history educator's mind makes me wonder, "Has it always been this way?" Well… of course, there were the Revolutionary War, Shays Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, slave insurrections, the Civil War, Homestead and other labor conflicts, lynching, race riots, Stonewall riots… And despite continuing bitter words, it's hard to imagine today the equivalent of Rep. Preston Brooks'es beating of Sen. Charles Sumner on the very floor of the Senate. (See image by Winslow Homer, "Arguments of the Chivalry,"from the collections of the Library of Congress.)  In actuality, by most measures, political violence has declined enormously in recent years. The Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995 marked the last large-scale eruption of wholly domestic political violence in the U.S. Deeper questions arise: - To what extent does the American Political system effectively allay violence by offering genuine change through voting and other nonviolent means? Does the system effectively balance the factions that James Madison envisioned in Federalist 10? - Do mass media today only inflame passions? Or do they also provide a vital outlet for unpopular and contrarian views? - What other factors are at play? For one source of rich debate steeped in primary sources and thoughtful analysis, I recommend the ongoing discussion on Civility on the Constitution Daily, blog of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The Center is a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to education and debate about citizenship and of course, our own Federal Constitution. Recent articles include "Should the people be able to veto Supreme Court decisions?" and an "opinion lab" for classroom use, asking, "Is divided government good or bad for the country?" Sign in, and speak up.

The Common Core and Literacy in History

Published on Tue, 03/06/2012

The Common Core approaches the content areas (Social Studies and the Sciences) with a particular emphasis on literacy. This has several implications. First, note that literacy in the Common Core means listening and speaking as well as reading and writing. Audio files from the Library of Congress, for example, have an important role to play. Further, English Language Arts components of the standards incorporate numerical data, audio-visual, and digital information. Census and economic data, historic films, and survey data–all gain importance in the classroom.

Subscribe to Blog