[February 7th
marks the 150th birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder, one of
America’s most famous writers and a cultural voice who provided entry points
into American history for many many young readers (and then TV viewers). So this
week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of texts and contexts of histories for kids,
leading up to a crowd-sourced post on where and how you got your childhood
history (or where your kids are getting it)!]
Thanks to their
wonderful Massachusetts public school, my sons have had the chance to work on
numerous unique and exciting projects, including many focused on historical
figures and themes. Here are brief descriptions for and historical lessons from
three of them:
1)
The Negro
Leagues: As part of their 4th grade Social Studies curriculum,
both boys have had the chance to read about and study the Negro Leagues,
culminating in a project creating a ginormous biographical baseball card for
one particular player (my older son chose Josh Gibson; my younger son
is the process of making his choice). The entire unit offered a wonderfully
specific and engaging way to think about issues of race, social justice, and
sports in American culture, and the baseball card project in particular asks
the students to consider how such themes became part of the life story of their
chosen figure (both in limiting and in inspiring ways, or at least that’s
certainly how my son’s Josh Gibson project played out). It’s not always easy to
know how we should remember something as fraught yet vital, frustratingly
circumscribed yet impressively successful, as the Negro Leagues—much less how
we could teach such a history to kids. But this unit and project do so very
effectively on all levels, I’d say.
2)
Explorers: Another part of 4th grade
Social Studies focuses on explorers and exploration throughout history, from
Marco Polo and the
Vikings up through 19th century Americans like Lewis, Clark, and
Sacagawea. This year the unit features a new multi-pronged culminating
project, with one option being the chance to create a board game based on a
chosen explorer’s journeys. My younger son has chosen Sacagawea, and as I write
this is in the process of finalizing his board game of her role in and
contributions to the Lewis and Clark expedition and an expanding national
identity. Thanks to how much the unit has taught him, and to his own empathetic
perspective, he’s including some of the expedition’s negative effects—both its
own deaths/losses and the ways in which it led to often disastrous consequences
for native tribes and communities across the continent—as well as its and
Sacagawea’s more positive and heroic sides. As with other native figures such
as Pocahontas
and Sarah
Winnemucca, it can be hard to navigate those more inspiring and more
painful sides to their lives and legacies—but this unit and project have helped
my son to do so, and in a board game no less!
3)
The Lost Boys of Sudan:
As part of his 5th grade Social Studies class, my older son recently
completed a unit on the Lost Boys of Sudan, one centered around Katherine
Applegate’s historical novel Home
of the Brave (2008). The unit’s most striking and exciting culmination
was a visit to their class from two of the actual Lost Boys, now young men
living their unfolding American lives and sharing their stories here. (As an
important aside, refugees
from Sudan would no longer be allowed to come to the U.S. under Trump’s new
Executive Orders.) But the unit also featured a final project, in which my son
and a couple classmates created a newspaper featuring stories about a number of
moments and figures in the story of Applegate’s fictional Lost Boy protagonist
Kek. As he worked on the newspaper, he was able to think not only about Kek’s
experiences and perspective, but about the vital question of how we can tell
such stories, how we can connect them to audiences (something that the visiting
Lost Boys also helped model, of course). One more great lesson from these
wonderful school projects!
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So one more
time: what do you think? Kids’ histories you’d remember and share for the
weekend post?
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