Teach American History Blog

Poetry and History: Or, How Our Students Learn

Every teacher knows that one of the most difficult things our students struggle with is what I would call empathy, some sense of understanding and tolerance for those in the past. That does not mean that we have to find whatever they did or said acceptable or useful, but that we judge them on their own terms, for their own time. We live in a cultural dominated by images, and our students often seem to learn more by seeing and doing than just by reading or hearing.

That is one reason why using the "Where I'm From" poetry project can be very useful in helping students come to a greater understanding and appreciation of the past. The author and poet George Ella Lyon described how she came up with the original poem here. This was discussed at an Enduring Visions Mini-Institute back in February, and one of the attendees took that project back to her students. They looked at images of slaves, and read some material about them as well, to get a better understanding of what it meant to live and work in the Old South as a slave. That preparation allowed the students to think outside themselves - to try to get into the head of someone very different from themselves. The students were then asked to write a "Where I'm From" poem from the perspective of one of those slaves. The wonderful and intriguing results from this group of 5th graders can be found here, as well as a longer description of the creation process.

Another project that students could do is connected to the archival information about the trans-atlantic slave trade found here. This is a vast compendium of information regarding the ships and captains, country of origin and country of destination, number of people who boarded and the number who disembarked, etc., for the slave trade from 1525 to 1867. Someone has come up with various exercises that students can do to discover and use the data on this website; those exercises can be found here.


The question I have is this: would these work in YOUR classroom? Anyone willing to try? Or, are there other projects that you have successfully used in the past that help students develop their critical thinking and understanding of the past? If so, feel free to comment here, or on our wiki.

Posted by Jason Mead - Tuesday, 04/12/2011, 08:37 AM - Comments -