ᠲᠡᠤᠭᠡ ᠶᠢᠨ ᠵᠢᠭᠠᠨ ᠰᠤᠷᠭᠠᠯᠲᠠ ᠪᠠ ᠲᠡᠭᠦᠨ ᠤ ᠡᠬᠡ ᠰᠤᠷᠪᠤᠯᠵᠢ ᠤᠳ

UNCOVERING OUR HISTORY Teaching with Primary Sources SUSAN H. VECCIA UNCOVERING OUR HISTORY Teaching with Primary Sources SUSAN H. VECCIA AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION Chicago 2004 While extensive effort has gone into ensuring the reliability of information appearing in this book, the publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, on the accuracy or reliability of the infor- mation, and does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions in this publication. The paper used in this publication meets the mini- mum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Veccia, Susan H. Uncovering our history : teaching with primary sources / Susan H. Veccia. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8389-0862-4 1. United States—History—Study and teaching. 2. United States—History—Sources. 3. Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program. I. Title. E175.8.V43 2004 973'.071—dc22 2003019893 Copyright © 2004 by the American Library Asso- ciation. All rights reserved except those which may be granted by Sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Revision Act of 1976. Printed in the United States of America 0807060504 54321 Foreword v CHAPTER ONE Primary Sources: Magical Moments of Insight 1 CHAPTER TWO The American Memory Website from the Library of Congress 14 CHAPTER THREE Finding Materials Online 39 CHAPTER FOUR Strategies for Teaching History 57 Contributed by Stanlee Brimberg CHAPTER FIVE It’s Elementary! 73 Contributed by Gail Petri CHAPTER SIX History Told Firsthand in Middle School 88 Contributed by Laura Wakefield CHAPTER SEVEN Focus on the Questions in High School 101 Contributed by Michael Federspiel iii CONTENTS CHAPTER EIGHT Professional Development: The Road Ahead 113 CHAPTER NINE Going to the Source 130 Image Credits 135 Index 139 iv Contents When Susan Veccia asked me to write the foreword to this book, I immediately agreed to do so. Why? Two reasons stood out for me. First, I had worked with Susan on several projects focused on the Library of Congress’s American Memory collections. Through that work I came to admire and respect Susan’s work and to share her vision of American Memory as a resource without parallel for history teachers, school librarians, and students. The book she envisioned—this book— promised to make American Memory more accessible and useful to these audiences. Second, I knew all the other contributors either by working directly with them or by knowing indirectly about their work on other American Memory projects. Each contributor is an outstanding educator—whether a teacher or a librarian. Whether curriculum materials, ideas for teacher training, or conducting lessons with their own students, each person’s work is always thoughtful and thought provoking. With these people as the authors, I thought, the book had to be a good one. While I thought this would be a good book, after reading all the chapters I think this is not only a good book, it is a powerful one. Its power lies in the fact that each contributor provides us with significant snapshots of her or his personal journey to find ever-better ways to engage students directly with history. While the authors’ successes are both heartening and instructive, each writer has also experienced her or his share of obstacles and pratfalls along the way. The strate- gies the writers have developed to cope with these problems empower the reader. The stories are powerful in another sense. I discovered that the authors’ pro- fessional journeys have, in fact, been in many ways similar to my own. Despite some obvious differences among us—geographical region, grade level, students, school settings, and resources—our journeys have led us over some common terrain (issues and problems) and in similar directions with respect to what works with students. As I read these stories, I was struck by how valuable a book like this one would have been to me as I stumbled along my own personal journey to become a better history teacher. Let me explain. In the fall of 1967, because I was thinking about becoming a history teacher, I enrolled in a course titled “Social Foundations of Education,” then the first required course in the teacher preparation program at the University of Colorado- Boulder. A few days into the course, Professor Jack Cousins sprang a test on the class. Our assignment was to answer as many of the fifty test questions as we could in twenty-five minutes. After the allotted time passed, Cousins began asking for volunteers to share their answers orally. About four or five questions in, v FOREWORD Cousins asked, “Okay, what was the name of the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945?” My hand shot up immediately. Since I was the only student to raise my hand, Cousins called on me. “Enola Gay,” I answered proudly. Cousins, of course, said, “Right!” Then, quite unexpectedly, he asked me, “So what?” Having no ready answer, I was rather embarrassed by this question, which is no doubt why I still remember this episode so vividly. Cousins’ deft handling of the situation allayed my brief public humiliation. An extraordinary teacher, Cousins used the sham test exercise to make several significant points about history teaching. One point—again burned indelibly into my memory—was that most history teachers spent far too much time covering the textbook and trans- mitting names and dates (what he called inert facts) to their students. Discrete facts, it seemed, had some inherent (although hidden) purpose and value. Further, teachers spent far too much time testing their students on their short-term reten- tion of those inert facts. (We soon found out that Jack had drawn the “test” items from commonly used textbooks and standardized tests.) A second significant point was that this common approach to teaching history (i.e., coverage, textbooks, testing for facts) rested on certain assumptions about how students learn and what their actual involvement could be in the learning process. The most common assumption was that students needed the facts first, then they could think critically and historically about those facts. Unfortunately, in most history classrooms, teachers spent so much time imparting the facts that no time was left over to involve the students in thinking historically or critically about those facts. A third point was that this approach to history teaching had further negative consequences. One was that students almost uniformly despised their history courses and they thought of them, by and large, as a waste of time. Because of this persistent attitude toward history courses, students had little motivation to learn and their performance on standardized history tests was dismal. (By the way, research suggests that little has changed in the last three-plus decades regard- ing these matters.) Because Cousins was an exemplary teacher, he did not stop after making these important points. Rather, he involved the students in activities that illustrated more effective ways to engage students in their own learning. He drew many of the materials we used from the then current “new social studies” projects, most of which rested on a foundation of discipline-based inquiry. The learning activi- ties required students to uncover problems and issues, inquire into them, and find and use primary sources that informed critical inquiry into those problems. Involved directly in the process of historical reconstruction, we discovered that the subjects were more interesting than we had thought before and we became more motivated to learn. We also discovered we were learning far more important skills and habits of mind than in the history courses we had had before. We discussed and argued about whether this or that source was more reliable, whether this or that had happened, and what warrants supported our thinking. What was more, we discovered we were gaining a better grasp of “conventional” historical facts because we had a purpose in learning them that we never had had before. So powerful were these experiences that I adopted an inquiry approach vi Foreword and the importance of “going to the source” as foundational elements of my emerging philosophy of what comprises effective history teaching. It was not long before I had occasion to try to implement my emerging phi- losophy. I almost immediately discovered that there were all sorts of obstacles I had to negotiate if I were to engage my students in historical inquiry and primary sources. I will mention only three such obstacles, although there were many others. First, many students simply had difficulty reading and analyzing the sources. I discovered that my students were not as inherently interested as was I in many of the sources I brought to class. What to do? Although I didn’t know the word at the time, I spent a good deal of time “scaffolding” the learning tasks and outcomes I expected students to do and achieve. I also found it was impor- tant to give students ownership of many of the problems, issues, and tasks they were to do. Such scaffolding increased both their interest and their abilities to deal with the sources in an intellectually respectable way. It also increased exponen- tially the time I had to devote to planning. Second, I discovered that primary historical sources were not necessarily easy to come by or to make available to students. Imagine a time, not that long ago, when the Internet had not even been fancied a possibility! Imagine a time, too, when photocopying was only just beginning to appear on the scene. (How many of us still remember typing ditto masters if we wanted multiple copies of a page?) In this technological environment, I developed three strategies. One was to use “canned” source sets. These had one obvious advantage: a significant corpus of sources had already been culled from archives and libraries. A disadvantage was that my students did not always resonate to the topics. A second strategy was to “mine” every bookstore I entered for collections of primary documents. This approach, too, had its shortcomings: many of the sources in these books were irrel- evant to the topics we wanted to study and I needed a wheelbarrow to carry all the books to class. My final strategy was to pester the research librarians I encoun- tered. To a person, these folks were always willing and able to help. But again downsides: the primary materials to which they had access were often limited in scope and I still had to type the sources before I could use them with students. Third, I discovered that some of my teaching assignments were not particu- larly conducive to engaging students with batches of primary sources. One of the first courses for which I had complete responsibility was a class of over three hundred students! The lecture hall I was assigned was the largest I had ever been in—and the seats were bolted to the floor. This was a survey course in United States history after 1865. Several “systemic” issues lurked below the surface of this course. One was that the department expected me to cover the entire sweep of U.S. history after the Civil War. A second expectation was that lecturing was the most efficient mode of transmitting information to students. A third was that three hundred students made it virtually impossible to use anything but objective tests over the material (who had time to read three hundred term papers or essay exams several times a semester?). A final obstacle was my own lack of imagina- tion—I was both too new and too scared to think outside the box in which I found myself. It took time and experience to cope with these systemic problems. In retrospect, I wish I had had a book like this one to help me get through some of the rough spots on my own personal journey. The craft wisdom that the Foreword vii contributors to this book bring to bear on the issue of effective history teaching is remarkable. Most important, the contributors to this book not only “talk the talk,” they have “walked the walk.” Through their personal stories, they share craft wisdom about how they have engaged their students directly with historical inquiry, primary sources, and technology. These stories provide the “real-class- room” test that all educators look for as they think about adopting new practices or refining others they may already use. Second, our contributors’ stories are powerful because they are honest and unvarnished. Each contributor suggests some of the pratfalls they took and the mistakes they made along the way. They candidly discuss many of the problems and obstacles they have encountered. They also describe for us the strategies they used to cope with these problems and obstacles. These strategies would have been helpful to me; they may be helpful to you as you embark on your own journey. Finally, the themes that cut across these chapters resonate with my own expe- riences, with my own personal journey. What are some of these themes? Primary sources make history come alive for students when you involve them in authentic tasks. The constant interplay among big ideas (the “why” question; standards- based themes), nuts and bolts (the primary sources), and mediating skills (reading, source analysis) facilitates learning. Good questions are the engines of student inquiry. This has a corollary— to explore good questions in a satisfying way takes time. Since involving students with primary sources and questions will likely be new to most of them, and because of student diversity within most classrooms, students’ experiences with these materials must be orga- nized (scaffolded) carefully. Computer technology, although it can deliver incredible resources right into the classroom or library, has many pitfalls for which planning is a must. Collaboration, whatever the mix among teachers, librarians, and admin- istrators, is a must if you are to succeed. Humility—don’t assume you’re going to get it “right” the first time; think of this effort as a journey and enjoy the lessons you learn along the way. These themes emerge from the real classroom experiences of our contributors as they have tried to improve their own practice. Equally important, perhaps, is the fact that their experiences are consistent with the best current research in cog- nitive psychology, effective teaching, student motivation, integrating technology in instruction, and school change. This coming together of craft wisdom and solid research provides numerous warrants for believing that their advice to readers is sound. James R. Giese Hewit Institute for History and Social Science Education University of Northern Colorado (Greeley) viii Foreword I remember Miss Crivelli. She was a tall, buxom woman with clear creamy skin, bright red lipstick, and thick black hair piled hig