Teaching Strategies
My plan to teach the unit begins with helping my students to understand the concepts of and distinction between history and memory. In order to get all of my fourth graders to understand these concepts, I want them to explore histories and memories in their familiar world. Once I introduce the concepts of history and memory, I want my students to recall one of their own memories from our school's "old" playground. The old playground is the wooden one, which was constructed by Mary Munford's PTA and the greater community at large. Once the students have written personal narratives about a playground memory, I want the class to research the history of the old playground. Funding was provided by individual and corporate donations. The playground is a large wooden structure and the spindles of the fence that surround it are carved to commemorate the many names of the people and businesses involved in its construction. I want my students to learn how to conduct an interview. I might have a local newspaper reporter visit the class to assist with this process. The whole class, as a group, will interview my principal and perhaps the former PTA president who were involved with the establishment of the playground. My students will play the role of historians and document the history of the playground. Each student will use the facts from the interviews and write the history from their perspective. Depending on their note-taking ability, the facts they choose to include, and their own perspective, each history will be different. The histories will be compared, to show them first hand how no two histories are alike. The idea is that they will learn the difference between history and memory by carefully crafting their own history and memory.
The next strategy is to have my students practice their interviewing skills independently. They will conduct their own interviews with their parents about another familiar place – their homes. I hope they can uncover the history of their house or at the very least their family's history in their house. Once the history is discovered I want them to present it to the class as an oral history, which I would love to capture on videotape. The students will also provide an oral narrative of a memory from their home. Part of my instruction will focus on the concept of familiar places and how emotions are tied to places to which we are intimately connected. An example I would like to share with them compares my experience with the gaslights that were in my childhood home to a neighborhood that I drive past in Richmond, Virginia. I lived in my childhood home for about twenty years. I have memories of events I lived through and am emotionally attached to my experiences and to the landscape surrounding my home. My emotions make the memories of my childhood so vivid. When I pass by the neighborhood in Richmond, I have no sentimental attachment or emotional memories associated with the neighborhood. When the descriptions are compared, the role emotion plays in memory is clearly evident.
When I think of a gaslight, I flash back to my childhood, and the familiarity of the yard surrounding the house in which I lived for almost my entire childhood. The yard had three gaslights, and I can quickly conjure up a picture from my mind, of the black pole, the glass windowpanes and the pale yellow burning of the netlike wick. I remember my mom using a small wooden ladder to change the wicks when they burned out and needed to be replaced.
Now fast forward to my memory of a gaslight in the less familiar place of Richmond. I have been living in Richmond for about twenty years of my adult life. My only memory of a gaslight is driving down the suburban road past the neighborhood dubbed "Gaslight." As I pass the street leading into the subdivision, a few black gaslights are visible. That's it. That is my memory of this less familiar place. I cannot help but to notice how the memories seem to be much weaker since not as much emotion is tied to them. The example of the gaslights illustrates the role emotion plays not only in memories, but in the larger concept of cultural history which combines history and memory, and the role emotions plays in understanding one's cultural history. I want my students to understand how memories involve emotions and tell stories and make the history real and not contrived. Memories humanize our past and help people to make emotional connections to the past.
In my unit, students will explore the history and memory of the Lumpkin Jail. The history of the site is enriched by the personal story and the memory of Anthony Burns. The memory enables the students to make meaningful connections to the past. My students can empathize and connect emotionally with Anthony Burn's experience. They will better understand what took place in 1854, a distant time that is so different from their own. By making these connections, my students will learn how to relate in meaningful ways to the history of their city.
The final strategy is to have my students research an unfamiliar building or location on the proposed Richmond Slave Trail. In small groups my students will conduct research from links I place on my webpage, and discover the significance of each location. Then they will also have to investigate a memory or a personal narrative involving the place along the slave trail.
Technology will be incorporated throughout the unit. The students will conduct research on the computers and will develop a class Prezi, which is an interactive presentation program similar to PowerPoint with more bells and whistles. The Prezi would travel to all of the sites on the slave trail and highlight the research of my students. Following their work in the classroom, I plan to have a guided tour of the slave trail conducted either by David Herring or by Janine Bell. David Herring works to save Richmond's history and memories every day and Janine Bell is a woman who conducts tours of the trail and was instrumental in putting the slave trail in place.
The economic success of Richmond has historically involved slavery. Even after the emancipation of slaves, freedmen provided the labor and worked in the factories. Blacks continued to play a key role in building Richmond as Selden Richardson declares with the title of his book about Richmond, Built by Blacks. As our Virginia Studies curriculum moves out of the nineteenth century and through the twenty-first century, I hope to continue on a journey to make the invisible visible, so my students will gain a better understanding of how our city was built.
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