History in Our Everyday Lives

Classroom Activities

From day one, this unit captures student interest by engaging them on familiar topics, then encouraging them to think critically and historically about what they already know. Students first complete a “Myth-Busters” style Pop Quiz about public housing. In the interest of challenging popular notions, the quiz includes surprises about how public housing was originally construed by the American people, how much money the federal government gave through FHA loans in the 1950s and why conventional public housing was popularly considered a failure by the 1970s.

Students provide material for a classroom gallery of images, song lyrics, clothing, movie excerpts and other pop culture references to “Bottom Life.” As gallery visitors (classmates and peers) view the art work, each student is asked to either defend or decry the way it portrays life in public housing.

1. What can be known about the artist’s intent?
2. What does the art work mean to you?
3. Does this representation of “Bottom Life” perpetuate stereotypes or promote better understanding about someone’s complex reality?

Students listen to one recorded interview and then observe one oral history interview in class. After constructing a set of helpful guidelines for successful interviews, the class chooses a method for inviting former and current tenants of Hillside Court to participate in oral history interviews that they conduct themselves. Optimally, they locate residents of Hillside from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as more recent tenants. Likely, this process involves the use of social media and networking but clears the way for face-to-face interviews. Conducting the interviews increases student self-efficacy and makes connections between the historical events we have covered in class and today’s tenants of Hillside Court.

The oral history interviews inform students’ wider understanding of what the community members value. Students then create a survey-based community service project drawing from tenant responses to questions like:

1. Is there something in particular that my community is missing?
2. What would improve me and my neighbors’ daily lives in Hillside Court?

All students, families, and community members who participate in the interviews are invited to participate in the culminating community service project. The tactile and interpersonal requirements of this project give students a unique opportunity to work alongside and form relationships with both neighbors and strangers.

This curriculum unit begins as work in a traditional classroom and ends with work in a public housing project; it is written for my students who are both at home in “the Bottom” and looking for a place at the top.