Rationale
As I stated earlier, my school is diverse. And, with that diversity of student population comes diversity in experiences. Though many of my students do arrive at Chicago Academy from neighborhoods close to the school itself, some travel a considerable distance. In envisioning a unit on public history, I thought about my students, and considered something one of my former 9th grade English literature students said in a freewrite about her neighborhood: “In the park, everyone is equal.” While resources may not be distributed equally across the city-- as will be discussed later in this curriculum unit, there is a certain sense of equal standing one has when one uses the public park spaces in Chicago. Access to resources, such as swimming pools, is seemingly blind to country of origin, race, religion, language spoken, and income; one only needs to have a Chicago address to participate in all that Chicago’s parks have to offer.4
In each of my students’ neighborhoods, they have parks. Many of the parks closest to many of my students’ homes-- including Riis Park in Belmont-Craigin, Portage Park in Portage Park, and Columbus Park in Austin-- are on the National Register of Historic Places. Columbus Park, completed by Prairie School architect Jens Jensen, is also a National Historic Landmark District. And yet, my students do not understand the situatedness of urban parks within the broader history of Chicago. Nor do my students grasp the history of city planning and urban development.
Part of the power in public history is seeing history as a participatory act-- something in which academics and non-experts alike can engage. And, there is tremendous value in teaching students to think like historians. Close reading and analytical skills are at the heart of such inquiry; and, those are the same skills that are a part of the Common Core State Standards and College Board Standards to which other English teachers in my school and I align our instruction. This unit is designed with my 9th grade English language arts students in mind; however, the concepts and skills in it could be easily transferred to others’ own unique classroom settings.
Comments: