A Year in Review

Like many of you, I have spent the last few days winding down my curriculum and wrapping up my school year. With this comes the obligatory final exam review.

My students of course ask, what is on the exam? What should we study? Any my reaction is always- EVERYTHING! HA

In all seriousness though, as I look back on this year, spent both in my classroom and with History Connected, I am drawn back to Paul Revere's Ride.

I constantly remind my students that it only takes one person, one idea and one action to change the world.

Although recent actions in our political arena have brought up Revere's name again, my students and all of us, as History Connected participants, will never forget Revere's role in the play that was the American Revolution.

reflections...

As I was reading through the current blog page I was interested by the amount of subject areas and methods that reflect ‘today’. I pulled a few quotes from the blogs and the following are my personal reflections:

Many students question the value of studying history but comparing past elections to the “Presidential election of 2012” or even Obama’s election can bring history to life.

“As the nation remembers the sesquicentennial of the Civil War”, this topic keeps coming up on the radio and television. Many students will agree that all the issues raised by slavery and abolition have not really been totally dealt with in today’s society- there is still observable inequity. I saw a trailer for the upcoming movie “The Conspirators” about Lincoln’s assassination- hopefully many will go see it.


“Reflection: A great deal of students did not understand the idea of a paradox.” I loved this lesson because a paradox is truly a compelling problem and its important for students to understand that these things happen today as well as to our human family throughout history—what a connection to the past.

These methods allow the students to interact with history in technological ways they are very comfortable with:
“I started my blog”:
“Polldaddy and Survey Monkey”
“Create a Prezi or website about their person”
Such a wide variety of activities that can help translate history into a ‘language’ they understand

Election Activity

With the Presidential election of 2012 about to launch into national relevance, the topic of American elections is becoming increasing important to address in the classroom. I have found myself touching on the topic in both my US History I class and my Sociology class. Civics and voter participation are topics that transcend all areas of social studies.

A lesson about American elections should begin with a question to the class: how important is to vote in America today? Most students generally consider voting to be a privilege that they do not have yet, and therefore have not put much thought into.

Last year during a HC seminar on the right to vote, we were shown an image of the election of 1852. The picture made voting day out to be a celebration, with people drinking and bringing their families. Politicians engaged on a personal level with voters, even feet from the ballot box. The picture really got me thinking, how much has voting and pride in civic responsibility changed since then?

In my US History I classes, I put two pictures on the board, one of the election of 1852, and another of present day voting procedure. Lining them up, I asked each student to draw several conclusions about each, and then to compare the two. The results were striking, indicating that modern day voting is less a celebration and more a chore that people don’t love, but might feel guilty about not doing. The lines, sterile environment, and lack of good natured campaigning sucks much of the excitement out of the institution of exercising your voice in a Democratic system. I then asked my students the pros and cons of the voting procedure in both pictures. While one fails to generate excitement, it did help to provide a fair and uncorrupted result.

Upon completion of the compare and contrast exercise, I then proposed a statistic to my students that only 40% of all eligible voters between the ages of 18-24 actually vote. Immediately afterwards, my students began to brainstorm how to bring interest and excitement back into Election Day. To key was to attract more voters to the polls, not to have a party. With that in mind, students engaged in an open discussion about how to achieve this elusive goal of increasing voter participation.

A Response to Patriots by Christian Appy

Jean M. Acciavatti
Haverhill High School
May 18, 2011

Response to Patriots

Christian Appy has taken on a huge undertaking with the penning of this volume. The scores of interviews of Vietnamese and Americans- some well known, others just everyday people- is daunting. One thing is clear. Most people are very opinionated about the Vietnam War. As a child during the war, I was very aware of the antiwar sentiment- at least from the media's perception of it. One of the things I didn't know however were that there were theatre troupes whose mission it was to protest. I had no idea that many Vietnamese simply considered themselves that- not northern and not southern. I never really thought about what Vietnamese children thought about the war- but they must have had strong feelings given the part many played in both formal and informal battle. How many of them had witnessed the horrors and were simply 'playing' them out without realizing the finality of it all. Soldiers and other leaders who were merely doing their jobs suffered much ill will as did their own families. It is also amazing to me that prewar most Americans had never even heard of Vietnam and couldn't find it on a globe before the war. And most agree that nothing that was happening in Vietnam had much bearing on American life. The Vietnamese were interested in developing themselves—so --why were we there?

Sesquicentennial! Civil War Letters: Sources and Ideas for the Classroom

As the nation remembers the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the web is teeming with great resources to engage students. With recent efforts to digitize archives and sources for greater public access, there are phenomenal resources that capture individual points of view…so many that you can really capture a picture of the whole war through individual voices and experiences. Civil War letters are a phenomenal way to pull students into the everyday perspective of war… North or South, home front or battlefield, male or female, white or black. Letters reveal motive, emotions, aspirations, as well as details about daily life. There are endless ways you could use letters to help students understand the Civil War. Firstly, consider the essential questions that frame your unit, what do you want students to know about the Civil War? Personally, because of the nature of the Civil War, I feel it is important for students to know why people fought…what caused this massive and tragic loss of life? It’s valuable to let student curiosity guide their inquiry as it creates a greater sense of ownership and interest. Using a generic question, such as, “What can we learn about the Civil War from this letter?” you can have students choose from any collection…one you’ve created or a data base on the web. If you want to put more time into organizing the sources, you could create stations with letters from specific regions, topics, points of view, and as the students rotate through the different stations they can treate the letters like pieces to a mosaic. One use of Civil War letters I found particularly interesting was having the letters narrated. The Patriot Ledger had a “Civil War Letters home from Quincy Soldiers” special in which letters were read aloud. Try using voicethread, or jing, to narrate your letters.

The New York Times posted several of Robert Gould Shaw’s letters in his defense of Washington, DC as a member of the elite New York Seventh Regiment, before he commanded the Massachusetts 54^th Regiment. This might be an interesting connection to the film, Glory. Though these letters are before Shaw’s leadership with the 54^th, they are a great resource, particularly because of his background…coming from education and wealth. The letters capture a well spoken insightful perspective of the war and his mission, to defend the capital…it would definitely make for an interesting comparison with a soldier from less wealth an education, or an African American soldier.

I really liked Maine State Archive’s Civil War Sesquicentennial. There are dozens of letters catalogued by their date, author, subject, and town. There is also a search box so you can look for certain terms that appear within letters. This source is unique in that it presents perspectives that reveal how war impacted whole communities. The organization allows one to search for specific aspects of war.

A little closer to home, I’ve also really enjoyed the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Looking at the Civil War, Massachusetts finds her voice. The selection accessible on the MHS website includes sources from many perspectives, that of MA governor, John Andrew, to a soldier’s letter to his wife. These two perspectives would make an interesting comparative.

PBS, of course, never fails. PBS has a pretty extensive lesson plan involving Civil War letters. The Civil War Trust also has an extensive bank of lesson plans, some having to do with letters as well.

Using excerpts from Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides by Christian G. Appy

Brief Overview: To supplement my unit on the Vietnam War, I shared three excerpts with my students from Christian G. Appy’s book. I used three different teaching styles with these readings and assessed their enduring understanding through their analysis of three quotes on our unit test. Included below are the three excerpts I used, the questions I posed to the class and my reflection on their use in the classroom. It is my hope that maybe you could use or modify some of this in your own classes. I would love to hear about other excerpts you have/plan to use!
Connection to MA Frameworks: US II 20. Explain the causes, course, and consequences of the Vietnam War and summarize the diplomatic and military policies of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

“Kick the Tires and Light the Fires” pgs 61-75
Method of Instruction: Informal Class Discussion In class I gave out this reading and gave students about fifteen minutes to skim. We then spent about fifteen minutes discussing the answers to these questions.
1. What did “sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem” mean?
2. Discuss JFK’s role in Vietnam.
3. Do you agree with Malcolm Browne’s idea that in the early 60’s the U.S. was waging a secret war in Vietnam?
4. Explain Le Lieu Browne’s perception of President Diem.
Connection to unit objective(s):
• Summarize Vietnam’s history as a French colony and its struggle for independence.
• Examine how the United States became involved in the Vietnam conflict.
Reflection: I think my students really understood the problems that stemmed fro Diem’s policies and the complexity of U.S. involvement at that time. They were most fascinated with Malcolm Browne’s account and we had a great discussion about the impact of the media and powerful images. Lastly, they loved the story behind Malcolm and Le Lieu. In retrospect, I think I could have saved on class time by asking them to read the account at him and coming in prepared to discuss in class.

“From Civil Rights to Antiwar” pgs 142-145
Method of Instruction: Individual Written Assignment I gave this assignment for students to complete in class on a day I was out on at a TAH seminar. Students were asked to complete the reading and answer the following questions individually and hand in for a graded assignment.
1. Describe the paradoxical relationship between civil rights and antiwar movements.
2. Analyze the following quote: “The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.”
3. Briefly explain the impact that the Vietnam War had on SNCC.
4. What was the controversy surround Muhammad Ali? Do you agree with his decision? Explain.
Connection to unit objective(s):
• Explain the impact of the war on American society.
• Explain the draft policies that led to the Vietnam War becoming a working-class war.
• Trace the roots of opposition to the war.
• Describe the antiwar movement and the growing divisions in U.S. public opinion about the war.
Reflection: A great deal of students did not understand the idea of a paradox. I have plenty of dictionaries in my classroom and I always stress being an active learner so I was disappointed that not many took the initiative to grab a dictionary! I also had to address question #2 in class because instead of answering the question based on the reading, they drew from prior knowledge. Most of their answers focused on funding of the Great Society being affected by the war, when in the article they suggested Martin Luther King, Jr. was referring to the contradictory goals of this working-class war and the philosophy behind the Great Society. Students did seem to be engaged about brief account of Muhammad Ali and they had some questions for me the next day!

“From Cambodia to Kent State” pgs. 376-389
Method of Instruction: Jigsaw Discussion For this assignment, I asked all students to read the introduction and then answer questions 1 and 2. After that, I assigned each student one of the three primary source accounts (Anthony Lake, A.J. Langguth and Tom Grace) and assigned them the corresponding questions. After ten minutes of silent reading time, we got into groups of three and students shared their answers to questions 3-5. This took about fifteen minutes. We then reconvened as a class and shared out the responses to all questions.
1. Explain Nixon/Kissinger’s military strategy in Vietnam at the start of 69.
2. How did Nixon deal w/the media, pubic knowledge and support of the war? Give 2 examples.
3. Explain Anthony Lake’s moral dilemma when he resigned. Do you agree with is decision to resign?
4. What did A.J. Langguth find in his research about the effectiveness of Vietnamization?
5. How did Tom Grace’s experiences at Kent State shape him? Were you surprised by any of his account?
Connection to unit objective(s):
• Describe the antiwar movement and the growing divisions in U.S. public opinion about the war.
• Describe Nixon’s policy of Vietnamization.
• Explain the public’s reaction to the Vietnam War during Nixon’s presidency.
Reflection: Students did really well with this excerpt and method of instruction. We had a really active discussion on all three questions as students expressed their personal opinions about the topics. We discussed mistrust the government, the scariness of Kent State from both sides, the decision of Lake to resign and the battle for the hearts and minds in connection to Vietnamization.



Formal Test Assessment
Quote Analysis: Pick three of the following quotes. In a paragraph, briefly explain what they mean and whether you agree with the idea behind them. (5 pts each)

1. “Sink or swim with Ngo Dihn Diem.”-American journalist in regards to Washington’s policy.
2. “You could smell the burning flesh.”-Malcolm Browne
3. “The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
4. The United States is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
5. “No Viet Cong never called me nigger.”- Muhammad Ali
6. “Quitting wasn’t heroic.”-Anthony Lake
7. “They didn’t want to fight.”-A.J. Langguth
8. “As much as we hated the war on April 29, we hated it more on April 30th.”-Tom Grace
Reflection:
Below is the percentage of students that chose the above quotes to analyze

#1-11.5%
#2-11.5%
#3-25%
#4-3%
#5-16.8%
#6-6%
#7-5.3%
#8-23.9%

I was pleased that all quotes were chosen at least three times and not surprised that students gravitated towards #3 and #8 since those were the ones we had the liveliest discussions on. Click here to view some student samples.

Image of book was taken from:
http://www.amazon.com/Patriots-Vietnam-War-Remembered-Sides/dp/0142004499

Focusing on the individual, not just the event

Besides my US History classes, this year I have the pleasure of teaching 9th grade World History. In Stoneham, the 9th grade curriculum focuses on the French Revolution through the modern era (or whatever that means). Every year we struggle with finishing the content, typically rushing through WW II- many of my students' favorite part of history.

This year we decided to mix things up a bit...

After reading Double Victory I realized there were so many untold stories of World War II and that I would love to integrate this idea of telling their story with my 9th graders.

Together the 9th grade teachers designed and implemented a new research project:

Unknown Heroes and Heroines of World War II

Although some are not really "unknown" to most, they were certainly unknown to my students.

Much like National History Day, students pick a topic which corresponds to a theme and then has 4 options to present the information. The options are:

1. Creating a 3-D model which depicts an important event in the life of their person
2. Write a historical paper
3. Create a Prezi or website about their person

And my personal favorite...

4. Become the person and present their findings to the class!

Although the 9th grade curriculum is not completely relatable to TAH content, the theme of an War, Society, State and Citizenship is. Many of my students only know World War II because of the violence.

With this project we hope that they will also be able to put a face and a story with the great conflict and above all else, understand the conflicts impact on the people who lived through it.

Possible options include:
Primo Levi Spitfire Women

Jean Moulin