Take, for example, the extraordinary interview with 87-year-old with former slave Sarah Frances Shaw Graves. In this narrative, we learn that Sarah Graves was born in 1850 in Kentucky, moved to Missouri at 6 months of age, and worked as a slave until her family was freed in 1863. At the time of the 1937 interview, she owned a 120-acre farm in Missouri, and her bachelor son still lived with her. Those are the facts. It is her memories that fill in the story.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1938, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division

We learn the following details:

• When Sarah was a baby, her mother laid her “on a pallet near the fence while she plowed the corn or worked in the field.”
• Her stepfather and mother “tended their own tobacco and grain in the moonlight. This they could sell and have the money.”
• To get a wool dress, they would “shear the sheep, wash the wool, card it, spin it and weave it.”
• Field work was hard and backbreaking. “They used oxen to break up the ground for corn, an’ for plowin’ it too. They hoed the corn with a hoe, and cut the stalks with a hoe and shocked ‘em. They cut the grain with the cradle and bound it with their hands, and shocked it. They threshed the grain with a hickory stick. Beating it out.”

In the harshest paragraph of the interview, Sarah Graves describes whippings at the hands of her master:

“Yes’m. Some masters was good an’ some was bad. My mama’s master whipped his slaves for pastime. My master was not so bad as some was to their slaves. I’ve had many a whippin’, some I deserved an’ some I got for being blamed for doin’ things the master’s children did. My master whipped his slaves with a cat-o-nine tails. He’d say to me, ‘You ain’t had a curryin’ down for some time. Come here!!!’ Then he’d whip me with the cat.”

And who better to explain the concept of “allotment” than an ex-slave who understood it all too well?

“You see, there was slave traders in those days, jes’ like you got horse and mule an’ auto traders now. They bought and sold slaves an’ hired ‘em out. Yes’m, rented ‘em out. Allotted means somethin’ like hired out. But the slave never got no wages. That all went to the master. The man they was allotted to paid the master.”

“I was never sold. My mama was sold only once, but she was hired out many times. Yes’m when a slave was allotted, som[e]body made a down payment and gave a mortgage for the rest. A chattel mortgage.”

A down payment!!

“Times don’t change. Just the merchandise.”

Sarah Graves’ explanation of allotment personalizes what could otherwise be viewed by students as a dry economics concept.

Taken together, the memories of ex-slaves in the “Born in Slavery” collection connect students to a far more complete picture of slavery than the usual textbook approach. It is important to keep in mind, however, that all of the ex-slaves interviewed during the late 1930s were still young when they were slaves. How accurate were their memories of slave childhoods nearly eighty years in the past?

The dilemmas of memory and forgetting are unavoidable whenever teachers use oral histories in primary source teaching. But that’s another post.

Sarah Frances Shaw Graves, Age 87

I found one of the best lessons I have ever seen on evaluating eyewitness reports on the EDSITEment website from the National Endowment for the Humanities (in partnership with the National Trust for the Humanities and the Verizon Foundation). You won’t believe the fabulous lessons on this site! They’re not all based on primary sources, but whoever said every lesson had to be a primary source lesson?

Before you get lost in EDSITEment-land, be sure to take a look at the Great Chicago Fire lesson I discovered called Evaluating Eyewitness Reports. (Although this lesson is written for grades 9-12, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it with middle school kids, and I think most of it could be revised for elementary school, too.)

Here’s the lesson description from the website:

This lesson offers students experience in drawing historical meaning from eyewitness accounts that present a range of different perspectives. Students begin with a case study including alternative reports of a single event: the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Students compare two newspaper reports on the fire and two memoirs of the fire written many decades later, with an eye on how these accounts complement and compete with one another, and how these sources can be used to draw historical meaning from them. Students then apply the lessons learned in their investigation of the eyewitness accounts of the Chicago fire by considering a unique eyewitness account: the diary kept by a Confederate girl when her Tennessee town was occupied by Union troops during the Civil War.

The “Guiding Question” of the lesson fits right into best practices for teaching with primary sources: “How can we evaluate eyewitness accounts of historical events and periods, and what historical meanings can be drawn from them?”

The lesson links to a basic Written Document Analysis Worksheet from the National Archives. A special Student Launchpad includes links to the eyewitness reports and questions about them, so students can work through the assignments online. It has complete assessments, links to state standards, and one great suggestion for applying developing analytic skills to today’s news:

If you have time you might have students put their new analytic skills to work by having them collect eyewitness reports from present-day newspapers or conduct their own interviews of family members who have witnessed some significant event (for example, an athletic competition, a natural disaster, a public celebration, the coming of some new technology….).

Even if you have no opportunity to teach this lesson, you will enjoy exploring the extensive website on which it is based: The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory. Carl Smith, Curator of the Online Exhibition, writes about how various acts of memory contribute to our understandings of the Great Chicago Fire.

Journalists, novelists, poets, artists, politicians, scholars, clergy, businessmen, and private citizens have continuously reworked this epic occasion over the years, simultaneously drawing from and contributing to a massive body of remembrance.

The same could be said of more current events, such as the Iraq war or the World Trade Center bombing or Hurricane Katrina. Think of the extent to which our collective memory of these events is growing and changing through primary and secondary sources.

For a little added fun, don’t miss the special media features of The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory. They include a Shockwave interactive 360-degree view of Chicago in 1858, MIDI music files that play fire songs, three-dimensional stereographs of the post-fire city (you’ll need 3-D glasses), and a QuickTime digital video of a 1955 newsreel clip about the fate of the site where the fire started.

The Great Chicago Fire, an artists rendering

Chicago in Flames: The Rush for Lives Over Randolph Street Bridge

Originally published in Harpers Weekly, 1871

Wikimedia Commons

What have I been doing? Well…

• Two trips to Europe–Sicily in April and Brittany (northwest France) in June. I continued my Italian studies and brushed up on my once fluent French.
• Hours and hours of Twitter, where I have built an admirable Professional Learning Network (PLN) of educators. I follow #edchat, #sschat, and #tlchat whenever possible, along with many education-related groups with nings and conferences. I contribute under the name @johnsonmaryj. I cannot recommend Twitter enough as an efficient and effective route to Professional Development. It’s all @nancyw‘s fault, but she was totally correct.
• A new contract to write eight columns called “Online with Primary Sources” for School Library Monthly. Two down, six to go.
• Three workshops for Teaching with Primary Sources – Colorado and Teaching with Primary Sources – Western Regional Center. These took place in Denver, Albuquerque, and Austin. Oh, how I love getting my teaching fix through the opportunities that TPS offers me!
• A new physical trainer along with a renewed commitment to fitness and weight loss.
• Movies, reading, listening to audio tapes, neighborhood walks, morning coffee, art shows, running errands, trying out new technologies…just the usual stuff of life. How did I EVER do all this when I was working full time?
• Finally, finally, finally…a newly upgraded WordPress blog, a few additional plug-ins, and a new resolve to get back to blogging on a regular basis. I send my sincere thanks to Todd Wolfe, Student Intern at Teaching with Primary Sources at Metropolitan State College of Denver, for his patient and skillful guidance throughout the upgrade process. It goes without saying that I could not/would not have done it without Todd.

So with my long absence accounted for, I welcome my readers back to what I hope will be a valuable use of your time. After my next trip — only to Iowa this time — I’ll start passing along ideas and resources for making online primary sources a rewarding part of your bag of tricks! Now if I can just figure out how to insert my own photo into the About the Author page. And make the Share This icons actually go somewhere. And, well, you get the picture. I’m a work in progress.

When would I absolutely expect primary sources to be included in research? Almost always. Why? Nearly every line of inquiry–scientific, historical, social, political–needs to establish the kind of historical context evidenced by primary sources. Here are two possible examples:

Immigration. How have attitudes changed or remained the same throughout American history? Rather than simply researching the current political debate regarding immigration, students build deeper understanding by viewing and analyzing Ellis Island films, anti-Chinese lyrics in sheet music, and even application materials for U. S. citizenship.

Water Rights. Who deserves to have access to water when the supply is limited? In researching this topic, students can study the Tennessee Valley Authority, legal decisions to divert the Colorado River to California fields, photographs of the Dust Bowl, and other historical decisions that affect today’s water supplies.

I’m a great believer in incorporating primary sources into nearly every research assignment, but only when it will add depth to the learning. As an end in itself, a primary source requirement seems a mere exercise in filling in the blanks without any connection to real learning. I’m delighted to see more and more emphasis on primary sources in revised content standards, but my fear is that primary sources will become one more item in a long checklist designed to prove that standards have been met.

Primary source learning becomes significant when students learn how to analyze sources and to pose further questions about their significance. Their questions should drive their research. Sometimes their questions will lead them to still more primary sources. The number does not matter. The way primary sources contribute to understanding does matter.

Work with primary sources also requires training and practice. As students build confidence in their analytical skills and in their ability to generate meaningful, researchable questions, they will start to incorporate more and more primary sources into their learning. Early questions can be remarkably simple, as in this early Library of Congress “Thinking about Primary Sources” guide or its revised version, the “Primary Source Analysis Tool,” along with this helpful explanation.

A side benefit of working with primary sources online is that often subject experts have given them a context by adding explanatory text, links, timelines, and other value-added, secondary source material. For example, compare this primary source with this primary source and its supporting material.The supplemental material leads young researchers to ask more questions and to seek more primary and secondary sources to fill in their knowledge gaps.

One of Bud’s blog comments asked how to locate primary sources online. In my next post, I’ll provide links to my favorite primary source collections as a starting point. There are also links to excellent primary source collections on the right side of this blog.

I do love Bud’s suggestion that primary sources might solve the problem of print vs. online, even with certain caveats. I’m ready to help educators take the next step by leading them to excellent collections, as well as analysis ideas to make primary sources useful and meaningful in every curricular area.

The Americanese Wall, 1916 Cartoon

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

But I DID write a book! It’s called Primary Source Teaching the Web 2.0 Way, K-12.

At first, I planned to write a book that featured primary sources by category–text, historic newspapers, photos and other images, maps, sound and movie files, and artifacts and ephemera. While working with that idea, the world of Web 2.0 began to take over my writing and my life. Soon, the book had morphed into a presentation of ideas for teaching with primary sources using the latest online tools.

I soon discovered that Web 2.0 tools and online primary sources made an excellent match. Primary sources are all about critical thinking, and Web 2.0 tools support the kind of interactivity and feedback that pushes critical thinking far beyond mere presentation of primary source analysis.

In choosing my audience, I recognized that many fine educators would like to incorporate Web 2.0 ideas into their practice, but they need support and encouragement. In other words, not everyone is an “early adopter” of new technologies. Given the speed of changes in the field, these educators often feel completely overwhelmed. I wanted my book to give them the courage to try Web 2.0 ideas and the content to feed their students’ learning.

Apparently my book is meeting a need. In the two conferences I’ve attended this fall (Encyclo-Media in Oklahoma City and the national conference of the American Association of School Librarians in Charlotte), the book has sold out each day. I’m sure it’s really difficult for publishers to gauge the necessary number of copies to keep the shelves stocked, but I’m sad that some educators never had a chance to consider buying a copy…especially when they could have gotten a discount for conference attendance.

So just in case you’d still like a copy, I’ll put all the important information below along with a link to the publisher. More than anything, I welcome your feedback, reactions, complaints, criticism, praise, and whatever else you’d like to say about Primary Source Teaching the Web 2.0 Way, K12.

Here’s the cover, followed by contact info and the blurb from the back of the book:

To Order:

ABC-CLIO

130 Cremona Drive

Santa Barbara, CA93117

Call 1-800-368-6868

Online: Linworth Publishing, Inc.

Orders by email: mailto:orders@abc-clio.com

Customer Service Hours: 7:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. PST

Primary Source Teaching the Web 2.0 Way K-12 helps teachers, librarians, and technologists apply 21st century strategies at every level and in every content area!

    

A comprehensive listing of popular Web 2.0 tools.

An extensive state-by-state bibliography of primary source collections online.

A sample permission letter to parents to introduce a 21st century primary source unit.

In-depth chapters on six different primary source categories.

Primary source analysis tools for each category.

Six “Web 2.0 Focus” sections offering how-to-get-started advice and primary source teaching ideas: Blogs, Citizen Journalism, Flickr, Podcasting, VoiceThread, and Digital Storytelling.

 

Technology alone does not guarantee a quality learning experience, but now is a perfect time to challenge existing 20th century structures and exploit the transformative potential of tags, comments, interactivity, collaboration, and other powerful features of Web 2.0 in the primary source classroom. This book shows you how!

• My formatting bar in WordPress disappeared. Didn’t work in Firefox, Safari, or IE, nor in Mac OS or Windows.
• All I could view in my rough draft posts was html code.
• I wanted to jazz up this blog with plug-ins, widgets, and social networking links.
• I still need help with that (see above), but I’ve solved some problems.
• My husband shattered his heel, needed a full-time nurse (me) during recovery from surgery, and had to learn to walk again.
• We took a mental health trip to Italy. Husband practiced walking; I studied Italian.
• Three days after returning, I attended the National School Board Association T + L Conference during a Denver snowstorm.
• Next I spent five days at the national American Association of School Librarians convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.
• Twitter took over my life.

I have lots of half-written posts filled with great primary source teaching ideas that I’m eager to share with you…soon. Don’t give up on me!

The Missing Primary Source Librarian

Creative Commons License, Flickr Photo by juanluisgx

Today’s Document from the National Archives was a note written by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the wee hours of September 1, 1939–the day that Germany invaded Poland and set off a war that would ravage the European continent.

According to the National Archives:

This item is a pencilled notation written by President Franklin D. Roosevelt while in bed on September 1, 1939 at 3:05 a.m., and records how he received news that Germany had invaded Poland and was bombing Polish cities, thus beginning World War II.

The note documents that Roosevelt received word of the invasion from Ambassador Anthony Biddle, through Ambassador William Bullitt. The note also documents the President’s order that all Navy ships and Army commands be notified by radio of the German invasion.

My Google Reader today led me to the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, which also commemorated the September 1st invasion of Poland by excerpting a poem by W. H. Auden in its “Face-to-Face” blog. Face-to-Face always features portraits, and it also often adds enriching information tied to both historical and current events.

The tools of today are helping me discover history at a painless, gentle pace. Many educators approach the latest technology tools with some trepidation–sort of an “I-can-never-know-enough” mentality. I certainly do. Still, I am beginning to understand that when I can control the onslaught one day at a time, it can be a pleasurable experience.

And now it is time for me to check today’s Tweet from John Quincy Adams as he crosses the Atlantic Ocean on his way to Russia. I will find out what the weather was like on September 1st, 1809, and I will be impressed by which classical literature the future president was reading. Slowly, slowly, I will make my way across the Atlantic with him. At each point along the route, I can click on the map to read his latest diary entry. Technology is helping me to enjoy a quieter, more thoughtful time. Would you like to come along?

John Quincy Adams, from the Massachusetts Historical Society
About the Diary Entries from the 1809 Trip to Russia

Most of the photographs in the online slide show that accompanied the article are indeed famous, but also controversial because of their editing:

• Lincoln with “his head grafted to the more majestic body of John Calhoun.”
• Ulysses Grant mounted on a fine horse before a military encampment–actually three photos spliced together.
• Stalin in a photo minus an erased enemy.
• Mussolini minus a horse handler (more manly that way).
• Chairman Mao in a group photo minus the Gang of Four.
• Life Magazine‘s Kent State shooting photo with a pole removed.

Of course, such editing is far simpler today given digital technologies. I would not hesitate to remove a pole coming out of someone’s head, as did Life Magazine in the Kent State photograph. That’s what photo editing software is made for, right?

When students analyze primary source photographs, they must be made aware that every photograph results from the interplay of the time period, the technology, the photographer’s purpose, and often the photographer’s or the subject’s own biases. Like all primary sources, photographs are made for a reason. The discovery of that reason becomes the foundation of critical thinking activities.

To introduce a critical thinking activity tied to photographic analysis, teachers often use this American Memory lesson: Does the Camera Ever Lie? The activity comes from the Selected Civil War Photographs collection of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Union or Confederate Soldier? Well, that depends.
Gettysburg, July, 1863.

Photographed by Timothy H. O’Sullivan, July 1863.

“…over the course of his long life, Mr. Jennings witnessed, and perhaps participated in, the rescue of George Washington’s portrait from the White House during the War of 1812 and stood by the former president’s side at his deathbed. He bought his freedom, helped to organize a daring (and unsuccessful) slave escape and became the first person to put his White House recollections into a memoir.” -Rachel L. Swarns

Beth Taylor, a research associate at James Madison’s plantation of Montpelier, has been digging into the Jennings story. Yes, a good researcher can still make amazing discoveries in archives! For instance, she found a rare edition of Mr. Jennings’s recollections. Here’s a link to a reprint of the memoir–”A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison“–from the White House Historical Association. (If you get sidetracked at the Historical Association website, be sure to check out the classroom links.)

Two things particularly fascinated me in the article. One is that next week, dozens of Jennings descendants will gather for a reunion in the White House. I’ll be keeping an eye out for reports of that event. Imagine being the great-great-great grandchild of a slave in the White House! The most recent discoveries will certainly fill in some gaps in the family history.

Photograph of Paul Jennings, Montpelier Foundation
The second part of the story to grab my attention was the description of Paul Jennings’s prickly relationship with Dolley Madison. I am also intrigued by descriptions of Dolley Madison’s “heroine” image in light of Jennings’ reminiscences. History is almost always more complicated than tradition would have us believe. Even the White House Historical Association lesson called “Saving History – Dolley Madison, the White House, and the War of 1812” completely accepts Dolley Madison’s claim that she alone saved the Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington from the British flames.

Every primary source comes with a viewpoint. The tension of two viewpoints around a single event makes for rich historical research. That’s why we need to keep training young historians in the analysis of primary sources!