Where Did You Say You Came From?

During the summer, the prof of Canadian Immigration History and I discussed a number of ideas for the class session in September. We agreed on using the Archives to help the students practice for an oral history assignment. Who better to practice interview skills, I thought, than with dead people? There are both similarities and (significant) differences.

The session was divided into three parts: interviewing dead people, blind dating, and moving beyond the records. I brought in a few secondary sources about oral history to wave around during the session so that students knew they could get lots of help in the Library.

First up—an interview with a dead person, J.F. Herbin to be exact. You can find a similar lesson plan here (http://archivallessons.blogspot.ca/2012/07/counting-canadians.html ; for this class I did a modified version). We spent close to 30 minutes going through this guided example. I tell the students a few details about the individual and then quiz them about other sources of information. As students brainstorm a source, like a newspaper, I encourage them by giving out a copy of the newspaper and asking for details from that source. Every student gets a source to explore. In the end, we all have a piece of the puzzle and as a group put together the person’s life. This first part of the class demonstrated to the students what they needed to do during the following two parts.

Next was blind dating to give the students an opportunity to practice doing background research with archival records. Four groups of records had been pre-selected for this class, all related to immigration. Normally, I set out records and the students sit randomly at tables without knowing what records are there. But, I did something unusual this time; I told the students about the records that were on each table so they could choose to work with ones of interest to them and they chose where to sit. We spent 30 minutes looking at the records, doing critical analysis of them. The groups were given a sheet of critical analysis questions that I developed from Social Studies that Sticks by Laurel Schmidt (2007). They were asked to select one set of the questions and use them as a jumping-point to find major themes within the records, build categories of key concepts found in the records, and look for what is missing from the records. Each student in the group worked independently to prepare for the next part of the session.

Part three, moving beyond the records, was to prepare the students for an actual interview. You can find the basic lesson plan here (http://archivallessons.blogspot.ca/2013/12/thinking-outside-box.html). The groups at each table worked together to discuss a number of questions about the records. These questions were meant to provoke further discussion about forming interview questions for the assignment.

You may wonder about music for this class. I played Sting’s “Englishman in New York”, although I could have used “Illegal Alien” by Genesis.

This class was almost 90 minutes long, so I was able to do three, separate lessons, relate them, and offer them as one class. I think it worked well, giving the students lots of time to experience and guidance with the records. Many of the students returned to work on the research necessary for their assignment.