An unexpected visit

My final class of the year was with a small group of high school students. Their teacher had been in one of my sessions when she was a student and wanted to bring some of her students to the Archives. Yeah! This is one of my goals for doing sessions with B.Ed. students.

I divided the allotted time into a combination of looking at records related to their curriculum, interesting books from Special Collections, and a tour of Archives and Special Collections. The exercises with archival documents were very short, asking only two questions about the content and allowing for some discussion time. I also gave them some information about the process of research. During the tour, I had laid out a few documents that I thought would catch their interest.

It all went very well. The documents and books that I selected did make an impact on them. They took pictures of the material they used. The group stayed longer than expected and had lots of questions during the tour. Indeed, we all learned a lot.

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.

Lit Review: Broadening Student Understanding…

A good friend of mine recently brought my attention to an article in Social Education 77 (5), pp. 228-231, by Lee Ann Potter entitled “Broadening Student Understanding of Wartime Experience through Original Works of Art and Personal Accounts”. It is a most interesting article that discusses the incorporation of various sources (i.e., oral history, photos, correspondence, videos, etc.) to encourage critical thinking. The author outlines how this is done. Here's my take on what she said.

The students are provided with some sources and challenged to identify if they think any sources are missing. If so, what types of sources? Then challenged again to identify what the missing sources might add to their understanding of the event. As the new sources are provided, the students are asked to speculate on the creator, title, and date of the new item(s) and then create a list of questions based on these sources. After that list is built, the students are given the metadata about these items. As a group, the students discuss how this changes their view of the event. Then, the students are shown a video (or videos) that are directly related to the event, adding another dimension [I would love to do this with my classes]. The group discussion that follows incorporates the newest information from the video. How are the students’ views changed about the event or the items that reflect the event? Finally, the students are asked to read the relevant section in their textbook to build and understanding of the event. [Now comes the best part.] The students were asked to produce their own interpretation of the event based on the more-rounded information, using the various sources. [Are you wondering what my sessions might be doing next term? If I can find a class with which this will work, I will let you know!]

One From the Song Book

Some time in August, the planning began for a course for which I had done a session before, but not using my new methods. Of course, I had to completely change the session to incorporate speed dating, discovery, interrogation, and – yes – music. The prof, who is open to new things, was in total agreement. We decided to offer the session twice so that the class of 40 students could be divided into two sessions of 20, each lasting 1.5 hours in length. The class assignment was a choice of one with historic textbooks, an archival collection, a historiographic essay, or an oral history.

To get those creative juices flowing, part one was a speed dating exercise with the historic textbook collection – I called it Timeless Texting. I have used this method many times for various classes. The challenge is to select only 20 or 25 books out of the 2200 titles we have in this special collection, ranging in dates between 1800 and 1983 on all topics. Normally, the class has a subject area to which I can limit my search, but Educating Canadians covers the entire scope of this collection. I limited myself to two titles for each decade, spreading out the subjects as evenly as possible to provide comparisons. During the 30-minute activity, we discussed biases when approaching a book, making fun of old textbooks, and expectations on content. This was also an opportunity for me to explain the purpose of speed dating, which is not apparent to everyone. I explained that the students need to learn and practice skills for assessing a source and collecting bibliographic data – speed dating.

Between this exercise and the next one, I played some music for the students. Years ago, the Archives recorded the campus Choir singing and chanting Acadia-related songs and cheers. Many of the students had not heard these before. The music interlude was directly relevant to the class and the students enjoyed them. Very effective.

The next part was discovery with archival collections. As I have in other sessions, students were given five collections related to the topic with the correlating finding aid. They looked through the boxes for one item of interest, completed an information sheet, and we openly discussed the records and items at each table (lesson plan here: http://archivallessons.blogspot.ca/2013/12/hunting-and-gathering.html). The purpose was to practice gathering historical details and information. This part took about 30-minutes. Then, I had more Acadia-related music and song books to share with the students before we began the next exercise.

Part three was the interrogation section and would help with the oral history assignment. The purpose was for students to practice interrogating sources and to brainstorm new ideas. First, I instructed the students to switch tables. You see, in part two they had heard about the records at the other tables and I suspected that something may have caught their interest. Now was their chance to check out another group of records. After the switch, everyone selected one item, completed a sheet of questions, and then brainstormed about other sources of information that could be helpful. (lesson plan here: http://archivallessons.blogspot.ca/2013/12/thinking-outside-box.html). As the students packed up to leave, I played the song that is part of the Acadia convocation ceremony. Many had not heard it before, but everyone understood the significance of playing it at the end of this class.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Nothing Blue

At the start of September, I was asked to bring two, large classes of History students to the Archives. Because the reading room can only accommodate 25 students comfortably—up to 40 students uncomfortably, each class was divided into two sections. Fortunately, the History Librarian was able to work with the other section of students each time and we swapped at the mid-point. This is a strategy that works well for me, the Librarian, and the professor. The students especially benefit as they learn about primary and secondary sources in one class.

The first of the two classes was Environmental History. The prof wanted students to be able to evaluate primary and secondary sources through the lens of an environmental historian. I had 45 minutes to excite and educate them. I turned to one of the workshop format lesson plans of last year, modified it to suit the topic and time-frame, and developed a new lesson plan for this class (http://archivallessons.blogspot.ca/2013/11/no-paving-projects.html). I learned several things while this session was in progress and, luckily, had enough time to make alterations during the first session. First, let the students look through the material without having the questions in hand. When the questions are in hand, the students are less focused on the discovery aspect and more focused on answering the questions. The purpose of the questions is to give the students a focus AFTER they have looked at the archival material after all, the instructions are to select one thing from the box, take a good look at it, and then answer the questions. Second, I need to allow sufficient time for student to talk about the sources they found. Some students want to talk more than others so this part is hard to judge, but if I am prepared with interesting details about each collection than I can keep the discussion going. Sometimes the discussion can come back to the questions that the students have been asked to answer. Third, there is merit to allow time for students to go to another table and look at other sources of interest. We have just discussed these sources as a group and I expect something may have peaked their interest. Give the students exploration time at another table.

I tried a new idea for the History classes this year. I introduced music that was relevant to the topic. For example the Environmental History class left the room listening to Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell, although I also had Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning ready to go. For the next class, Pre-Confederation Canada, music was more of a challenge!

The second of the two classes during the first week of September was Pre-Confederation Canada. Again, I taught the class in two sections, swapping at the mid-point with the History Librarian. This was class a re-run of the Pre-Confederation lesson plan done in 2012 when I tried speed dating resources (explained here http://classroomarchivist.blogspot.ca/2012/11/snapshot-impressions-4-fourth-class-of.html). I did modify the sources somewhat but the questions and format remained the same with one exception. I asked the students to reflect on how this item was similar to or different from the one they saw before. That question intuitively came out of the Critical Dietetics conference session and, I felt, need to be considered during the exercise. What music did I end up playing? Kastin’s Akua Tuta, as there was a prominent indigenous peoples section and assignment in the course. I also had chosen a song by Susan Aglukark as a backup.

Overall, the introduction of music was not a huge hit for students—not in these classes anyway. In the next class, I used it more effectively.