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UPDATE: Lauren reports (4/10/20) on how her students are faring and what they've been writing in their "living history" assignments at the end of this post. "They give me a glimpse of how quickly some of them are growing up." By Lauren S. Brown
Several weeks ago - what is starting to feel like a lifetime ago - I finished grading 100 plus family history projects. Some were videos, but most were illustrated stories my students had written about someone they interviewed in their family.

Some kids interviewed parents or grandparents about their parents or grandparents. Some, who swore to me they had no interesting stories in their families' past, wrote about a parent's experience during 9/11 or how they felt during the last 2-3 presidential elections.

Now all of us, including my students, are living through a historical moment. If you are looking for a meaningful assignment that you can give students while we are all stuck at home, consider doing a "living through history" assignment.

Just a few days ago (which now seems like much longer ago, doesn't it?), I saw a couple of dozen students. Our district had quickly rescheduled an institute day; teachers prepared for e-learning and students were able to get into the building one last time to pick up any belongings.
As students came by, they were eager to share their observations, questions and concerns.

Hey, Ms. Brown, do you think we'll be out of school for longer than 2 weeks?

Do you think we'll still have the Great American field trip at the end of the year? Will we still have graduation? ( I teach 8th graders).

My sister is a senior in high school. She heard there won't be prom this year.

We going to pick up my brother at the airport today because his college closed.

We went to Costco this morning and the line was all the way to the back of the store.

My dad is worried that he will lose his job.

My mom told me a few days ago to stop putting the rubber bands on my braces so I don't have to put my fingers in my mouth.

I think I'm going to go nuts at home.

Ms. Brown, have you ever lived through anything like this? This will be in the history books, won't it?

Students can create "primary sources" for future historians

There are so many unanswered questions right now, but the answer to that last question is yes. So consider a simple assignment in which your students jot down their thoughts, questions, concerns and observations about what is going on. I suggested that they could do this as a letter, a diary/journal entry or just write.

Here are a few suggestions to get them started:

your family's trip to the grocery store and "stocking up"

cancelled family vacations, cancelled field trips, cancelled school

how weird it is to have to "e-learn"?

how are you occupying your time?

how do you feel about this? psyched that you don't have to come to school? bored? worried? bummed that you won't get to see your friends?

what is changing for you because of this?

what kinds of things are your families thinking/saying/doing?

Or have them post short videos about what they are thinking. Flipgrid is great for this. One of my colleagues is posting a question each day for students to reflect on. I know I have enjoyed this glimpse into my students' worlds, seeing the posters on the walls of their bedrooms, or their dog on the couch in the living room. You can come up with some fun questions to get the ball rolling:

What is your "must have" if you are going to be cooped up inside for awhile?

What are your "binge watch" recommendations?

Where is your new "desk"?

And then you can get into deeper questions, as long as you let students know that they don't have to share anything they don't wish to.

What is the #1 concern you have about what is going on right now?

What is a small way in which your life has changed right now?

What mattered to you a few days or a week ago that now seems irrelevant? Vice versa?

Things are changing very quickly now. This seems to be an assignment you could keep adapting as time passes. It doesn't necessarily require the internet, should that availability become restricted in some way.

Remind your students that they are creating a primary source - documentation of what one student was thinking in March of 2020 during the global pandemic. Now we are all a part of history.

Stay well!

Click here to see a recent week of Lauren's Google Slides for this assignment, with a note to teachers and a writing prompt for each day.

UPDATE (4/10/20) - "A Glimpse of How Quickly Some Are Growing Up"

Since writing this post, I have given this assignment to students. Their answers were, as I told them, the most interesting things I have EVER graded as a teacher. Some made me laugh, and more than a few made me cry. There is a poignancy to them, and a wonderful insight as to how middle schoolers see their world.

Students who are quiet in class have opened up. Some of the class clowns got serious on me. Some of the serious students were able to see the humorous side of things. One student wrote that her dog has never been happier-everyone is home and taking her on walks multiple times a day! They reveal sides of my students I did not always see. And they give me a glimpse of how quickly some of them are growing up.

Here are a few of the many responses I have gotten:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rEmgPYSgcp6XMeTSoAo5VFIleBsonAr8U8uoAzs9ptk/edit?usp=sharing
Visit a century-old pandemic here: What We Can Learn from the 1918 Influenza Diaries by Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, April 12, 2020

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Students' Pandemic Journals Could Become Primary Sources

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Remind your students that they are creating a primary source documentation of what one young person was thinking in the spring of 2020 during a global pandemic.

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Spanish-speaking immigrants aren't getting enough information about the coronavirus from government, groups say

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Oscar Torres Mendez and his co-workers at a downtown construction site were confused when Dallas County's safer-at-home order first went into effect last...

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In times like these, we could all use a little historical perspective. Jody Avirgan, political historian Nicole Hemmer, and special guests rescue moments from the entirety of U.S. history to map our journey through a tumultuous year. Each episode takes on one moment from that day and explores what makes it interesting, and what lessons can be learned -- all in under ten minutes.

New episodes release Tuesdays & Thursdays. Produced and researched by Jacob Feldman. Music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions. Artwork by Kate LaRue.

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This Day In Esoteric Political History - Jody Troi Avirgan

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In times like these, we could all use a little historical perspective. Jody Avirgan, political historian Nicole Hemmer, and special guests rescue moments from the entirety of U.S. history to map our journey through a tumultuous year.

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Around the world, the history of our present moment is taking shape in journal entries and drawings.

Margaux Rebourcet, a 28-year-old artist who lives in Nanterre, France, has found solace in her work. "We are now isolated," she said. Credit... Margaux Rebourcet

Before the end of life as we knew it, Ady, an 8-year-old who lives in the Bay Area of San Francisco, read a biography of Anne Frank.

When she realized that she, too, was living through what would soon become history, Ady started keeping her own diary.

In one early entry, she recorded that the judging for her county's science fair would be conducted over the phone, rather than in person. "Not 'fair'!!" she wrote. "Har, har, very funny."

When Santa Cruz County enacted a shelter-in-place order on March 16, she again picked up her pen.

"I'm REALY scared!" she wrote. "Did you know this is getting so bad that I have to go my clarinet lessons on the cumputer!!"

Image

As the coronavirus continues to spread and confine people largely to their homes, many are filling pages with their experiences of living through a pandemic. Their diaries are told in words and pictures: pantry inventories, window views, questions about the future, concerns about the present.

Taken together, the pages tell the story of an anxious, claustrophobic world on pause.

"You can say anything you want, no matter what, and nobody can judge you," Ady said in a phone interview earlier this month, speaking about her diary. "No one says, 'scaredy-cat.'"

When future historians look to write the story of life during coronavirus, these first-person accounts may prove useful.

"Diaries and correspondences are a gold standard," said Jane Kamensky, a professor of American History at Harvard University and the faculty director of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. "They're among the best evidence we have of people's inner worlds."

History isn't usually told by the bigwigs of the era, even if they are some of its main characters. Instead, it is often reconstructed from snapshots of ordinary lives. A handwritten recipe. A letter written by a soldier at the front. A drawing of a kitchen sink. One of the most famous works of academic history - "A Midwife's Tale," by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich - came from the diary kept by a woman living in Maine from 1785 to 1812. It won a Pulitzer Prize.

"The personal that is presented in diaries gives us the truth of the era," said Carole Ione Lewis, a diarist and the author of " Pride of Family: Four Generations of American Women of Color," which she wrote using her relatives' diaries.

Today's journals convey the shared experience of life in isolation.

Some diarists record statistics: the number of infections, the number of deaths. Others keep diaries that are part shopping list, part doodle pad. Unidentified phone numbers are scratched out in the margins of punctuation-less pages filled with the frustration of being separated from family and friends. Among these accounts, anxiety is the constant.

Deb Monti, a 22-year-old painter, was in Valencia, Spain, when the country went on lockdown. Confined to her apartment, she painted what she could see from her window.

"I'm looking at other people who are now trying to live their daily lives on these tiny balconies," she said.

Now back in Pittsburgh, where she grew up, Ms. Monti is self-isolating in her childhood bedroom.

"You look at this painting of a person looking out a window and you think, like, 'Oh, how romantic. This person is able to just daydream,'" she said. "But for me, it's so all of a sudden. It makes me feel so suffocated and restrained."

For some visual diarists, making new work has been a way to stay connected with other artists in isolation.

In Manila, before the outbreak, Patricia Joyce V. Salarzon, a 27-year-old production editor, would meet her friends to draw outside. Now they all agree to sketch at the same time, just to feel like they are together.

Credit... Patricia Joyce V. Salarzon

Timothy Hannem, an illustration artist in Paris, made a template for people to fill in and post on social media using the hashtag #coronamaison: corona house. A well-known illustrator, Pénélope Bagieu, shared the drawing with her Twitter followers.

They will each draw their own ideal place to be quarantined, she wrote.

Within a few days, hundreds of people had uploaded their own imagined interiors, with cats and plants and books. They started a website, too, as a landing pad for the project.

Together, the drawings make for a fantastical house, with rooms created by many, many hands.

About two weeks ago, Anna Temkina, a professor of public health and gender at the European University at St. Petersburg, realized she was living through what sociologists refer to as "emergent moment."

"It is a moment when new rules begin to develop, but they are not yet clear," Dr. Temkina, 59, said. "Sociologically, this was absolutely great."

She has started project called "the virus diaries," part of a broader effort by the university to study quarantine's effect on daily life.

"Saturday - a normal crowd out and about," she wrote. "I don't notice any increased caution. People are walking without distancing; two military men shake hands; a man and woman my age greet each other with a kiss."

In the early days of the outbreak, Annie Armstrong, a 24-year-old writer in Brooklyn, went home to Atlanta. Now her diary is filled with questions about her career, how to find meaning in her life, what she really wants.

"I really feel like I'm witnessing the fall of the empire," she wrote. "I'm already mourning this whole little life I made for myself in New York."

Kari Stevenson, a 34-year-old high school librarian who lives near Colorado Springs, Colo., started keeping her own quarantine journal. Writing soothes a nervous ache in her stomach, she said, even when the subject matter is anxiety provoking.

"The grocery stores are feeling the strain + shortening hours," Ms. Stevenson wrote in a recent entry. "I am starting to worry our 14 day supply might not be enough."

The day before public schools closed in Boston, Ari Zimmet asked his middle school students to draw how they were feeling.

Normally, Mr. Zimmet, 25, teaches woodworking. But he remembered how one art professor, in college, opened up her classroom for discussion and sketching after the 2016 election. He wanted to make room for his middle school students to do the same.

As they drew, many seemed unaffected. But one student, a boy, drew frantically. With blue and orange lines, he made frenzied marks as stick figures fell from the sky.

"He didn't articulate his feelings, and he almost never does," Mr. Zimmet said. "But it was like he was constructing this whole narrative with the path that his Cray-pas was taking."

That these accounts are recorded on paper is crucial to their longevity. "People think the internet is going to be permanent, but we're already starting to lose things that were committed to bits and bytes," said Shane Landrum, who holds a doctorate in American history from Brandeis University. "Even with the danger of your house burning down with all your written records inside, I still think paper is valuable as a practice," Dr. Landrum said.

The weight of a personal diary is familiar to Frank Herron, a 67-year-old book publisher who lives in Winchester, Mass. He has studied the journals his great-aunt kept in the early 20th century.

In one entry, she wrote about seeing Austrian royalty from a tailor's window.

"The procession was like a fairy tale," she wrote on June 14, 1900. "I never expect to see such a fine one again anywhere."

She was right. In a few years, in a few more diary entries, World War I would start. A few years later, the Austro-Hungarian empire would fall.

"What makes history is people who write some stuff or keep some pictures," Mr. Herron said. "This is how we communicate across centuries."

Daniel A. Kipnis translated Anna Temkina's diary entry from the original Russian.

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Around the world, the history of our present moment is taking shape in journal entries and drawings. Before the end of life as we knew it, Ady, an 8-year-old who lives in the Bay Area of San Francisco, read a biography of Anne Frank.

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Song Exploder is a podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. Each episode is produced and edited by host and creator Hrishikesh Hirway in Los Angeles. Using the isolated, individual tracks from a recording, Hrishikesh asks artists to delve into the specific decisions that went into creating their work. Hrishikesh edits the interviews, removing his side of the conversation and condensing the story to be tightly focused on how the artists brought their songs to life. Guests include Fleetwood Mac, U2, Metallica, Solange, Lorde, Yo-Yo Ma, Carly Rae Jepsen, and over 150 more. Full list of episodes.

Song Exploder is an independent podcast, and a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.

The show has been featured at the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, Noise Pop Festival, and Moogfest. In 2016 the Sydney Opera House hosted Song Exploder as an artist-in-residence. Hrishikesh has spoken about Song Exploder at the Google Design Conference, the AIGA Design Conference, Pinterest, Intel, Etsy, and IDEO.

"In the world of beautifully produced podcasts, Song Exploder is the beacon. Short version: It's a show that dissects a song. Long version: It's a show filled with serious lines of honesty, cinematic production and peeks inside the creative process." - New York Times

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"It is possibly the most perfect podcast, really." -

"Some of the finest explorations of the creative process you'll ever hear." ('The Best of the Best Podcasts') - The Telegraph

"Everything a podcast should be...this is mandatory listening for music fans." -

"A brilliant idea, fantastically executed...Invariably fascinating, each episode manages to squeeze heart and soul from its subject, not to mention you, the listener." -

Best of iTunes, 2015
Best Podcast of 2015 - Quartz
Best Music Podcast, 2016 and 2017 - Academy of Podcasters

Hrishikesh Hirway, Host & Creator
Christian Koons, Producer
Carlos Lerma, Illustrator
Olivia Wood, Production Assistant

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Song Exploder is a podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. Each episode is produced and edited by host and creator Hrishikesh Hirway in Los Angeles. Using the isolated, individual tracks from a recording, Hrishikesh asks artists to delve into the specific decisions that went ...

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More than 157 million treasures fill the Smithsonian's vaults, but where public view ends, Sidedoorbegins. With the help of biologists, artists, historians, archaeologists, zookeepers, and astrophysicists, host Lizzie Peabody sneaks listeners through Smithsonian's side door to search for stories that can't be found anywhere else. Follow us at @SidedoorPod for updates and bonus content.

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Sidedoor: A Podcast from the Smithsonian | Smithsonian Institution

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Smithsonian podcast presenting stories that can't be found anywhere else.

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Unprecedented tells the raw and emotional stories of ordinary people who, as they pursued justice all the way to the Supreme Court, defined the limits of our First Amendment rights. In each episode, you will meet the accidental guardians of one our most cherished freedoms: speech.

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Paul Marhoefer, known throughout the trucking industry for his Americana folk music, hauls today for Moeller Trucking after long experience as an owner-operator. He lives with his wife, Denise, in rural Losantville, Indiana.

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Paul Marhoefer, known throughout the trucking industry for his Americana folk music, hauls today for Moeller Trucking after long experience as an owner-operator. He lives with his wife, Denise, in rural Losantville, Indiana.

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Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.

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A podcast about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists and their stories about the movements they built.

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CommonLit is a comprehensive literacy program with thousands of reading lessons, full-year ELA curriculum, benchmark assessments, and standards-based data for teachers.

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Lego, the company famous for its plastic building blocks, is using its resources to build protective gear for healthcare workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Denmark-based toymaker company announced on Instagram Thursday that it's producing more than 13,000 face visors a day for Danish healthcare workers after converting some of its molding machines to create the safety equipment.

"This week we began to make visors at our factory in Billund for healthcare workers on the frontline in Denmark," Lego wrote in its social-media post. "We are so incredibly proud of the team who made this happen. They worked around the clock to create designs and make moulds that can produce more than 13,000 visors a day. We are grateful to have such talented, dedicated and caring colleagues."
Face masks at Walgreens: Retailer is latest to give workers face covers
Lego accompanied the statement with behind-the-scenes photos of its visor production, created to provide an extra barrier between healthcare workers' eyes and their patients.

More: Homemade mask sellers get creative as the CDC sets new guidelines to stop spread of coronavirus

This is not Lego's first act of kindness during the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week, the company announced a $50 million donation toward relief efforts, including a contribution to the charity Education Cannot Wait, which "provides education for children in crises."
Coronavirus: More: GM turns shuttered Warren plant into face mask supplier Trump blasts 3M as company says mask demand far exceeds ability to produce them
"As million of families stay at home, the Lego Group and LegoFoundation have joined forces to help children in these unprecedented times," the company said on March 30.

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Lego is producing 13,000 face visors a day for healthcare workers amid coronavirus pandemic

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Lego, the company famous for its plastic building blocks, is using its resources to build protective gear for healthcare workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. The Denmark-based toymaker company announced on Instagram Thursday that it's producing more than 13,000 face visors a day for Danish healthcare workers after converting some of its molding machines to create the safety equipment.

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Find the latest information on the University's response to the coronavirus here.
"You do not write alone," Herbert "Tico" Braun tells his University of Virginia students. Even before this time of uncertainty due to the coronavirus pandemic, those words could be comforting, his students have told him.

Now they mean something more.

Braun, a professor in the Corcoran Department of History, has been teaching in the "Engaging Differences" part of the College of Arts & Sciences' new curriculum since 2017. In his "The Individual and Society" course, Braun leads the students in exploring the historical impact of society on individuals and how individuals form communities.

He sent an email on Monday to his current and former students asking if they would participate in a voluntary project to keep a record of their daily lives during this unprecedented time.

"Our 'engagement' courses aim to help our first-year students connect to the world around them," Braun wrote in an email. "I hope that when they have taken this course and others, they have become imbued with the idea that they are citizens.

"The mantra of our course is, 'Write it down.' When you do, much of your life and who you are will be different than if you don't," he wrote.

Braun offered many suggestions for how the students could contribute, suggestions that just about anyone else could also use to create a record of what's happening - for the sake of history and to be part of a different kind of community.

There is a possibility Braun and his students will find a way to share this project at some point. UVA Today adapted his email into this Q&A to share his ideas with our readers now.
Q. Why do you feel it's important to create a record of one's daily life these days?
A. Our normal days in the now-suddenly-distant past may well have often dulled us into just getting through them. Our sudden lives now stop us, and lead us to wonder about our experiences and our feelings on many passing moments.

This [project] will, of course, not be routine writing and composing. That's the point. There is much that all of us and each of us have already experienced in the past few weeks that is shocking, unexpected, unpredictable, unknowable, new; much that we have not felt before and not seen. What is it like to live today knowing that we do not know what tomorrow and the day after will bring?
Q. What are you suggesting your students do that others could also do?
A. I suggest that you keep a record - in one or more different forms of your own choosing, a journal, a blog, an e-portfolio, a film, a series of artworks, a short story, poems, a series of haikus - of your life in these unprecedented days. Each individual perspective is valuable, and adds to the whole.

If you are going to compose a journal of these times, make it something easy to do. If a journal becomes onerous, it does not work. You do not have to write or do things for the journal every day. Keep your writing and composing close by, so you can jot things down to return to them later. Jot things down, a few words here and there, but then compose them in full sentences.

When you read an article that you find telling, produce a link in your journal and write a few brief reflections. Include photographs, from the press and those that you take.

Many of us are writing today and producing our work on social media. It is an explosion. You can gather these voices, these experiences, all this creativity. They are all a record of our times. These voices are urgent.

How will we deal, socially, psychologically, with the increasing number of deaths all around us? Many are saying that around the globe our lives will not be the same again.
Q. How does this project relate to the course, "The Individual and Society"?
A. I have claimed that the subject of the course touches on everything - almost everything - about our lives. I have told my students, "You will come up with this subject time and again in your lives, and you will find it in different Engagements courses, and in quite a few of your other courses.

"Write about what you learned in those courses, about you and your education, all of this today in this maelstrom. Those connections are what the liberal arts are about."
Q. Why do you think it would be helpful to do this?
A. Think of your children, your grandchildren, your friends down the road, who will ask you what was it like during that pandemic - "What was it called? Corona-something? You know, the one that was named after a Mexican beer ... back then in 2020 or '21. When was it?"

When you think about the individual in this pandemic, think of yourself and you can write about yourself, think and write about other individuals, and about your relationships to others, to your society, societies, to your loved ones, your friends, your institutions.

When you think about society, think about parts of it; death, disease, Wuhan province, the Chinese government, medical systems, Italy, the stock market, shaking hands, online classes, isolation, your town, your family, rich people and poor, social distancing, public events, the market, vulnerabilities, hoarding, hospitals, politicians, health insurance, selfishness, fear, sick leave, economic policies, exponential expansion, individualism, cooperation, competition, solidarity ... and more.

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'Write It Down': Historian Suggests Keeping a Record of Life During Pandemic

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Find the latest information on the University's response to the coronavirus here. "You do not write alone," Herbert "Tico" Braun tells his University of Virginia students. Even before this time of uncertainty due to the coronavirus pandemic, those words could be comforting, his students have told him. Now they mean something more.