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What AI thinks a beautiful woman looks like: Mostly white and thin - Washington Post

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What AI thinks a beautiful woman looks like: Mostly white and thin - Washington Post

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This article from The Washington Post would be great to use with high school students when considering AI and bias.

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Welcome to the Concord Museum — Concord Museum

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Welcome to the Concord Museum — Concord Museum

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The Concord Museum:https://concordmuseum.org/

The Concord Museum was a local gem! Its design and ease of use is very sophisticated for a local resource.  Teachers looking to teach Massachusetts history and national history as it relates/stems from Massachusetts—think the Revolutionary War and Transcendentalism—  will find lots of good stuff here. The Museum  has a robust Teacher Resources page.  Some highlights include three online exhibitions paired with lesson plans:  The Shot Heard ‘Round the World: April 19, 1775 and microsite on the Battles of Lexington and Concord at www.shotheardroundworld.org; Early Spring: Henry Thoreau and Climate Change; and Thomas Dugan: An African American Life in 1820s Concord.  These are beautifully designed, and include primary and secondary multimedia. resources. They are easy to interact with for teachers and students from 4th grade onward through secondary school. In addition, their Teacher Resources include lesson plans developed by teachers during summer institutes funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Finally, there is an option for teachers to borrow a “Traveling Revolutionary Trunk” of reproduction primary sources and artifacts to bring the Revolution to life for students. This comes with resources for teachers to make the best use of the materials. The museum also offers teacher workshops, free admission for MTA members.  Highlights of the full collection are also featured with visuals and exhibition tags.  There is an option for researchers to search the collection, but this is rather advanced. I tried a search for Henry David Thoreau and retrieved many interesting things, complete with images and item information (see this sample - Thoreau’s rocking chair) but definitely it’s meant for high school students.  The information presented by the museum seems to be of the highest quality and well-substantiated.

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The Paul Revere House offers a lot for teachers teaching aspects of the American Revolution, but its digital collection is not robust. Online, they offer a blog and a podcast, as well as some written material(mostly secondary sources) and images. They do have a good set of materials about Paul Revere’s Ride, including an interactive map, which is pitched towards students. So while there is not much online, what is there is highly specific and could be very useful for the right unit.  Their Education Department specializes in creating immersive experiences for students and collaborating with teachers, which can happen at the house, at one’s school, or virtually.  It seems like they are eager to partner with teachers. My 5th grader had a visit from the Paul Revere house educators this spring and found it inspiring and wanted to visit the house, so I would say that their work was successful.

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Special thanks to Marge and Ben Edwards and their son Ben L. Edwards of Walking Boston for generously funding the redesign of our website. ©2019 Paul Revere Memorial Association. All rights reserved.

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On This Land Online — Natick Historical Society

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On This Land Online — Natick Historical Society

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The Natick Historical Society is a strong resource for Natick teachers teaching Natick history and anyone exploring the relationships between indigenous peoples and colonists in Metrowest. The site is rich with images and text. The most useful and interesting feature under the “Learn” tab is On This Land Online, a digital educational resource designed specifically for Natick 3rd graders and funded in part by a grant from Mass Humanities.  It contains three digital learning modules that guide students in exploring primary sources.  Each module contains worksheets and/or coloring pages, videos with experts guiding students through artifacts, and images. Students learn about artifacts, geography, and native languages through the three modules. The site includes biographies of each of the people who worked on this resource, which is helpful in helping students consider the validity of the source. The site is highly engaging for students and 3rd graders can navigate it independently.

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On This Land Online - Natick Historical Society

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OTL Online is made possible by a grant from Mass Humanities , which provided funding through the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC). The Natick Historical Society would also like to thank Middlesex Savings Bank for its sponsorship and the generous private donors whose contributions brought this program to life.

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The Walden Woods Project: https://www.walden.org/

The Walden Woods Project “preserves the land, literature and legacy of Henry David Thoreau to foster an ethic of environmental stewardship and social responsibility.” This local nonprofit offers many resources, as well as professional development for teachers. While it’s an obvious go-to for high school English teachers teaching American literature, there are also resources here for science and history teachers. AND, there is a curriculum on Walden Woods and Henry David Thoreau for 3rd- 5th graders, called Henry’s Hat. The Henry’s Hat® standards-based lessons and activities are in a wide range of STEAM topic areas, including English Language Arts, Math, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Art.  Older students can also find resources designed for them on Thoreau and  environmental ethics and action, as well as an Ask a Curator feature where students can ask questions about Thoreau. Teachers can arrange a virtual visit for their class with the curator and any teacher can set up a field trip to Walden Pond. One of the most amazing pieces of this thoughtfully, designed, scholarly website is The Transcendental Log: A Digital Documentary of the Life & Times of the Transcendentalists, this collection compiles documents, searchable by year, of writings related to the Transcendentalist movement and includes links the original sources where appropriate.

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The Walden Woods Project offers a wide range of educational programs, inspired by the life of Henry David Thoreau, for local and global audiences of all ages. Our programs foster an ethic of…

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Thoreau Society Collections | The Thoreau Society | Outreach. Education. Advocacy

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Thoreau Society Collections | The Thoreau Society | Outreach. Education. Advocacy

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The Thoreau Society | Outreach. Education. Advocacy

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Established in 1941, the Thoreau Society has long contributed to the dissemination of knowledge about Thoreau by collecting books, manuscripts, and artifacts relating to Thoreau and his contemporaries, by encouraging the use of its collections, and by publishing articles in two Society periodicals.

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Thoreau Society Collections | The Thoreau Society | Outreach. Education. Advocacy

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Established in 1941, the Thoreau Society has long contributed to the dissemination of knowledge about Thoreau by collecting books, manuscripts, and artifacts re

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This organization is funded by a grant from the Library of Congress’s Teaching with Primary Sources program. It is a tremendous resource for teaching the humanities at all grade levels.  Teachers can find tech tools, lesson plans, literature links, and a searchable database, which is also browseable by theme.  The tech tool blog was particularly helpful for accessing some of the primary sources.  There is one that “reads” sheet music for you and an idea for  using Padlet for primary source analysis.

For the Harlem Renaissance, there is a “primary source spotlight,” which includes a text set with teachers’ guide, as well as lots of other primary source collections. There is also a student ibook, a Library of Congress Student Discovery Set, which is a textbook of sorts for students that includes primary sources for analysis.  This set is ready for use by secondary school students.

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Bulletin Volume 2, Issue 10 While the newsletter is on summer hiatus, keep up with the news on Twitter. CIVICS IN ACTION Citizen U Weaving civics across grades and disciplines Click the links to access, like and share New Lessons AAPI Perspectives & Experiences Students analyze primary sources, investigate ways that Asian American and [...]

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The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 - Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA

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The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 - Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA

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This extraordinary series of events that began in 1692 led to the deaths of 25 innocent women, men and children. The crisis in Salem, Massachusetts took place partly because the community lived under an ominous cloud of suspicion. A remarkable set of conflicts and tensions converged, sparking fear and setting the stage for the most widespread and lethal outbreak of witchcraft accusations in North America.

Centuries after this storied crisis, the personal tragedies and grievous wrongs of the witch trials continue to provoke reflection, reckoning and a search for meaning. Today, the city of Salem attracts more than 1 million tourists per year, many of whom are seeking to learn more about these events. The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) holds one of the world's most important collections of objects and architecture related to the Salem Witch Trials. From 1980 to 2023, PEM's Phillips Library was the temporary repository of the state's Supreme Judicial Court collection of witch trial documents. These legal records, which were returned to the Judicial Archives following the expansion and modernization of the Massachusetts State Archives facility, are available to researchers around the world on our website thanks to a comprehensive digitization project. Through exhibitions, research, publishing and public programming, PEM is committed to telling the story of the Salem Witch Trials in ways that honor the victims and amplify the teachings of wrongful persecution that remain relevant to today.

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The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 - Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA

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Learn more about Salem Witch Trials, including a comprehensive history, today's impact, and how you can explore the crisis at Peabody Essex Museum.

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Poets.org is a searchable collection of poems curated by the Academy of American Poets.  It contains primary sources - poems and essays - as well as some secondary sources, like biographies and lesson plans and materials for K-12 teachers. They have a poem of the day feature teachers can subscribe to and offer a wealth of resources for teaching the Harlem Renaissance through primary sources - poems, especially. My favorite was a “walking tour” of Langston Hughes’ Harlem built from lines from poems and essays written by Langston Hughes during the 1920s. Poets.org  has been named a best website for teaching and learning by the ALA, and has received an Innovations in Reading seal from the National Book Foundation. It is a reliable source for poems of all kinds, on all subjects. Teachers can use this resource to build community in the classroom, introduce a unit in any subject with a poem, or find poems for literary analysis. While I use this website frequently in my ELA classroom, the poems can help students meet reading standards in multiple disciplines and can inspire student writing in any subject.

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about

After "The Entombment" by Raphael

The night my father died, I sat on a stool
at the Buckhorn, gazing
out the window's cool counter seat.
Like a funhouse mirror, you appeared.
I have a familiar-looking face; my father used to say-
his wish for me to blend in.
Late after an argument, I fled
and was found bound to a prairie fence
after eighteen hours.
My body is like a sock in the wind
in a field just a mile from here.
My face blooms, velvety
and light like a lamb's ear,

frozen with blood; down
my neck, it goes. A medley of ants shuffles
away. My body is rich with the sour smell
of urine on my head like a crown of daffodils. stachys byzantina; my ears

Copyright © 2023 by Ruben Quesada. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 27, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

One does such work as one will not,
And well each knows the right;
Though the white storm howls, or the sun is hot,
The black must serve the white.
And it's, oh, for the white man's softening flesh,
While the black man's muscles grow!
Well I know which grows the mightier,

O, rich young lord, thou ridest by
With looks of high disdain;
It chafes me not thy title high,
Thy blood of oldest strain.
The lady riding at thy side
Is but in name thy promised bride.
Ride on, young lord, ride on!

I'm in my room writing
speaking in myself
& I hear you
move down the hallway
to water your plants

I write truth on the page
I strike the word over & over
yet I worry you'll pour too much water on the plants
& the water will overflow onto the books
ruining them

If I can't speak out of myself
how can I tell you I don't care about the plants?
how can I tell you I don't care if the books get wet?

I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn.
No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday's disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday's pains.

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Home The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets.

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Summer Camp: The Harlem Renaissance | Academy of American Poets

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Summer Camp: The Harlem Renaissance | Academy of American Poets

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When considering essential movements in American poetry, no conversation would be complete withou

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Walking Tour: Langston Hughes’s Harlem of 1926 | Academy of American Poets

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Walking Tour: Langston Hughes’s Harlem of 1926 | Academy of American Poets

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Harlem was like a great magnet for the Negro intellectual, pulling him from everywhere. Or perhaps the magnet was New York, but once in New York, he had to live in Harlem.
- Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

The 1920s were an exciting time in Harlem. The end of World War I brought a large migration of African Americans to New York City seeking new economic and artistic opportunities. Musicians, writers, and artists converged on Harlem, living and working together, and developing a thriving artistic scene of literary magazines, cafes, jazz clubs. It was the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance.

During the summer of 1926, Hughes, along with several other writers and artists, including Zora Neale Hurston, began to publish the short-lived but groundbreaking journal Fire!! In his autobiography, The Big Sea, Hughes described the venture: "The idea being that it would burn a lot of the old, dead conventional Negro-white ideas of the past, épater le bourgeois into a realization of the existence of the younger Negro writers and artists, and provide us with an outlet for publication not available in the limited pages of the small Negro magazines then existing."

James Weldon Johnson recalled the excitement of the 1920s in Harlem, "[we] hailed with loud huzzas the dawn of the Negro literary millennium. We expected much; perhaps too much. I now judge that we ought to be thankful for the half-dozen younger writers who did emerge and make a place for themselves."
Convent Avenue and West 141st Street
Though many of the landmarks and buildings have since been remodeled or torn down, one can still follow in the footsteps of the artists who once lived in Harlem and imagine the exuberance of the era.

355 West l45th Street, Corner of St. Nicholas
The artist studios of Charles Alston, Louise Jefferson, Augusta Savage, Paul Robeson

108 West l40th Street
Eric Walrond's home address, 1927

101 West l40th Street
James Weldon Johnson's home address, 1920-1921

270 Convent Avenue
George Schuyler's home address

940 St. Nicholas Avenue
Countee Cullen's home in the 1930s
Walk down Convent Avenue to Nicholas Terrace. Walk to the midpoint from which you can oversee the Harlem panorama. 409 Edgecombe Avenue
This address was made famous by its occupants, among whom were Regina Andrews, Countee Cullen, W. E. B. DuBois, Jessie Fauset, Rudolph Fisher, James Weldon Johnson, Thurgood Marshall, and Walter White.

In those days, 409 Edgecombe, Harlem's tallest and most exclusive apartment house, was quite a party center. The Walter Whites and the Aaron Douglases, among others, lived and entertained there. Walter White was a jovial and cultured host, with a sprightly mind. . . (and) the most beautiful wife in Harlem, and they were always hospitable to hungry literati like me...
-Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

At the Aaron Douglases,' although he was a painter, more young writers were found than painters. Usually everybody would chip in and go dutch on the refreshments, calling down to the nearest bootlegger for a bottle of whatever it was that was drunk in those days. . . .
-Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

Walking eastward, note the Paul Lawrence Dunbar apartments at West l49th to West l50th, Seventh to Eighth Avenues, grouped around a green inner court. W. E. B. DuBois, A. Phillip Randolph, Paul Robeson, Bill (Bojangles) Robinson were among its tenants.
Walk down through the park to St. Nicholas Terrace and West l35th Street.
On the Southeast corner of St. Nicholas are three houses. Hurston stayed with friends in the middle house during the 1930s.

580 St. Nicholas Avenue
Regina Andrews's and Ethel Ray Nance's apartment, a gathering place for young Harlem writers and artists.
Walk Eastward on West l35th Street.
I can never put on paper the thrill of that underground ride to Harlem. . . . At every station I kept watching for the sign: l35th Street. . . I came out onto the platform. . . and looked around. It was still early morning and people were going to work. Hundreds of colored people. I wanted to shake hands with them, speak to them. I hadn't seen any colored people for so long-
-Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

230 West l35th Street
Between 8th and 7th Avenues, The New York Age

180 West l35th Street
Between 7th and Lenox Avenues: YMCA.

Here Hughes lived for a time in the 1920s and Claude McKay stayed when he first returned from his travels abroad. Next door was a basement restaurant owned by the actor Dick Huey. The restaurant served as a popular hangout for writers who gathered there every noon, including Paul Robeson and Henry L. Moon, when he worked for the Amsterdam News.

103 West l35th Street
The Schomburg Center for Black Culture, New York Public Library, founded in 1925.

"Here is the evidence." Assembled from the rapidly growing collections of the leading Negro-book-collectors and research societies, there were in these cases, materials not only for the first true writing of Negro History, but for the rewriting of many important paragraphs of our common American history.
-Arthur A. Schomburg, "The Negro Digs Up His Past"
West 135th Street and Lenox Avenue
Yes, it was a rare sensation again to be just one black among many. It was good to be lost in the shadows of Harlem again. It was an adventure to loiter down Fifth and Lenox Avenues and promenade along Seventh Avenue. . . . There was a room for me in the old house on One Hundred Thirty-first Street. . . .
-Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home
Go Northward on Lenox to West l36th Street; turn right.
104 West l36th Street
The Countee Cullen Branch, New York Public Library

Original site of the apartment of Mrs. A'Leilia Walker Robinson, the "great Harlem party-giver" and "joy-goddess of Harlem's 1920s."

At her "at homes" Negro poets and Negro number bankers mingled with downtown poets... Countee Cullen would be there and Witter Bynner. . . . When A' Leilia Walker died in 1931, she had a grand funeral. . . . But, just as for her parties, a great many more invitations had been issued than the small but exclusive Seventh Avenue funeral parlor could provide for. . . . That was really the end of the gay times of the New Negro era in Harlem, the period that had begun to reach its end when the crash came in 1929.
-Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

136th to 139th Street
The real Harlem nightclubs

White people began to come to Harlem in droves. For several years they packed the expensive Cotton Club on Lenox Avenue. But I was never there, because the Cotton Club was a Jim Crow club for gangsters and monied whites.
-Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

The first place really popular with my friends was a Chinese restaurant in l36th street, which had been known as Hayne's Cafe and then became the Oriental. . . . One danced to a piano only, and wound one's way between linen-clad tables over velvety, noiseless floors. . . . There was the Garden of Joy, an open-air cabaret between 138th and l39th streets in Seventh Avenue, occupying a plateau high enough above the sidewalk-a large, well-laid smooth wooden floor with tables and chairs and a tinny orchestra, all covered by a propped-up roof, that resembled an enormous lampshade, directing bright light downward and outward. Not far away the Abyssinian Church used to hold its Summer camp-meetings in a great round circus-tent. Night after night there would arise the mingled strains of blues and spirituals, those peculiarly Negro forms of song, the one secular and the other religious. . . . I used to wonder if God, hearing them both, found any real distinction.
-Rudolph Fisher, "The Caucasian Storms Harlem"
Follow West l36th Street to Seventh Avenue; turn right and walk uptown.
Seventh Avenue and l38th Street
Near the corner, the site of the Lybia, another cabaret Fisher memorializes.

But Seventh Avenue is the promenade of high-toned dickties and strivers. It breathes a superior atmosphere, sings superior songs, laughs a superior laugh. Even were there no people, the difference would be clear: the middle of Lenox Avenue is adorned by street-car tracks, the middle of Seventh Avenue by parking.
-Rudolph Fisher, "Blades of Steel"
West 138th Street and Seventh Avenue
"Strivers' Row" -between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, one of New York's architectural landmarks. In these beautiful houses have lived and still live many of Harlem's most prominent citizens. Eric Walrond (editor at Opportunity and Negro World) lived on l39th Street and Noble Sissle of "Shuffle Along" lived on Strivers' Row before moving to Florida.

Selected Bibliography

We recommend the following books to take along on this tour:

The Big Sea (Hill and Wang, 1975) by Langston Hughes
Voices from the Harlem Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 1976), edited by Nathan Irvin Huggins

Some additional library reading:

Selected Poems (1955) by Langston Hughes
Negro: an Anthology (1935) edited by Nancy Cunard and Hugh Ford
The New Negro (1925) edited by Alain Locke

Credits

The original version of this walking tour, prepared in 1981, was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts, with special thanks to the Harlem Cultural Council. The updated version was made possible, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Special thanks for research and photography to Stephanie Anderson, Jocelyn (Josie) Casey-Whiteman, C. J. Evans, and Billy Merrell.

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walking tour: langston hughes's harlem of 1926

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Walking Tour: Langston Hughes's Harlem of 1926

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Harlem was like a great magnet for the Negro intellectual, pulling him from everywhere. Or perhaps the magnet was New York, but once in New York, he had to live in Harlem. - Langston Hughes, The Big Sea The 1920s were an exciting time in Harlem.

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This is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH that seeks to archive radio and television content created over the past 60 years. The archive contains 50,000 hours of digitized public broadcasting programs and original materials. While there are no radio or television programs from the Harlem Renaissance here, there are interviews and programs from different time periods about Harlem and about the Harlem Renaissance.  So this may not be the best place to find primary sources on that topic, but it offers a lot for teachers and students studying American history, music, science, and technology.  There are special collections that include things like interviews about the murder of Emmett Till, a series on the Civil War, coverage of 9/11, and Stonewall. They also have archives of Sesame Street! Under the “For Educators” tab, there are multimedia primary source discussion sets curated to help teachers of American history teach various topics, like busing in Boston in the 1970s, the Civil Rights Movement, and reproductive rights. These resources are most appropriate for high school students, and there is a content warning asking teachers to preview materials to be sure they are suitable for their particular audience.

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A collaboration between GBH and the Library of Congress with a long-term vision to preserve and make accessible significant historical content created by public media.

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As a journalism teacher, I was really excited to find this resource, which was linked as a Tech Tool in Primary Source Nexus. This site allows you to search American newspapers for images from 1900 - 1963 by place, year, and keyword.  You can’t pull up articles through this search, but the images are cool and might help give students a sense of time and place for various periods of American history.  You CAN access the full digitized newspaper from which the image is pulled through a link to the Library of Congress and find the accompanying article/context, which is helpful for research. There is a link that gives students the context of the newspaper itself. A citation tool is included. There is also an option to train an AI navigator to help you in your search. I can see using this as a springboard for creative writing, too.  It’s probably most appropriate for middle and high school students.

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This website was not one I would have necessarily found on my own; it’s the parent site of Columbia205 Celebrate Harlem History, which  was collected in a list of links about the Harlem Renaissance in a LibGuide by Christopher Newport University. It’s highly specialized in that it really only covers anything connected to Columbia University over the past 250 years, but it might be helpful for high school teachers in different subjects. It is definitely helpful to me in terms of using primary sources to help students better understand the Harlem Renaissance because it includes voices of people living at the time through interviews, archival newspaper articles, and oral histories. Columbia has witnessed a lot of history in its neighborhood over the last 250 years. There are also some secondary sources that provide context. There is not a lot here, but what is here feels useful to me for this particular subject..

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Harlem History presents a wealth of archival treasures and scholarship from Columbia about the history of one of the world’s most famous and influential neighborhoods.

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Journalism in Action is a fantastic educational resource offered by the Library of Congress and PBS Newshour designed for middle and high school students. It focuses on key moments in history such as the Civil Rights movement, the American Revolution, the Civil War, WWII and Watergate as seen through the eyes of journalists.  For each period, students embark on a guided investigation into primary sources from the time like newspaper articles, videos, and photographs.  Guiding questions are clear and push students from observation into higher level analysis.  They can save their progress as they work, which is cool. An accompanying educator guide suggests possible uses in the curriculum and ways to use the resource as an assessment, as well as how the activities align with Common Core standards.  Additional resources for further study are also included.

This resource is a great asset for history or English classes.  I can also see how this might align with the journalism elective I teach. The website is very engaging with great visuals and the questions push students to analyze primary sources and think deeply about the time period through the lens of journalists. The time periods offer natural “hooks” to engage students and the website is clearly designed by educators for educators.

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Journalism in Action allows you to learn about ten key moments in US history through a journalist's lens. In this interactive website designed for middle and high school students, you will analyze primary sources such as newspaper articles, videos, and photography to determine what happened and how such culture-shifting events affected civic life.

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The Harlem Renaissance | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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The Harlem Renaissance | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. If your use will be beyond a single classroom, please review the copyright and fair use guidelines.

Teacher's Guide

To help your students analyze these primary sources, get a graphic organizer and guides: Analysis Tool and Guides

A tremendous explosion of creativity rocked the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, and it took the name of the New York City neighborhood of Harlem.

Historical Background

The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, was a period of great cultural activity and innovation among African American artists and writers, one that saw new artists and landmark works appear in the fields of literature, dance, art, and music. The participants were all fiercely individualistic talents, and not all of them saw themselves as being part of a movement. But in time writers such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes; painters like Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden; and musicians and composers such as Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith became widely known as members of the Harlem Renaissance.

Much of the foundation of the Harlem Renaissance was laid by earlier generations of African American educators, students, and intellectuals. In the decades following the Civil War, many racial barriers to education were removed, and African Americans took advantage of the new educational opportunities in great numbers. Dozens of African American colleges and universities were founded, and African American professors and other intellectuals took increasingly public roles. By the early 1900s, intellectual leaders like W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson were writing, lecturing, and being published in journals such as Crisis and The Messenger.

At the same time, African Americans were moving in huge numbers from the South to northern industrial cities, like New York, where they could find work and escape some of the institutionalized discrimination and mistreatment caused by the South's Jim Crow laws. Innovative young African American writers, painters, and musicians began gathering in a number of neighborhoods in Manhattan, including Harlem and Greenwich Village, working together and developing new ideas, and in the years after World War I they gained national attention.

Some of the most prominent works created during the Harlem Renaissance were in the field of literature. Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Langston Hughes produced novels, poetry, short stories and memoirs.

Hurston produced important work in a number of fields. An anthropologist and folklorist, she studied with the eminent anthropologist Franz Boaz at Columbia University, and used the music and stories that she collected as a folklorist to inform her novels, plays, and other books, including Mules and Men and Their Eyes Were Watching God. She also performed music based on her folkloric research, and has left a number of recordings along with her manuscripts.

Langston Hughes, best known as a poet, also wrote plays, a novel, short stories, and an autobiography. Many of his poems were set to music by African American composers, and he collaborated with Zora Neale Hurston on a play, Mule Bone. Another artist who achieved great things in a number of fields was the multitalented Paul Robeson. An honor student and All-American athlete while at Rutgers University, Robeson went on to graduate from Columbia University Law School, and soon after became a famed concert singer, recording artist, stage and film actor. He was an impassionedadvocate of political causes, and his performance tours and activism took him around the world.

Harlem was a center for musical and theatrical performance as well as literary work, as musicians drawn by the neighborhood's nightlife collaborated with writers, artists, and each other to create original works. Some of this work drew on musical forms that had grown from the African American experience-gospel, jazz, and blues. Other African American musicians worked in classical forms. Bessie Smith was a legendary blues singer, Marian Anderson broke ground as a classical contralto, and Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington took jazz to new levels of innovation.

Eubie Blake was a prolific composer of the Harlem Renaissance, and was one of the creators of the musical revue Shuffle Along. This show was written and produced by African Americans, opened in New York in 1921 to great success, ran for one year in New York, and then toured for an additional two years. The visual arts also were part of the Harlem Renaissance. Among the best-known artists of the period were Aaron Douglas, Laura Wheeler Waring, Edward Harleston, and the painter and collage artist Jacob Lawrence.

Suggestions for Teachers

Ask students to examine the newspaper pages. How do they convey connections between the African American community in New York City-the principal setting of the Harlem Renaissance-and African Americans in other areas? What is the importance of these connections?

Multiple drafts of Langston Hughes' poem "The Ballad of Booker T" offer opportunities to explore not only the writing process, but also the poet's thinking process. Compare two drafts and consider the changes that Hughes made; compare an early draft to the final copy. How did the changes he made shape the effect of the poem? What do the changes and his other notations reveal about his thinking and writing processes? Students can apply what they learn about revisions to their own work: ask them to write a descriptive paragraph or a short poem and then revise it over several days, dating each version.

Read "The Whites Invade Harlem" and consider what point Levi Huber is making. After students read the entire document, direct them to focus on a single paragraph and analyze the techniques the writer uses to make his point. Why might he have taken that approach? Students may apply the techniques to their own writing about a current artistic or cultural phenomenon. Students may study the photographs taken by Carl Van Vechten and analyze his style and artistic choices. What qualities or characteristics of each subject was he emphasizing? How did he use poses, backgrounds, props and focus to create the overall impression? Students might search the Library of Congress digital collections to find photographs by other photographers of the people Van Vechten photographed, and compare the choices those photographers made with the choices Van Vechten made. Students might also select a few people in the school and experiment with portrait photography. They should be prepared to discuss the choices they made in setting up and taking the photographs.

Ask students to examine the documents related to Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and Eubie Blake. Have students look for connections with African American culture in the years preceding the twentieth century. Ask students to consider subject matter and writing/musical style. What is the significance of these connections? Have students find more information about the music of the artists portrayed in photographs-Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and Marian Anderson. How does their work compare to music composed or performed by African Americans in earlier eras?

Additional Resources

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The Harlem Renaissance | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. If your use will be beyond a single classroom, please review the copyright and fair use guidelines.

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Visual Art During the Harlem Renaissance | DPLA

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Visual Art During the Harlem Renaissance | DPLA

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Coinciding with the Great Migration by African-Americans from the South to Northern cities, the term "Harlem Renaissance" is used to describe the thriving art, music, and literary scene in New York City during the 1920s and 1930s. This set of primary sources highlights the multi-media visual art of this era, which vibrantly celebrates African-American and African history and culture. Additionally, the visual art created by African-American artists of the Harlem Renaissance sometimes offers subtle criticism of the status of African-Americans in the United States at that time.

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Visual Art During the Harlem Renaissance

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Coinciding with the Great Migration by African-Americans from the South to Northern cities, the term "Harlem Renaissance" is used to describe the thriving art, music, and literary scene in New York City during the 1920s and 1930s. This set of primary sources highlights the multi-media visual art of this era, which vibrantly celebrates African-American and African history and culture.

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Eliot Indian Bible - Native Americans: Interactions at the Time of Settlement - LibGuides at Primary Source, Inc.

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Eliot Indian Bible - Native Americans: Interactions at the Time of Settlement - LibGuides at Primary Source, Inc.

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According to its mission statement, Primary Source “educates global citizens by working with teachers to foster students’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions for thoughtful and engaged citizenship.” I was familiar with them as a professional development provider, and have created lessons for some of those classes with primary sources, but didn’t realize they offered online resources for teachers. I am reviewing their set of resources on Native Americans: Interactions at the time of settlement. This resource is designed for teachers to use with students, and the page is very much for teachers’ eyes. It’s not as visually stunning as some of the other primary source sites I explored this week, but the resources, materials, and activities are well-designed. The resource focuses on three objects: the Eliot Bible, a dress, and a piece of ceramic pottery. There is a background essay to frame the exploration, a glossary of terms, pre-viewing activities, primary source-focused activities, and contextual documents. Each activity is aligned with Common Core standards, and offers additional suggestions for curricular connections.  It’s a rich resource. Similar “packages” exist for other periods and places, but this one was connected to the local Native American population, so seemed to be instantly engaging for students.

One thing I have liked about Primary Source courses I have taken is that they seek to address gaps in history and social studies as it has been taught historically.  I was intrigued to read about “archival silences” in the ACRL publication in this week’s reading list. Asking how a primary source might address an absence or silence in the historical record or reflect one, is important, and important to think about with students. This was one thing I would add to my evaluation criteria, which generally held up well. I think keeping my audience in my mind – teachers or students – was really important here. I was particularly keen on sites that really made things easy for teachers. I was really impressed with the analysis tools and handouts  offered by both the Library of Congress and the National Archives.  They were student-focused and ready to use with almost any primary source and help students build digital literacy and primary source literacy skills they will need beyond any one assignment.

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LibGuides: Native Americans: Interactions at the Time of Settlement: Eliot Indian Bible

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LibGuides: Native Americans: Interactions at the Time of Settlement: Eliot Indian Bible

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Docsteach is such an amazing resource to connect teachers with materials from the National Archives. They offer both curated lesson plans  and flexibility for teachers to create their own document-based lessons.  You can search three different ways - just the documents, the lesson plans, or create your own activity using primary source documents from the National Archives. It’s also easy to share documents to a Google Classroom.  I decided to register on the site and play with this tool. There are many options in terms of what kind of activity you can create. I decided to ask students to analyze a document and chose an image from the Harlem Renaissance, called “Harlem”, to introduce students to the Harlem Renaissance. Once I had my image, I could choose the level of questions and choose the exact questions I wanted from a menu. There is also an option to write your own questions. The creation process is guided step by step and was pretty intuitive. It took a little bit for me to get familiar with how it all worked, but within about 20 minutes, I had a student-ready activity that could be assigned for HW.  The student view is nicely laid out and clear.  Students can submit their responses to their teacher for assessment. Teachers can publish their work for other teachers and select labels for search purposes.  One thing missing from the teacher page, which would be cool, is a place to add Common Core standards from a menu, though teachers can add them manually. I loved this tool for its ease of use, the ability to customize the lesson for my students, and the instant connection to the National Archives collection of primary source documents.

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Access thousands of primary sources - letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos, and other document types - spanning the course of American history. We're always adding more!

Borrow from an ever-expanding collection of document-based activities created by the National Archives, and teachers around the world. Copy and modify activities for your students.

Create your own activities using the online tools. It's as simple as: (1) selecting a tool, (2) choosing your primary sources, and (3) customizing instructions. Learn more >

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Access thousands of primary sources - letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos, and other document types - spanning the course of American history. We're always adding more! Borrow from an ever-expanding collection of document-based activities created by the National Archives, and teachers around the world. Copy and modify activities for your students.

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Found Poetry | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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Found Poetry | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. If your use will be beyond a single classroom, please review the copyright and fair use guidelines.

Teacher's Guide

To help your students analyze these primary sources, get a graphic organizer and guides: Analysis Tool and Guides

"Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry."
--W.B. Yeats

Background

Why Use Primary Sources?

The historical record is made up of factual evidence, but history becomes meaningful for students only when they personally engage in determining what that evidence reveals. Primary sources can help students perform the critical thinking necessary for them to develop a personal understanding of the past.

Primary sources are the raw materials of history-the documents and objects left behind by the eyewitnesses and participants in past events. Because they are incomplete and often come without solid information about their historical context, they require that the student move from making concrete observations to making inferences about the materials. Primary sources encourage students to ask questions about point of view: What is the intent of the speaker, of the photographer, of the musician? How does that color one's interpretation or understanding of the evidence?

It can be difficult for students to understand that we all participate in making history every day, that each of us in the course of our lives leaves behind primary source documentation that scholars years hence may examine as a record of the past. The immediacy of first-person accounts of events is compelling to most students and can provide a link between the lives of people who lived long ago and students' own lives. Primary sources thus help students relate in a personal way to events of the past and come away with a deeper understanding of history as a series of human events.

"Retelling" History

After you have engaged your students in analyzing and interpreting historical primary source content, in synthesizing the information, and in making personal connections with history, ask them to articulate their understanding. Retelling history from one's own perspective can help them make the learning their own. While there are many ways that students can "retell" history, one very effective strategy is the writing of "found" poetry. Using rich primary source texts, students select words that allow them to retell the historical content in poetic form. Evocative images of an era, theme, or topic contribute to historical understanding and can spark writing ideas. Careful observation and analysis of an image will provide historic details and to historical understanding and can spark writing ideas. Careful observation and analysis of an image will provide historic details and supportive information, and may even offer rich language for the found poem. Have your students use the tools provided in this Primary Source Set for document analysis. Notations about objective and subjective observations will be invaluable when they begin to retell history through their own poems.

Creating Found Poetry

To create a found poem, students select words, phrases, lines, and sentences from one or more written documents and combine them into a poem. Raw material for found poems can be selected from newspaper articles, speeches, diaries, advertisements, letters, food menus, brochures, short stories, manuscripts of plays, shopping lists, and even other poems. A set of Library text resources written by well-known authors is provided in this Primary Source Set.

There is no single strategy for creating a found poem. The words and phrases selected to make the poem depend upon the student's initial purpose. Here are some strategies you may suggest to your students:

Analyze the source document(s) for understanding and retell the same story in poetic form.

Focus on the underlying issues of the source(s), then create a found poem that discusses the same issue but as it relates to today's world.

Focus on descriptive techniques by selecting words that bring vivid images to mind.

Select words and phrases that contain poetic effects such as alliteration and consonance.

Select words and phrases and use them creatively in any way that moves you. When students have selected their words and phrases, they combine, arrange, and rearrange them, considering not only the content and meaning of the emerging poem but also its rhythm and line breaks. Because writing found poetry is a personal process, students will approach their work in various ways. Some students will use pencil and paper. Others will cut out words and phrases from the printed source document and physically arrange them on a desktop or blank sheet of paper.

Suggestions for Teachers

Teachers may find these Library of Congress primary source documents of particular support to interdisciplinary teaching. This set provides evidence of the writing process, as well as historical evidence about persons, periods, and events.

The letter written by Helen Keller will astound students with Keller's ability to "see" the World's Columbian Exposition, despite her visual limitations. The image of this event will help your students to "see" what Keller describes.

Students can compare and contrast Walt Whitman's first notebook (#80) with later notebooks (#94 and #101). Students may consider how Whitman's writing and thinking changed in the years between the writing of these notebooks, and what might have caused these changes. Teachers may find the Collection Connection, Poet at Work: Recovered Notebooks from the Thomas Biggs Harned Walt Whitman Collection, a useful resource.

Alice Paul's dedication to the cause of women's suffrage is well documented in a newspaper article, while an essay provides an opposing viewpoint and opportunity to consider this cause from different perspectives.

Langston Hughes' poem offers students a chance to view the process of his writing, not just the final product. Students can analyze Hughes' edits, consider why these changes may have been made, and think about what the poem would have said without these changes. Students may wish to find out more about the life of Booker T. Washington, as well.

Students can gain an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance through a selection from the WPA Life Histories. Students may be surprised to learn that Zora Neale Hurston wrote for this project.

Zora Neale Hurston's play settings and character lists are rich in descriptive language. Students may wish to read Hurston's entire play after this introduction.

Additional Resources

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Found Poetry | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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Jump to: Background Suggestions for Teachers Additional Resources "Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry." --W.B. Yeats

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Home | Native Knowledge 360° - Interactive Teaching Resources

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Home | Native Knowledge 360° - Interactive Teaching Resources

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The museum’s goal to transform the teaching and learning about Native Americans. Here educators can find a searchable database with many filtering options. I was looking for lesson ideas using Native American myths.  While the featured categories included lessons in History Civics, STEM, and Geography, I found many useful resources adaptable for the English classroom by doing a keyword search. One I would definitely use was about correct terminology. There were also lessons around Thanksgiving and Native American removal; the former  would be great for elementary, the latter for high school American History students,

A selection of their lessons and resources are also available in Spanish. Though not the focus of this summary, this page also has a link to search the Collections for primary source materials.

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Native Knowledge 360° | Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

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Educational resources, lesson plans, teacher training, and strategies to support positive change! Native Knowledge 360° is a national initiative to inspire and promote improved teaching and learning about Native America. #NK360

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John. F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

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John. F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

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The Kennedy Center was established by Congress as a National Cultural Center and living memorial to JFK. Their resources support teachers integrating the performing arts into all subject areas at all grade levels. Why do this? The performing arts can provide students with an engaging "in" to many curriculum areas and help deepen cultural understanding, as well as meet standards for literacy skills in myriad subject areas. These resources are organized by subject and searchable using keywords. I would use it with teachers looking to enrich their curriculum with music, art, theatre, and dance; with students, I would use images and video clips in the library to introduce new topics or deepen knowledge. I searched the resource collection specifically for The Harlem Renaissance and discovered a terrific, interactive set of resources for American history and literature students from grades 3-12.

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Differentiation and the School Library Teacher – 21st Century Learning

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Differentiation and the School Library Teacher – 21st Century Learning

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Mia Morgan, EdD, MLIS
Differentiation and the School Library Teacher
Good teaching requires that we take the needs of all students into consideration as we plan our lessons. Most standard lesson plan templates ask teachers how they plan to differentiate for ELL and special education students, but really, our lessons have to be approachable for all of our students regardless of who they are or the skills they bring with them to class. Specialists have the added challenge of planning for every student in a school. In my district, I see 550 students each week for library class and there is a very wide range of set of skills and interests among those students.

It is daunting to think of designing a lesson that will be accessible to every student in a school. You might wonder, is it even possible?

Fortunately, there are many tools available to help us differentiate our lessons. What does it mean to differentiate a lesson? According to Reading Rockets, differentiation means to tailor instruction to meet individual needs. For example, in response to a student struggling to complete a writing assignment you might offer that student the option of recording a response using Padlet or Flipgrid. You might use EdPuzzle to create two or three different versions of the same YouTube video, but with different question sets in each version that target different types of learners. If you notice a student struggling to answer the questions in one version, or if you notice the questions are too easy for a student, you can offer easier or more challenging versions so that each student is appropriately challenged. You might take the few students who quickly complete an assignment aside and offer them a Quizlet to perfect their skills, or you might let them write a set of Kahoot! questions for their peers. You might pull a small group aside to review sticky points with a game such as Kahoot!, or Quizlet flashcards. You might provide a writing frame to help struggling writers get started.

Differentiation is about providing teacher controlled options to students at the point of need. We can differentiate every part of our instruction: warmups, lessons, activities, assessments, and exit tickets. It is no longer necessary or prudent for all students to show what they know using pencil and paper. It is no longer necessary or prudent for a teacher's voice and a text to be the only sources of new knowledge for students. Now there are games, videos, podcasts, interactive websites, blogs, and quiz tools to name a few. There are many web tools that provide a variety of options for teaching and learning. A struggling reader can use read-to-me options. A struggling writer can use voice to text options. A student who struggles with organizing ideas might use a visual organizer. You might have a shortened version of an assignment for one group of students, and an expanded version of the assignment for another group of students.

Student projects might take the form of a TikTok type dance and rap, a digital poster, a traditional poster, a skit, a Google Slideshow, a decorated cereal or oatmeal box, a poem, or an essay. Presentations might be pre-recorded to help students with anxiety or language issues present their work without fear of presenting in front of a live audience. Students might create games to show what they have learned, blog posts, or a website. Students might take a picture of their work and share it to a class Padlet or Flipgrid. Tools such as these provide options for different learners, provide the opportunity for students to use their creativity, and give students some control over their learning.

Most lesson plan templates ask teachers to consider the unique interests of both ELL and special education students (students on an IEP or 504 plan, read more here), but there are many other students who might also benefit from personalized instruction. Research has shown all students benefit from personalized instruction (Murray). While our students on 504 plans and IEPs come to us with carefully prepared instructions for how to best serve that individual student, the majority of our students do not come to us with instructions.

One type of tool that might help us to differentiate for all of our students, are the online self-assessment quizzes that provide insights into the test-taker's learning style, personality, and interests. A teacher might use those results to offer appropriate differentiation, and to better understand the students in their care. Rather than force a kinesthetic learner to sit still, the teacher might work movement into the lesson. A visual learner might benefit from an instructional video.

What struck me as I browsed my own test results, is the continuum. There is not a cut and dry label for every test taker, someone might fall into more than one category, visual and kinesthetic, for example, so it is helpful to provide all students with multiple options. As long as the students understand their own learning styles, they can then choose the option that is best. The teacher, meanwhile, can use the results to get insights, such as, 'oh that is why Johnny won't sit still' but not to pigeon-hole Johnny based on the results. The results should be a tool, not a label.

It is helpful for teachers to take these tests themselves to get insights into their own style of learning and interests. It is important to realize that not all of our students share our personal learning styles. For example, while I do turn to YouTube to learn important skills such as how to make an origami Yoda, or how to perform certain functions in Google Forms, I do not care for lecture style videos, I would much rather read a script. I do understand that aural learners prefer video lectures so, during remote learning, I created both video lessons and written lessons, to satisfy both the visual and aural learners. A few times I took my video outside to the yard, even jumping on the trampoline, which I thought might help bring in the kinesthetic learners. A teacher who takes these tests gains insight into their own learning style, and also exposure to all of the other learning styles. Seeing and understanding these differences is a fundamental step toward understanding how to present knowledge to our students.

Web tools make it easy to differentiate instruction to satisfy many learning needs, so why not use them for everyone? One concern for busy teachers might be the time it takes to prepare additional materials. If I am going to create three different question sets to accompany a YouTube video, then I am doing 3x as much work. If I am going to offer materials to students in a variety of formats, then I have to find appropriate material, or create the material myself. Every lesson, every day, all year, will require multiple options and versions. Yes, that does translate into more work for the teacher. However, I have found that if I don't offer material in a way that resonates with students then I end up having to reteach that material, multiple times, and that is time consuming. A little more time spent in the planning phase will free up more time in the classroom for the teacher to engage with students and enrich the learning, rather than reteaching material. Differentiation for warmups, exit tickets, activities, and projects really do not require extra work for the teacher because that responsibility would fall to the student to contribute using a pre-approved tool of choice.

Differentiation provides options for all students. Options increase engagement, promote creativity, and help students develop personal connection to the material because they have had a say in what they create. Given a librarian's busy schedule and high daily student volume, it seems to me that this approach, where you plan options right into the lesson might be a good option for meeting the needs of all learners, providing tools for differentiation when needed, tools for engagement, and tools for personalization for all students.Differentiation is about keeping your classroom flexible and ready to go for all learners.Differentiation also levels the playing field when teachers use those guidelines to adapt instructional techniques and fix problem areas in the classroom so that all students can participate equally in the content. Simple steps such as making sure all students can see the board or hear the instructions qualify as differentiation, as does including alternative assignment and content delivery options. Many of the apps we use to support reading, writing, or communicating end up benefiting multiple students in the classroom, by making the material more accessible or more engaging. An engaging classroom is a happy classroom. Our instruction has to capture student interest. We want our students to want to come to class. We can develop that desire by showing students tools they can use to communicate what they have learned that support their strengths and that will help them to succeed.

Cited Sources:

Murray, Jacqui. 4 Ways to Use Podcasts in the Classroom. Askatechteacher.com, Jul, 27, 2016. Accessed 8/5/20. https://askatechteacher.com/4-ways-to-use-podcasts-in-the-classroom/

Murray, Jacqui. 9 Good Collections of Videos for Education. Askatechteacher.com, Oct, 23, 2019. Accessed 8/5/20. https://askatechteacher.com/good-collections-of-videos-for-education/

Murray, Jacqui. Audio. Askatechteacher.com, Sept, 23, 2019. Accessed online 8/5/20. https://askatechteacher.com/great-kids-websites/audio/

Murray, Jacqui. Differentiating with Personalized Learning. Askatechteacher.com, Sept, 24, 2018. Accessed 8/5/20. https://askatechteacher.com/differentiating-with-personalized-learning/

Murray, Jacqui. Games. Askatechteacher.com, Sept, 25, 2019. Accessed online 8/5/20. https://askatechteacher.com/great-kids-websites/games/

Murray, Jacqui. Visual Organizer. Askatechteacher.com, Sept, 19, 2019. Accessed online 8/5/20. https://askatechteacher.com/great-kids-websites/visual-organizer/

TKI. UDL and Differentiation and How They Are Connected. ND. Accessed 8/5/20. https://www.inclusive.tki.org.nz/guides/universal-design-for-learning/udl-and-differentiation-and-how-they-are-connected

Tomlinson, Carol Ann. What is Differentiated Instruction. Reading Rockets. ND. Accessed 8/5/20. https://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-differentiated-instruction

Understood Team. The Difference Between IEP and 504 Plans. Understood.com. ND. Accessed 8/5/20. https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/special-services/504-plan/the-difference-between-ieps-and-504-plans

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Differentiation and the School Library Teacher

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Mia Morgan, EdD, MLIS Differentiation and the School Library Teacher Good teaching requires that we take the needs of all students into consideration as we plan our lessons. Most standard lesson pl...

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Available in all 24 European Union languages, this website offers teaching tools, games, and resources for K-12 teachers. It is searchable by keyword and you can filter your searches by age group, topic, and resource type. While this site might at first seem a natural fit only for high school world history courses, it surprised me with its heavy focus on media literacy, misinformation, and the like. There are entry points for these conversations for every grade level. I also think this site, because it’s available in multiple languages, could help ELL students access curriculum topics in their home languages, providing for deeper understanding of the material.

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Discover learning material, games and much more about the European Union and its activities, for children, teenagers, teachers and parents.

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This resource offers a searchable database that offers the opportunity to sort resources by country, grade level, and resource type. In addition to lessons, there are professional development tools for teachers. The resource puts topics in global perspective, expanding students' understanding of the world. I found a lesson perfect for our 10th grade honors American lit. curriculum on views of Americans from outside America - it would be a great introduction/kick off. There is truly something here for all curriculum areas and all grade levels. Also love this lesson which pairs with 4th graders' study of the water cycle.

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Don’t believe what you see – digging deeper for the truth – Linking Learning

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How can students get better at sorting truth from fiction from everything in between? At applying their attention to the things that matter? At amplifying better treatments of issues, and avoiding …

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Inquiry and Primary Source Handouts | Massachusetts Historical Society

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Inquiry and Primary Source Handouts | Massachusetts Historical Society

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Inquiry and Primary Source Handouts | Massachusetts Historical Society

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Wetlands Protection and Restoration | US EPA

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Wetlands Protection and Restoration | US EPA

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I found resources on this site when looking for materials for an elementary school unit on Vernal Pools. The “Wetlands Protection and Restoration” page includes short articles on different types of wetlands, materials for teachers and students, and a great reading list of reading materials about wetlands for grade PreK - 12, which is a great resource for librarians building a collection to support learning about wetlands.

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The National Gallery of Art  offers lesson ideas, professional development opportunities (online and in person), curriculum resources, and games. You can also enjoy free downloads of art and sign up for email updates. As one might expect, the site is visually engaging and easy to navigate. It was the prettiest website I looked at.  Their mission is as follows:  “The National Gallery of Art serves the nation by welcoming all people to explore and experience art, creativity, and our shared humanity”.  The website appears to live this mission in addition to highlighting their values of integrity, deepening understanding, and diversity, access, equity, and inclusion. Their teacher page is well-laid out, with lesson plans grouped by grade level (PreK-college/university). Along the right-hand side of the page, there is an email address to reach out with questions, featured teacher workshops, and highlighted new resources. One of these new resources, “Art Tales” is perfect for librarians working with young children. As a high school English teacher who teaches American literature to 10th graders, I was particularly intrigued with the new collection of resources under the umbrella “Uncovering America”.  This resource is designed for students K - 12.  According to the website, students will  “discover compelling stories of creativity, struggle, and resilience in this new set of resources for K–12 educators featuring works of art that reflect the richness and diversity of the people, places, and cultures of the United States.”  This collection was funded by a grant, and doesn’t appear to have an agenda. Each module focuses on a theme  like the Industrial Revolution, race, women in art, the Civil War, Immigration, etc. These modules connect to standards in the MA history and social science frameworks, as well as ELA, and art. Each module contains an Introductory essay, downloadable high-resolution image sets featuring background information, essential questions for students, classroom activities, and additional resources.  I explored the teaching resources on the Harlem Renaissance, which we cover in American literature.  These resources are definitely designed for teachers.  The introductory essay is pitched at a high level, and might be appropriate for older students, but really seems designed for the teacher audience. It’s not clear who authored the resources, but they are scholarly and include links to go deeper. This particular set of curriculum ideas is for high school students and each lesson is interactive and engaging with stunning visuals. There are three individual lessons, which could stand alone or work together. I could see using them as an introduction to the Harlem Renaissance before jumping into reading fiction or nonfiction essays with students.  The art might help engage students who struggle with reading text, and all students would benefit from the context the art provides and the deeper understanding it prompts. Along the left hand side of the page is a list of links to additional resources from reputable sites like the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress. I also like that the collection homepage offers an opportunity for students and teachers to share their own American stories by email, making the site interactive and responsive to the audience.

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Plan a field trip or bring art into your classroom. Find lesson ideas, teaching resources, or professional development opportunities for yourself.

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Teaching with Historic Places (U.S. National Park Service)

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Teaching with Historic Places (U.S. National Park Service)

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This database of lessons is browsable by theme, time period, and location. It draws on resources from historic places across the United States, offering teachers lots of engaging entry points for students. This site is great for the humanities, offering lots of native American history, Civil Rights, Women's suffrage, economics, and various important figures in United States history and culture.

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Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) offers teaching tools and lesson plans to help educators engage young people with powerful stories representing America's diverse history. Historic places in National Parks and in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places enliven history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects.

Historic places offer connections across time, encouraging empathy for the people who shaped our past. Students can connect their own local history with national events and themes. TwHP materials enable teachers and students to learn from places without leaving their learning spaces. By examining and questioning readings, documents, maps, photographs, and by engaging in activities, students connect these locations to broad themes of American history.

TwHP resources help educators, interpreters, and curious learners virtually explore and engage with our shared history.

Teaching with Historic Places is included in the African American Civil Rights Network, which encompasses historic sites and interpretive programs associated with the African American Civil Rights movement in the United States.

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Teaching with Historic Places (U.S. National Park Service)

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Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) uses properties listed in the National Park Service National Register of Historic Places to teach young people critical thinking skills as they investigate history through place.

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A Raisin in the Sun: Whose "American Dream"? | NEH-Edsitement

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A Raisin in the Sun: Whose "American Dream"? | NEH-Edsitement

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Activity 2. Building the context for A Raisin in the Sun

Before analyzing the following resources, draw upon the background you have established based on the documents and discussion completed for Activity 1 to design inquiry questions that help answer the guiding question: To what extent have the arts been informed by the social and political realities of the time and vice versa?

"Harlem": A 1951 poem by Langston Hughes in which the line "...like a raisin in the sun?" appears. You can also view this video clip on Yale University's exhibition: "Langston Hughes at 100" (scroll down to the third entry "Langston Hughes reading "Harlem"). How do "dreams deferred" relate to "The American Dream"?

Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America. Analyze maps of Chicago and other major cities in the U.S. to learn about the intersections of race and geography in the 1930s and 40s and discuss how this informs one's reading of the play.

NEH's Created Equal: Slavery by Another Name. Resources and analysis questionsonJim Crow during the New Deal era.

"The Black Laws" B.W. Arnett (American Memory Collection/African American Perspectives: The Progress of a People)

"Lynch Laws in Georgia" Ida B. Wells (American Memory Collection/African American Perspectives: The Progress of a People)

Activity 3. Learning about Ms. Hansberry

Before analyzing the following resources, draw upon the background you have established based on the documents and discussion completed for activities 1 and 2 to design inquiry questions that frame your analysis of the following texts.

1. According to stanza 1 of Hughes' "Let America Be America Again," what does the poet want?

2. What do stanza's 2, 4, 6, 12, and 16 have in common?

3. What is the dream, who are the dreamers, and is the dream attainable?

4. Compare the tone, theme, and perspective of "Let America Be America Again" with "Harlem"

5. What was Ms. Hansberry's life like growing up?

6. Based on the excerpts, what issues were important to Hansberry? If she were alive today, what causes might she support?

7. According to Hansberry, what is the purpose behind her play, A Raisin in the Sun?

Task:

Imagine a conversation between Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry on a theme that has emerged from their lives and work. What would they talk about? What might they say? What would they create?

Activity 4. The Youngers and "The American Dream"

Use Hansberry's play to respond to the guiding question: How does A Raisin in the Sun mirror and provide a window into the intersections of race and the social, political, and economic climate of the U.S. during the mid-twentieth century?

Given what we have learned about Hansberry, Jim Crow, and the African American Experience between 1850 and 1954, why do you think Hansberry chose to use a play to illustrate the experiences of African Americans at the time?

Engage students in a dramatic reading of the play while also discussing stage design, costuming, stage directions, and how the research students have conducted qualifies as dramaturgy work in the theater. In doing so, students are part of a decision making process that draws them into the staging as well as the performance of the play. For example: I f A Raisin in the Sun were staged today, who would students cast for each role?

At the end of each Act, have students work in groups to analyze the play while also referring to research and their own creative insights for how subsequent scenes can be staged.

Characterization. Use the " Character Analysis" handout (downloadable as a PDF) to record important information about each member of the Younger family.

How is "The American Dream" expressed in each member of the Younger family: Walter, Ruth, Lena (Mama), and Beneatha?

How do the supporting characters, George Murchinson and Joseph Assaigai, add to our understanding of the Younger family members?

Plot/Conflict. Use the " Plot Outline" handout (downloadable as a PDF) to map the dramatic structure of the central conflict.

Explain the existing conflicts between the Younger family members, Mama and Walter, Walter & Ruth, and Walter and Beneatha, the Youngers and society.

How are these conflicts associated with the American Dream and a dream deferred?

Symbolism. Use the " Analyzing Symbols Chart" handout (downloadable as a PDF) to analyze the symbolic elements below.

Joseph Assaigai, George Murchinson, Ruth's Pregnancy, Beneatha's hair, Mr. Lindner, the new house, the money from the insurance policy, and Lena's plant. In what sense are these people, events, and/or objects symbolic? How do they further our understanding of the play?
Allusion

Explain George's allusion to Walter as Prometheus. Have students go online to EDSITEment-reviewed The Perseus Project and use the Greek and Roman Materials Perseus Encyclopedia to refresh their knowledge of Greek Mythology and the figure of Prometheus. According to Greek mythology, who is Prometheus? What does Walter have in common with Prometheus? How does this allusion help us to understand Walter's role in the family? How does this allusion help us to understand Walter's conflict with Mama and the rest of the family? How does this allusion help us understand Walter and the Younger family's quest for the American Dream?
Theme

Analyze the following quotes: "We ain't no business people Ruth, we just plain working folks."

"Once upon a time freedom used to be life now money is life," What important issues do they raise? How do these issues help us to understand the American Dream? How do these quotes help us to understand the Younger's quest for the American Dream?

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A Raisin in the Sun: Whose "American Dream"?

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Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun provides a compelling and honest look into one family's aspirations to move to another Chicago neighborhood and the thunderous crash of a reality that raises questions about for whom the "American Dream" is accessible.