Linking Curriculum and Community Through Oral History

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Linking Curriculum and Community Through Oral
History
October 2006
The Many Bricks of the Schoolhouse Association
of Independent Maryland School (AISGW) April, 2008
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• Glenn Whitman
• Dean of Studies
• gwhitman_at_saes.org

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Workshop Objectives

• 1. Demonstrate the value of oral history as an
  educational and historical methodology.
• 2. Demonstrate that when students are empowered
  to be and think like oral historians, they can
  make lasting contributions to the communities in
  which they live and study.

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What are the first ten names in United States
History that come to your mind?

• Student Responses
• September 2004
• George Washington
• Thomas Jefferson
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Ronald Reagan
• Abraham Lincoln
• John F. Kennedy
• Bill Clinton
• Only 3 women (Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks,
  Harriet Tubman) were mentioned among the list of
  15 students

• Student Responses
• September 2007
• George Washington
• Christopher Columbus
• FDR
• Harriet Tubman
• Abraham Lincoln
• Hillary Clinton

How do we account for such lists? Who is
missing from these lists?
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What is Oral History?

• What it is
• A historical method that
• collects and preserves
• first-hand, spoken
• memories through
• recorded interviews
• -Donald A. Ritchie
• Doing Oral History

• What it is not
• Journalism
• -Kissing Cousins Journalism and Oral History
  (OHR, 2004)
• Folklore
• Role Playing

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What skills and values should we teach students
to prepare them for the world they will inherit
in the 21st century?

• Honesty and integrity
• Flexibility
• Teaming
• Collaboration
• Inclusiveness

• Value diversity
• Problem solving (Complex, real-world)
• Public Speaking
• Self-discipline
• Leadership

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Preparing Students for their Right Brained
Future (not our Left Brained Past)

• The Six Senses
• Design
• Story (Direction, Inspiration, Compelling
  narrative)
• Symphony (Bringing skills and values together,
  Synthesis)
• Empathy (EQ versus IQ)
• Play (Unsupervised, unrestricted and imaginative)
• Meaning

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Preparing Students for their Right Brained
Future (not our Left Brained Past)

• Five Minds
• The Disciplined Mind
• The Synthesizing Mind
• The Creating Mind
• The Respectful Mind
• The Ethical Mind

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Why I Use Oral History as an Educational
Methodology

• Trains the next generation of historians through
  Cognitive apprenticeships
• -Kim Porter, University of North Dakota
• Empowers student with their own learning (and
  confusion)
• Allows students to connect with the past that
  will be more enduring than Jefferson or Lincoln
• Generates student experts who serve as
  co-teachers for the class
• Accessible to all types of learners, across grade
  levels, and disciplines
• Creates a more inclusive history for marginalized
  groups of people
• Its fun! (An underappreciated educational
  methodology)

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Why I Use Oral History as an Educational
Methodology

• No geographic limitations
• You dont have to be famous for your life to
  have history.
• -Southern Oral History Program
• Everyman and woman can be his own oral
  historian.
• An oral history project can meet and often
  exceeds state and national standards of learning.
• Helps to build intergenerational bridges
• Opportunity for Service Learning (Allowing
  students to make important contributions to where
  they live and study)
• An oral history project can be integrated across
  disciplines, grade levels and types of schools
  and programs

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Bringing Diversity to Your School or Program
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Sharing Authority(Fostering Intergenerational
Bridges)
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Sharing Authority(Fostering Intergenerational
Bridges)

• Imagine having a teacher
• for every student in
• your class.

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Its What Students Will Remember About Your
Course!
p. 10
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Barbara TuchmanPracticing History

• Professional Historian
• Someone who has had
• graduate training leading
• to a professional degree
• and who practices within
• a university.

• Amateur Historian
• Someone outside the
• university without a
• graduate degree.

The two need each other to help democratize the
historical record
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The Student Oral Historian Preserving History
Today for the Historians of Tomorrow
. . . Do it for me and for the legion of other
social scientists and historians who will come
upon your students work ages hence--and will
learn important things about your community, and
how it was to live in what we, from our limited
perspective, call modern times. - James W.
Loewen, author Sundown Towns, Lies Across America
and Lies My History Teacher Told Me in the
Foreword to Dialogue with the Past Engaging
Students and Meeting Standards Through Oral
History
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The Oral Historians Classroom
The Traditional Classroom Setting
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Creating and Conducting an Oral History Project
- Frank Ernest by Bob Thaves
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When Creating and Conducting an Oral History
Project Think P

• Preparation
• Practice (educator and student)
• Process (Principles and Standards of the OHA)
• Product
• Preservation
• Publication

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Goal To make a useable, accessible, and enduring
primary source
Oral History is a Historical Process

• Oral History methodology and training (on-going).
• Interviewee selection (Where do you find
  interviewees?)
• Pre-Interview Worksheet and meeting
• Research/Content Background (Research timeline)
• Interview Questions (Get to the sub-text)
• Interview (Location, equipment, student safety,
  emotional questions/responses)
• Interviewer/Interviewee release forms (A must!)

Ipod Nation
Ch. 5
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The Project Process

• (8) Transcription (Does every project need to be
  transcribed in full?)
• - At the time of the project, I can remember
  complaining
• profusely about how laborious transcription
  is. Here I will
• grudgingly admit that which did not kill me
  made me stronger.
• - Libby Barringer, St. Andrews Episcopal
  School Student
• - Cost often necessitates Time Indexing Log
  rather than complete transcription
• (9) Analysis/Interpretation (bias, distortions,
  presentism, trauma). All historical sources
  need to be treated with equal skepticism.
• Archiving/Preservation/Publication It become
  history when booked (James Lowen)

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The American Century Projectat St. Andrews
Episcopal Schoolwww.americancenturyproject.org
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Interviewees650 interview tapes and
transcriptions

• Sandra Day OConnor
• John L. Lewis
• General John Shalikashvili
• Marion Barry
• Ernest Green
• Jack Valenti
• Helen Thomas
• Joey Thompson

• Bob Rast
• Ivona Kaz-Jepsen
• Warren Allen Smith
• Ernest Burke
• Eugenia Kiesling
• Virginia Ali
• Ann Stevens

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Annual Oral History Coffeehouse
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Student Museum Exhibits
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American Century Project Archive
Dreyfuss Library, St. Andrews Episcopal School
Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage - www.mdch.org
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Project Feedback (Students)

• "Not only did it teach us about history, but it
  taught the larger message of respect and
  responsibility that come with historical
  knowledge.
• (Drew Saylor, SAES student)
• "In the case of my project, examining the role of
  women in the 1950s, my interview totally
  contradicted my research. I could not understand
  why this woman did not hate staying at home
  raising five children with no career or
  educational opportunities. I thought that I had
  done something wrong. What I learned, however,
  is that her story was one that had never been
  told. I told her story.
• (Amy Helms, SAES student)

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• I got the packet today . . . I cant tell you
  how much I enjoyed reading it, and how much it
  touched me. These are questions Ive always
  wanted to ask you, and about you, and the war
  that I always wanted to know about, and hear you
  talk about. I guess its like Carol sons wife
  said, its easier to talk to a stranger than to
  talk to someone who is close to you. I know
  youve talked to me a little about it, but never
  this in depth or that much about your feelings.
  I want you to know that after reading this, even
  more so now, that I thank God that my father is
  alive and that my children have a real
  grandfather instead of just a memory to hear
  about from me.

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The Student Oral Historian Preserving History
Today for the Historians of Tomorrow

• Without the student
• oral historian far too
• many stories would be
• lost it would be like a
• library burning down.
• - Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History

St. Andrews Episcopal School Student Michael
Bryan with interviewee Ernest Burke a player in
the Negro Baseball League
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Resources/Must Haves for Oral History Education

• Lanman, Educating the Next Generation of Oral
  Historians
• Oral History Association (Extensive Resource
  Information under Education Committee)
  http//www.dickinson.edu/oha/
• Ritchie, Doing Oral History
• Whitman, Dialogue with the Past
• Wood, Oral History Projects in Your Classroom
• Become a member of the OHA or COHE

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