Saving Our Stories

You've just been introduced to a new acquaintance and immediately take note of the person's clothes, facial expression, and extent of eye contact. You ask a question and sense whether the response is forthcoming, shy, or guarded. You notice whether the person seems interested in you. This moment may not entirely determine the course of the friendship, but it certainly sets the initial direction. How you introduce the family history project to your students is equally important. When we teachers are enthusiastic about a topic, it's tempting to just dive right in and put kids to work. But it's crucial to lay some groundwork first.

The more you involve students in the goal setting and planning of the project, the more ownership and commitment you'll see throughout its execution. We aren't presenting this program as a fully student directed or negotiated project, though we'd be pleased to see it approached that way, as more teachers learn to help students make choices in their studies. However, even within the broad outlines of the teacher's expectations, students can consider and suggest many options from the very start:

• Goals and objectives-what are students hoping to learn?
• Possible activities-visit several ethnically focused museums?

• Bring in some grandparents to talk to us?

• Hold a family history fair for the rest of the school?

• Which of our relatives might we interview?

• How shall we present information - posters, a class book, short videos, Web pages?

Top

HOW-TO-GUIDE

STEP 1: SETTING THE STAGE WITH BACKGROUND ON FAMILY STRUCTURES

The teacher introduces this first workshop by describing and helping students discuss various types of family structures. Present some statistics on family structures in the 1990s. Kids are less likely to feel alone or ostracized if they know, for example, that:

• 31.7 percent of US. family households with children under eighteen were headed by a single parent in1998;

• 6 percent of families with children under eighteen were composed of extended family members instead of parents;

• 58.8 percent of mothers with preschool children were employed in 1998;

• There are 165 divorced people for every 1,000 married people in the United States. But 75 percent of divorced women remarry; therefore many children have a step parent (US Bureau of the Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics). Share this Information to help students feel comfortable about themselves and their family structures. What are some of the various ways that family members connect so that individuals can help each other?

• Large extended families versus small nuclear units.

• Visits back and forth among relatives living in various cities,

• Children living periodically with one parent and then the other, or for periods with a grandparent.

• Multiple family members running a store or business together.

Mention several of these arrangements, and ask students to describe ways that their own families work. Emphasize our common bonds. We all have family. We all come from somewhere. We all have stories

STEP 2: STUDENTS LIST REASONS WHY FAMILY HISTORY IS IMPORTANT

Now invite students to list reasons why family history could be important, record these on a sheet of butcher paper, and post it on the wall. If students are hesitant, ask them to write lists working in twos or threes, and then have reporters share reasons from their lists. Some common reasons students may give (depending on their age):
• You can find out where your family came from.
• You can find out if you have any famous ancestors.
• You can learn what life was like for your parents and grandparents when they were kids.
• You can see if some of your ancestors looked like you or acted like you.
• You can discover whether people in your family did any special kinds of things like fight in the Civil War, or hunt bears, or travel to distant places.
• You can learn whether some of your ancestors are from different cultural groups, such as Native American, or Irish, or Egyptian, even if your family doesn't consider itself a part of that group.

STEP 3: THE TEACHER SHARES HIS OR HER FAMILY HISTORY
Modeling is always helpful, and students are unceasingly fascinated with the facts and shapes of their teachers' lives (which itself tells us something about students' hunger to find more meaningful links with school). Take some time to talk about your own family's origins, traditions, and migration patterns, to spark kids' interest and illustrate the kinds of things they will learn during the project. You may need to do some telephoning and research to fill in a few blanks, in which case you'll discover some of the excitement and insight that your students will soon be experiencing.

STEP 4: STUDENTS BEGIN TO TELL WHAT THEY KNOW ABOUT THEIR FAMILIES
Once you've shared some of your own discoveries, ask your students questions that invite them to share some of their family stories, as well as to acknowledge the many blanks that will need to be filled in.
• What are some traditions celebrated in your family's culture?
• Are there special customs your family follows?
• Have you ever wondered why you do some of the things you do, eat what you eat, feel like you do?
• When did your people migrate to this city? Why did they leave the place where they had lived?
• Does your family have reunions? Why do people do this?
• If you don't know much about your family's background, what do you think are some things you might try to learn about?
• What part do you think your family has played in our city's history? In U.S. history? Every family contributes to our being
here in various ways. What might your family's contribution be?
• Are there children in he class who have no access to their family origins and may need the option of inquiring about the history of their broader national or ethnic background? Again, if your students are hesitant to answer or shy about speaking up, ask them to talk in pairs first, one question at a time, and go around the room getting responses.

STEP 5: SETTING GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS FOR THE PROJECT
Finally, explain to the students your purpose for this unit of study: to learn more about our families and cultures, and then to place ourselves and our families within the history of the community, the country, and the world. Ask students m list the things they expect to learn about themselves. What kinds of information should they look fox? How might they present it to the class or the rest of the school? How might the students change their ideas about themselves and their family as a result of studying family history? Record the students' suggestions and expectations on butcher paper and display the lists in the room. This provides a set of ideas, goals, and expectations that can be used to execute the project. They ran be reviewed later, to help students see what they've learned and to realize their surprise that there is much more to this subject than they originally realized.

Top

By the end of this session, your class will have accomplished the following:

• Begun to develop an attitude of openness and appreciation for the various lifestyles, family types, and ethnic and cultural experiences that fellow students bring with them.
• Established an initial set of questions and expectations about the learning that will take place in thefamily history project.
• Participated in planning, by contributing ideas for the direction and execution of the project.
• Demonstrated a baseline for observing growth in student knowledge and understanding about their own and others' family histories.
• Demonstrated a baseline for observing student understanding of the significance of local and national history in their lives.

Top

Expectations In Mrs. McCann's Third Grade, Hurley School
When we asked third-grade students what they looked forward to learning by studying family history, they realized the possibilities for satisfying their curiosities about the past. They responded eagerly as follows:

ERIC: I want to know where my parents met.
ROBERTO: How did they live?
ADRIANNA: When did my parents get married?
KURT: I want to find out when my grandparents came to Chicago.
ERICA: I want to know how my ancestors traveled here. My mom was born in Mexico, but she was a little girl when she came here. So does she still remember things about Mexico?
AMANDA: I want to find out what my ancestors ate. There were different kinds of food.
WILLIE: Where did my mom and dad go to school? Was school different than now?
VICTOR: What did my mom and dad do when they were kids?
Of the class of twenty-five, twelve didn't know where their forebears came from. Twenty-one wondered how their parents met. Everyone the wanted to know what school was like for their parents. When the subject of holidays came up, about half didn't know about the Mexican tradition of Day of the Dead, reflecting the ethnic split in the class which was for about half Mexican American. Everyone looked forward to hearing about families and groups that were different from their own.

Top

Luther King High School, 1992
Occasionally, students will be resistant at the start of the family history project because the topic brings up strong feelings, or because they cannot possibly obtain information about their original family. Some children may be adopted or living in foster homes or institutional settings, and have limited access to information about their family origins. The teacher must use his or her best judgment about when privacy must be respected, when an assignment needs to be broadened, when a substitute activity must be made available, or when it is important to encourage a student onward. Throughout this curriculum, teachers must keep in mind that its goals are to help students develop pride and knowledge about their backgrounds, make meaningful connections with the school curriculum, and learn to respect one another, rather than just complete a particular assignment. Yolanda Simmons learned this lesson early on in a vivid moment with James, a tenth grader. As the students in Yolanda's class at King High School started brainstorming ideas about why they should study family history, James suddenly bolted from his seat.

JAMES: Just go on and send me to the dean's office.
MRS. SIMMONS: Why would I do that, James?
JAMES: 'Cause I ain't gonna talk about my father. I ain't gonna write about him either, and I sure ain't gonna do no research on him!
PATRICE: What you complaining about, James? My dad won't call me until I'm eighteen. Says he can't be stuck with child payments. After I'm eighteen, he says we can talk.
LATASHA: Never met my dad. What you running from? We're getting older now. Time to face the facts, to deal with ourselves.
BETTIE: Run all you want James. Just gonna end up running into yourself.
James slammed the door behind him and strode off down the hall. The next day, as James entered the room, we all took a deep breath and held it.
JAMES: Okay if I pass out the family history portfolios, Mrs. Simmons?

Top

When parents are available to participate In family history activities not just at home but in their own workshops, it provides a tremendous boost for the kids' efforts. Parents can add information and perspective, as well as model the kinds of investigation we are asking the students to undertake. And in locations where poverty has bred discouragement, the activities build pride for the adults as well as the children. Adopted and foster children can be linked with the larger community and its heritage(s). In fact, in Chapters 5 and 6, we've provided examples of a parent who was raised in an orphanage and was gratified to find legal records about her own parents.

Pete Leki remembers the first time he broached family history with a group of parents at Jenner Academy, in the Cabrini-Green public housing complex of Chicago, and discovered that just as with children, he needed to help participants deal with the uncertainty surrounding the material they were delving into. He invited Pat Bearden in to talk about her family history and to show pictures of her great-grandmother Fredomia and others in her family's past. She announced that her ethnic roots are African, Native American, and Irish. The room was perfectly still as pictures of ancestors were passed around, some light skinned, some dark, some in between.

One woman spoke up. "Aren't you afraid? Afraid of what you might find out?" Pat said, "Yes, I was afraid. No, I'm not afraid now. We've all got skeletons in the closet. We all have things in our past that we would rather not have happened. But here we are! This is a celebration. Wherever we came from and whatever we've been through, it's just who we are. And here we are today, and the more we look back, the more we can say, 'Wasn't that something! "

Pat went on to tell the story about her grandfather who went to prison, convicted of murder for being part of the Atlanta race riots in 1906. As the story was told by Grandpa Alex Walker, a county officer was shot and killed during the riots. Alex was arrested, charged, and sentenced to life imprisonment. With the help of his Irish grandfather, Wright Read, who was a policeman, Alex was released from prison after serving just four years of the sentence. On the night of his release, Alex moved his family to Birmingham, Alabama, where he worked as a porter in a barbershop, and then at the Bessemer Steel works. Pat was able to corroborate this story by finding an article in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. "Is this history or what?" she asked. "Aren't we part of the history of this country?"

Top

History is for many reasons full of wars, conflict, and struggles. By starting with the data from the classroom profile, students can be helped to begin investigating one of these conflicts with a real sense of its impact on their own families, or the families of their friends. Students can then embark on investigations about the reasons for it; write about someone's experience during it; and read novels set in it (Fallen Angels, Walter Dean Myers-Vietnam War; For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway-Spanish Civil War; Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, and Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl-World War II). A teacher with the goal of covering World War II during the school year, for example, could use the chart on whose ancestors and relatives fought in wars as a way to enter into the subject. What are the current ages of these participants? If they were in their early twenties when they went to war, about when were they born? Are they still living and available for interview or to speak to the class? What kind of work were they doing before and after the war? For a classroom to share this kind of information-that their relatives were involved and sacrificed themselves-builds self-esteem and a sense of belonging, and it places students and their families in public history.

The excerpts in this article came from History Comes Home: Family Stories Across The Curriculum by Steven Zemelman, Patricia Bearden, Yolanda Simmons and Pete Leki, Stenhouse Publishers, York, ME, 2000.
For further information on these and the other workshops, please refer to the book, available through your educational materials retailer.

Top