This spring I participated in LILAC or the Library Instruction Leadership ACademy offered through the Rochester Regional Library Council. We spent the semester attending a series of workshops that walked us through effective instruction techniques including: understanding student learning behaviors, collaboration with students and faculty, uses of technology and learning outcomes. We also observed three instruction sessions taught by librarians at institutions of our choice. For our final assignment we created a lesson plan and then taught the first 10 minutes of the lesson in front of our fellow workshop participants. Here’s my lesson: (recorded video of my lesson to be coming soon!)
Background Information
Audience type: My session is with 10-15 History majors in the fall semester of their senior year. Although these students have studied History and used primary sources before, this is their first experience being immersed in the world of Special Collections material.
Course description: Their course is titled: Lincoln & Douglass: Analyzing reform in 19th century America. Taught by a Frederick Douglass scholar, this class meets weekly in the Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation Department, where I work. Manuscripts from the Frederick Douglass Papers and Abraham Lincoln materials provide the content for the course and the parameters for analysis. Each week student’s analyze items from these collections and use the materials to examine the theme of nineteenth century reform movements.
Course preparation: This is the second time the Professor has worked with me on this course. During the previous summer, he and I met regularly to comb through the primary sources in the collections to find the right balance of historical evidence for the students to analyze. He and I co-teach the class and divide the week into two classes, each is 75 minutes long. On Mondays, he lectures and leads a discussion in the Special Collections Department, which I attend and contribute to. On Wednesdays, I teach the class and introduce students to a variety of primary sources. The session I will present is from week two of the class. The first day that I taught, the students learned about the department and how to handle manuscript materials.
Lesson Plan
Lesson objectives:
1. Students will examine a document and answer the “Who, What, When, Where, Why and How” questions in order to learn how to analyze a primary source to better understand the historical context of their course.
2. The students will perform a close reading exercise of a Frederick Douglass letter that served as a pass on the Underground Railroad in order to understand and consider the risks both slaves and abolitionists faced that will provide them with a foundation for analyzing reform in the nineteenth century.
3. Students will study nineteenth century life in Rochester through a display exhibited in Rare Books and Special Collections to better understand Douglass’s world, which will enable them to begin to consider the limitations of manuscript collections.
Opening Activity, anticipatory set (2-3 minutes)
On the screen will be a picture of a
Ask the students to identify the picture: does anyone know what this image is? Once the class arrives at the correct answer, ask “How many of you have ever bought a train ticket or ridden on a train?” We’ll discuss what information can be understood from the ticket, including:
Train number
Departure city
Arrival city
Date of departure
Date of arrival
Time or departure
Time of arrival
Class number
Although this ticket is written in Italian, most of us can understand what it’s saying, even if we don’t know much or any Italian. Our unfamiliarity with the language will dovetail with the close reading exercise we’ll do of a nineteenth century Underground Railroad pass. By establishing prior knowledge of what a modern train ticket looks like and the information printed on it, we can use that understanding to gather information about the pass.
Central Learning Activity #1- close reading exercise (3-20 minutes)
I will hand out a color scan of the Underground Railroad pass. Once each student has had a moment to look at it, I will describe our next activity. I use close reading exercises when working with classes for the first time to help student de-mystify the research process of using manuscript materials. Often there’s guess work that a researcher must do to understand a source that differs from the process of working with secondary sources. Close reading activities work best when the professor participates and when the class reads through the document together. However, some students will never participate in a group setting when the fear of being wrong will prevent a student from voicing an opinion. To accommodate different personality and learning styles, I will offer students the choice of transcribing the letter together as a group or in smaller groups of 2 or 3 students.
Once they’ve decided, I’ll ask them to re-arrange their seats if needed and pass out a worksheet that explains the guidelines for doing a close reading:
– Don’t worry about getting every word correct.
– Skip over words you don’t know and come back once you know the context of the document.
– Give each member of the group the opportunity to transcribe part of the document.
– Don’t get hung up on understanding the meaning or significance of the document while you’re transcribing it.
I’ll then give students the chance to ask any questions they have before we do the activity.
Both the professor and I will circulate among the groups, or if we’re transcribing as a group, we’ll each take a turn transcribing. Once we’re done transcribing the class will come back together and begin analyzing the letter.
(END OF 10 MINUTE LESSON FOR LILAC)
We’ll answer the WWWWWH to begin the discussion. From this letter we don’t know the exact date, or where it was written. We do know that Frederick Douglass is the author and he wrote this letter to Mrs. Post. From the content of the letter we know that the letter served as instructions to Mrs. Post. To begin filling in the blanks, we’ll discuss possible sources- both available through the library, and those through Google or Wikipedia- that might help us. Searching Google for “Post family Douglass Rochester,” you find a number of sites, many generated by the University of Rochester, that help us identify Mrs. Post, as Amy Post, an ardent abolitionist and woman’s rights figure in the nineteenth century.
I would then share with the students that this letter is part of the Post Family Papers, housed in the department. One could then go to the finding aid online and learn about the Post family and their contributions to the abolitionist movement. They would also see that many letters from the collection have been digitized and transcribed and are also available online. Exploring sources related to a manuscript collection can be a wonderful and quick way to gather more information about an item. Although we still don’t know the letter’s date, we can at least surmise that Douglass wrote it after 1847, when he moved to Rochester and before 1865, or the end of the Civil War.
#2 Analyzing risk in antebellum America (10-15 minutes)
Once students have understood the basic components of the letter, I will then give them the option of discussing the letter as a class, or breaking into partners to discuss its significance. Their guiding questions will be:
1. Discuss possible risks that each figure encountered (writer, recipient, slave).
2. If you were Amy Post, would you have participated in the Underground Railroad?
3. If you had been a slave, would you have tried to escape?
These questions may be ahistorical, but they will encourage students to remove the benefit of hindsight from their analysis and focus on the facts of what it meant to be an abolitionist, former slave and escaping slave in antebellum America.
If students chose to break into partners, I will bring the class back together and we’ll do a share out. I’ll encourage students to comment on their classmates’ ideas. Once the discussion has come to a close, I’ll ask students to suggest possible primary sources that might help them to understand the risks from all three perspectives. Sources might include:
– slave narratives
– autobiographies, including one that Douglass wrote
– newspaper accounts
– letters from abolitionists to one another
#3 Douglass’s World (20-25 minutes)
For the final part of my lesson I would guide students through an exhibit of items that reflect nineteenth century life in Rochester. The exhibit will compel the students to confront their assumptions about the time period and to understand Douglass’s actions and words in a broad historical context.
The display is in two exhibit cases and includes photographs of Rochester reformers including: Susan B. Anthony, the Post Family, the Fox sisters and leaders of the Young Women’s Christian Associations. There are also items like the University of Rochester yearbook, an invitation for William Henry Seward to speak at a men’s club, an announcement for a Temperance meeting and a map of Rochester in the antebellum period.
Each item has a label identifying it and the collection it belongs to. I will ask the students to divide themselves into two groups, to allow them greater visibility when looking at the display. The students will have five to ten minutes to examine the items in both cases and writing down or think about questions they have or items that surprised them. We’ll then come back together as a class and discuss the display.
Guiding questions for the discussion include:
What can we learn from a display that we might not be able to from a single manuscript item?
What can we understand about Douglass from learning about the town he lived in?
What can’t we know from the display? (why he chose to move to Rochester, whether he enjoyed living there, etc.)
Lesson Conclusion (assessment)
From the contents of this lesson, students have learned how to analyze a primary source and to begin researching the key terms or figures mentioned in the item to gain a better understanding of its significance. Students have begun the process of extrapolating information from one source to imagine risk and motivations in the nineteenth century abolitionist movement, which is one of the main themes of the course. Finally, students have broadened their view of the course content, by examining an exhibition with documents that support the day’s topic.
I will then ask students if they have any questions before we wrap up. I’ll pass around an evaluation so students can assess the session.
I’d love to read any lesson plans you have for engaging students with primary sources!