Final Blog...

I feel that this course was very worthwhile to take. Before stepping foot into this classroom, I never really thought about where history was used outside of the classroom. I was focusing on how to teach history to students in the classroom about events that have occurred. It never occurred to me that local history is just as important to teach, if not more. This was the first time that I worked on a local history project and it was nice to tie the importance of history with the community. Also I enjoyed learning about the exhibit process. It was nice to break into two teams however I felt bad towards the end of the project asking the research team for more information. It was nice to actually work with others in a history course, with generally doesn’t happen. I learned how to work and rely on others and how to trust that others will accomplish tasks that you normally do by yourself. It was a nice taste of reality since most public historians regardless if you are creating museum exhibits or teaching, must learn to collaborate with one another and value each other’s opinions.

I also learned to realize how much time, research and effort goes into creating public history. In addition, I learned to take into account the audience. The audience is very important when trying to share history since they all can be reached in different ways. History is also incomplete. There are plenty of holes in history and the public needs to know about them. When teaching my future students, I plan to share all sides of the known story and to stress the importance of the holes or of what doesn’t make sense. Finally, I learned that you can be creative when teaching or sharing history. There are so many ways that history can be shared with students without leaving the classroom. Fun activities and projects can engage students but also teach them to look at the story or event from everyone’s perspective. They need to ask themselves, “what is missing?” Overall, I really enjoyed this class and I am glad to have had this experience!

Conversations with America

My individual project centered on the ‘Grand Rapids Home for Veterans,’ where I have created a proposal to have an oral interview project conducted, focusing on the Vietnam War. I have been researching how to conduct historical interviews and was directed to Studs Terkel. Most of the veterans that sit down to have an interview with Studs Terkel find it a great experience even though they may have to relive painful and terrifying experiences that occurred during the war. Studs Terkel interviews ordinary American officers whose stories are going untold. He has a unique way of interviewing as he just lets the veterans talk but guides them through the interview. He uses phrases like: “Can you tell me about…” and “You were telling me about…” as well as “What happened next?” Studs Terkel asks the veterans questions when he would like them to go in more details on a certain topic. He asks them to verify date, events and groups but mainly listens to the interviewee.

I feel that this is very important when conducting an interview. Interviewees need to be the dominate speakers and should not be persuaded to talk about things they don’t want to or have little knowledge of. The questions should be relevant and personal to each veteran since each person had a different experience. The only thing that I would suggest for Studs Terkel’s interviews would be to place the auto recorder so that we can hear him (the interviewer) as well. At times it hard to hear what he is asking the veteran and therefore it takes a few seconds to realize what the veteran is talking about. Other than that I feel that Terkel’s interviews were conducted in such a way that viable information was collected and the interviewee was comfortable talking. I plan to have volunteers who will be conducting the interviews at the ‘Grand Rapids Home for Veterans’ listen to one of Studs Terkel’s interviews which generally last about 15 minutes. This will be a perfect example and the interviewers can get a since of how I want the interviews to go.

Exhibit Presentation to Maria

I am really happy with the way that the presentation went last Tuesday. I feel that Shauna and I were able to work well together to collaborate on the floor plan with the omeka site. It was nice to see everything finally come together and I felt a sense of accomplishment. I feel that Maria liked some of our ideas and she seemed genuinely interested, which was nice to see. Also it was nice to see that the research team was interested in the design team’s progress and had suggestions for improvement. I like the suggestion of having the design team and research team communicate more throughout the semester. By having the design group present their thoughts earlier so the research team knows what direction to go in might work out better. I am very glad that we as a class had a chance to work on such a project. This group project was fun, interesting and I also learned a lot from the experience.

Reflecting on the I-496 Project

I am really glad that the design team is wrapping everything up. It’s a great feeling to have the group project coming to an end so I can focus more on my individual project. I feel that the design group worked well together as soon as we got a plan and started tackling our tasks. If we were to do this again, there are a few things that I know now that we should do differently to make the experience go smoother. It might have worked out better to break down the outline at the beginning of the project and assign sections to people. This way, we could have all focused on a section such as the impact zone, construction or consequences and write the background for the section as well as the visitor experience. I feel that it was too hard to work as a whole group to create the floor plan and the visitor experience and it took a lot of time. However it was nice to hear others thoughts and to have numerous ideas but I think that we could have completed the exhibit and the proposal in less time. Also it was hard in the beginning for our group to get started. We really didn’t know where to start and we didn’t have any information from the research team yet. I am now realizing as I am writing the background information and the visitor experience for the positive consequences of constructing I-496, that there is a lot of information on this section of the story but few photos for the exhibit or omeka. It would have been nice for us as the design group to have figured this out earlier so we could have asked the research team for things that we needed. However we were just not at this step yet. Also the design team hasn’t been able to plan the layout of the exhibit for the positive and negative consequences parts yet. I have really enjoyed working on the design team and learned that I enjoy creating floor plans for exhibits. I think that it would be fun and informative to the public if this exhibit became a reality some day. I’m excited to show Maria our final project and to get her reacting. Overall, it was the first time that any of us were assigned such a task and I’m very proud of the whole class project!

Visit to the Capital Area District Library

Today Nikki, Erica and I went to the Capital Area District Library and what an experience it was! When we were there, one of the two people that is banned from the library decided to pop it! Needless to say, it was a big deal that had the security guards and Dave Votta (the man that helped us) running in all different directions! Anyways, we went to the library to find realtor cards to place in our exhibit. We were focusing on a specific area, the 700 blocks of Walnut Street, Main Street and a few others. We were very successful however we don’t have them in our possession yet. Dave is going to scan them and email them to us. We were able to collect these realtor cards as well as pictures of the houses that they were about. These pictures were very interesting. And if there were people in front of their houses, they were generally African Americans. I feel that this information would be great in the impact zone in our exhibit. I feel that these pictures are very powerful and really should be included in the exhibit. Also Dave was able to find us newspaper articles about the construction of I-496. These were very interesting and were filled with great pictures. We found a picture of a store that was destroyed during the construction. This store would be great to recreate and add to our exhibit! I’m so excited that we found this picture!!

Moving forward...

Last Tuesday, the class seemed to run quite smooth given the fact that we did not have a professor. The design team went through and decided what artifacts or objects that we would have for each section of the outline. They are now in blue next to our outline. Brianne and I gave the research team a walk-through of our exhibit as of right now. It was great that we were able to use the projector and show the layout on the big screen. Also we split up sections of the intro and assigned them to people in the group. I was to read about the Highway Sprawl and create a paragraph explaining the important so we can put it in the introduction or background part of the exhibit. I have posted it on the wiki. We plan to go through these paragraphs tomorrow and start to form labels. And I also found some very interesting websites that connect with the topic of highway sprawl:

• http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/summer96/p96su10.htm
• http://www.plannersweb.com/sprawl/ike.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act

Finally I plan to go with Nikki next Tuesday to the Capital Area Library in search for the realtor cards on a certain neighborhood (still need to decide what neighborhood). I am also in charge of creating the bibliography for the photos on the Omeka. This has been a little challenging since there is not a lot of information with the pictures.

"The Impact of Highway Relocation upon the Housing Market" by Robert A. Rothbard

“The Impact of Highway Relocation upon the Housing Market,” by Robert A. Rothbard discusses the effects of relocation due to Interstate-496 on the local housing market. He also suggests the increase in segregation in the areas surrounding the new I-496. Rothbard takes the time to discuss statistics for white and nonwhite residents before, during and after relocation. Statistics include number of vacancies, persons per room, number of houses on one block, average monthly rent, value of home, home owners and home renters. He divides the city area surrounding the highway into thirty seven tracts, which is how he categorizes his data.

It is very interesting to see how segregation took an even greater roll after relocation. Nonwhite families were moved into heavily populated nonwhite neighborhoods where as whites moved into white neighborhoods and out of the city. The heavily populated nonwhite neighborhoods (tracts 15 and 18) had less square footage per house and had less land that white areas. These areas were overcrowded before the relocation and even more overcrowded after the relocation. Before the relocation and construction of I-495, there were 707 houses that stood in the way. In the 1960’s there were 863 houses and by the time of relocation there were 904 homes. It was surprising to me to see how quickly this area had overpopulated.

One of the most interesting things that I came across was the total number of homes that the state was actually responsible to move and the number of whites that occupied them. There were 940 homes that needed to be relocated in which 668 of them belonged to white families, therefore leaving 272 homes occupied by nonwhites. There were 208 of these families that moved outside of the city limits and 107 of these families didn’t give a forwarding address. Therefore the State of Michigan only had to relocate 625 families out of the 940 homes in the way of the construction. They shoved all of these people into basically the same area of the city but segregating them into certain areas. The map on page 69 was the most helpful thing for me in the whole thesis. This map reinforces the idea of segregation and shows where white and nonwhite families were relocated due to the construction of the highway. I found this thesis to be very informative and interesting to read. This thesis will be helpful to refer back to for facts and statistics when moving forward with our project.

Questions for Matt Miller

Matt Miller’s article on the destruction of I-496 was very informative and interesting. I can not believe how much devastation it brought to the people of Lansing. I really like how Miller is able to show both sides of the story. He has interviewees that think the highway was a blessing and others that thought it “cut the heart out of the neighborhood.” Here are my questions that I have for Mr. Miller:

Why didn’t Lansing’s black leaders fight against the highway at first?

How many houses were destroyed and how many people total had to move?

How many people were affected by the construction of I-496 in Lansing?

What was the government’s reasoning for putting the highway through the community they picked (the one with the large black population)?

Where there any non-black people in the area? Can we hear their stories?

I feel the most important questions would be: How many people did you interview? What was your main source, where you found most of your information?

What impact does the construction of I-496 still have on Lansing today?

I was actually in the downtown Lansing area near I-496 recently. When trying to locate historic sites, I of course had to circle many times before finding my final destinations. As I made my way around, I noticed several businesses and many ran down buildings and a few houses. The area is not very busy (at least not around noon) and there are few people out and about. It looks like Washington Street near the highway was once full of life, but now you can see by the photo the desertion and few people.

What counts as a historic site?

In the past week I have been able to visit two official historic sites in the State on Michigan historic sites database. Ironically, both the Grand Trunk Western Rail Station and the Frank Cooley House are located off of Main Street and Washington Street, near I-496 in Ingham County.

I first visited the Frank Cooley House. This is a beautiful house that is located next to the highway and is in the middle of several businesses. It was build by Eugene Cooley, the vice-president of the Michigan Supply Company, for his son Frank in the early nineteen hundreds. Dr. Harry A. Haze who was a state representative and mayor of Lansing occupied the house until the mid nineteen forties. Governor Williams also lived in the house towards the late nineteen forties to the early fifties. The building has now been turned into the Michigan Women’s Historical Center and Hall of Frame and a place for businesses to have meetings. I was unable to go inside the building since they are only opened from Wednesday to Saturday from noon to four. They do not make it easy for the working public to visit.

The building now publicizes the roles of hardworking Michigan women who might have been overlooked in the past. I feel that learning about powerful women in general is something that our middle and high school students need to learn about. With the pressure on females in high school now days, I feel that it’s very important for them to see independent women standing up for their rights and the rights of others. I do not know if I would take a class to this site, but I would definitely recommend it to all the students and maybe make it an extra credit project.

I was also able to visit the Grand Trunk Western Rail Station that was less than a minute away from the Frank Cooley House. The Grand Trunk railroad system began constructing this station in nineteen two to fulfill the demand for moving car parts for Ransom Olds. The station was closed in nineteen seventy two after sixty-eight years of service. It was then converted into a restaurant but the building is now vacant. The rail station is completely fenced in and boarded up. It is not nearly as kept up as the Frank Cooley House. The government website states that there is a marker indicating this historical site, however I did not see one. I can only imagine its beauty when it was in its prime. It’s a shame that it was not taken better care of by the government and the neighborhood.

I would not take my students to see this site alone; however I would like to combine the two historical sites since they are so close together and let the students compare the two. I would like the students to ask: how does the government decide what historical sites to keep up? What do they label as a historical site? Students might not know that historic sites like the Grand Trunk Western Rail Station are not being preserved. Personally, I feel that the rail station has more significance and more of a reason to mark as a historic site. I feel that by having the students’ visit both sites, a richer and more meaningful discussion about historical sites could be incorporated into the classroom, one that is definitely not typical.

West Virginia Social Studies Standards

West Virginia’s Social Studies Standards consist of 125 pages and six different subject areas; economics, citizenship, civics/government, geography, reading and history. There standards are very detailed and they state the material that students are to know for each grade level from kindergarten to twelfth grade. The main goal is “to build a rigorous, relevant and challenging social studies curriculum that would prepare students for the 21st century (p. 3).” Students are assessed and categorized into five performance levels: distinguished, above mastery, mastery, partial mastery and novice.

The Curriculum for middle and high schools in West Virginia is rigorous for sure. There is not room for teachers to slack or spend extra time on a specific subject, event or person. There is so much information that students must know each year that it would be difficult to stay on track but not unmanageable. Teachers will have to be creative and balance their time and standards as well as still allow students to think like historians. By the end of twelfth grade students are to have taken extensive studies in world history, US history and state history. I found it interesting that eight grade students only learn about West Virginia during that year.

They describe their meaning of history as followed: “History organizes events and phenomena in terms of when they occurred and examines where, how and why they took place. Students study how individuals and societies have changed and interacted over time (p. 7).” They also believe that students should be able to gather data, examine, analyze and interpret that data and then present their results in a clear manner. They really push their students to see the bigger picture, to ask why and how and to look at the reasons behind history. Students are to relate history to the current date and debate over the impact of historical events and conflicts.

I feel that historical thinking is occurring in this state, well at least by the way the standards sound. The only thing that the West Virginia Social Studies Standards do not specify is the use of sources. Are they checking sources and using both primary and secondary sources in the classroom? Also in the elementary years, they seem to focus on heritage. The students learn about the origins of their families, communities, state and nation. “Students analyze how individuals, groups and nations have shaped cultural heritages (p. 7).” Therefore there isn’t a lot of historical thinking occurring during these years. Overall, Students living in West Virginia after completing grade school should have a wide historical knowledge and be able to think historically.

Students as an Impressionable Audience

As a future educator, the audience that I plan to share my knowledge of history with is mainly my students, a very impressionable audience. As I think about my history classes in grade school, I realized that I learned mainly through textbooks and clips of movies which I can assume many people still learn from in the same manner. How reliable were these sources? Where were the multiple points of view? Where should students go to understand history?

The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History by David Lowenthal looks at the problems with history textbooks that students are reading today and in the past. Students have not been taught to question the textbooks or the authors, however the authors vary from historians to non-historians, some have extensive knowledge on the subject and some do not (p. 116). As an impressionable high school student, I never thought to question the text. What they were telling me was right, right? We need to teach students to question the text and introduce them to multiple points of views. This way they can create their own conclusions and see that history is not full of right or wrong answers. Although teachers must deal with a curriculum and time restrains, they still need to teach less from the text and more with other sources. Textbooks are good to get gather some facts and get the authors point of view, however students need to see more. If teachers only teach from the textbooks, the students are mostly likely to believe every word and encounter some ‘bad’ history.

The History Channel seems to be another source that students and teachers turn to for ‘good’ history, when in fact ‘bad’ history can appear here just as easily as in textbooks. Shows like Ax Men, Pawn Stars and Madhouse (which are the three most watched shows) have little historical value. I found it hard to actually watch a documentary since they are scarce in the evening. These documentaries are normally narrated through historians that tell facts and events chronically that they believed happened, just like a textbook. Is this a good source to find history and not heritage? These documentaries as well as educators generally teach more heritage then history (p. 125). Information is provided to us that we desire, that will make sense and led to another event. This is not history.

When students first walk into your classroom, some may have ideas or images of history that may not necessarily be accurate. Family members, other teachers or movies might have easily influenced the way they view historical events or people, especially movies. Many children grow up watching Disney movies that take place in a past era or have a character that was a famous individual in the past. Disney created entertaining stories around famous past people like Mulan, Pocahontas and Hercules. Although some of the facts are correct in these movies, many are not (p. 102). For instance, Pocahontas was never John Smith’s lover. She was merely twelve and he is his thirties when they met, however children of all ages are coming into the classroom with a false image of the two. For the teacher these false images may be hard to break or undo. This just shows how impressionable students are and that they need to learn to questions sources that they have gained historical knowledge from.

I have been thinking a lot about the types of sources I want to make available for my students. I myself was once influenced by Disney, movies, textbooks and families members until I sought to research on my own, therefore I want to encourage students to look at many primary and secondary sources, to see events from many angles, to question texts and to learn that history is not black and white. I want to create fun but informative hands-on activities that will help students to understand history better. Teaching history means teaching the undesirable outcomes as well as the desirable, teaching all points of view and teaching the hard to talk about subjects as well. The bottom line is that students need to see that “the past can never be totally reconstructed, that the study of history is always unfinished (117).”

"The War," a good source?

When first viewing the movie titled “The War” by Ken Burns, I thought that it would be a great way for students to learn about World War II. It had real footage of the war, there were real interviewees that have lived through it and there were letters and other artifacts presented as well. It has to be a good source right? After reading The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History by David Lowenthal and after our discussion in class, I am questioning the value of this movie. Is this a good source for students to learn from? Does it really show what war was really like?

When watching the short clips on the making of “The War”, I remember a veteran saying that he was grateful that the real true story was finally going to be told in this film. It was great to see that Ken Burns added real veterans into his film and shared their personal stories, connecting individual soldiers with World War II events. However, the true story that the soldier remembers probably is a little different then the way the soldier fighting next to him remembers the true story. Also time is a factor to consider when interviewing these veterans. It is known that as time increases it’s harder to remember details and also people are known to alter their stories sometimes slightly and other times drastically. As Lowenthal writes, “time makes liars of us all (p. 144)”. When watching this film, students need to be aware of this and realize that this is not the whole story. They need to be able to answer important questions like what is being left out, why were these veterans interviewed, etc.

It’s great that this movie had live footage of the war to try to get the audience more involved with the war. However, showing pictures and footage however, it never states whether the footage is from the event or part of the war in which they are talking about. For example, when talking about Operation Market Garden how do we know that footage is from that operation? We don’t. We are seeing men shooting guns at each other but that could be footage from any part of the war. Students will keep these images in their minds and relate them to Operation Market Garden, even though they were not from that operation. This is ‘bad’ history. Therefore I feel that this would be more harmful then helpful to show his movie in a classroom. Students are not getting the whole truth when watching this film.

‘Cavalcade of America’ as a Teaching Tool

As a future teacher, I understand the importance of bringing different teaching styles into the classroom as well as new and enjoyable learning materials other than the textbook. It is essential to be able to spark the students’ interest which will require me to teach through several forms of technology. Using radio shows from the past are a great way to teach history. The longtime running radio show, Cavalcade of America first went on the air in 1935. The show turned into a TV series in the fifties and had its last episode in the year of 1957. This radio show shared with its listeners historical events that had happened in the past but it itself also had a history. By using the episodes from Cavalcade of America, students can learn about a person or place from the past that the episode is geared to, but also about the time era that the radio show was aired. I feel that the radio show is a great primary and secondary source which students would gain a lot from.

For instance, I had the opportunity to watch the episode that aired on January 8, 1936 titled, “Women in Public Service.” Here, like all the episodes, the radio show consisted of music, drama and ‘play’ like dialogue. They would ‘pretend’ that they were in the past and acted out the life of Jane Addams, a hardworking woman who played a large role in public service in Chicago from the 1890’s until her death. Mrs. Addams and her friend Ellen Starr moved to the worst part of Chicago to see how less fortunate people were and sought to help them mainly by providing new homes and buildings in the community. They were able to fight for these people and raised enough money to help. The Hull House created, acted a home for many and a community center. In response to all of her hard work, Jane Addams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. The show talks about the many struggles she had to overcome including standing up against the powerful men of the city. The episode also retells a story of a nurse, her mistreatment by men but also her importance to the community and their members. It sought to encourage women to become more involved in public services. As you can see, Cavalcade of America was a way for Americans to become involved in history. The show was able, in my opinion, to make history come to life for its listeners by providing information as well as entertainment.

Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jane_Addams_profile.jpg

The Importance of Public Historians?

What is the importance of public historians and what do they actually do for society? I know that public historians must teach the public about history but why do we need public historians? As I began to read Alan Brinkley’s “Historians and Their Publics” as well as Ian Tyrrell’s “Historians in Public,” I soon was able to see that the role of a public historian is deeper than I anticipated. The great gap between historians and their audience is in need of fixing. I agree that history is generally hard to teach the honest truth since the truth can be upsetting and destroy false images of ones nation or comfortable myths, however it is very significant. It is public historians’ quest to help members of society break through their comfort zone and accept the past history despite it being uncomfortable. The fact that the public is turning to nonacademic writers only stresses the importance for historians to become more active in the nonacademic world.

People want to learn about history through ways that do not involve a textbook, myself included. With the advanced technology in this day and age, society is looking and expecting to learn and be entertained at the same time. By historians collaborating with the nonacademic world, the audience would broaden and reach more people. Public historians’ roles include spreading history and finding an audience to share their knowledge and love of history with. I feel that through technology, these goals can be met.

I found Brinkely's statement, “I have never believed that history offers ‘lessons’ in any conventional sense of that meaning,” very interesting since this is exactly how I described the purpose of history in class last Thursday. As a history minor and a future teacher, I disagree with Brinkely’s statement. I have always viewed history as teaching people ‘lessons’ and allows others to learn from past mistakes. I feel that by increasing your knowledge of the past, you can improve life and not repeat past events that had bad outcomes. I agree with Brinkely that we as a society and as individuals are affected by history everyday. It is undeniable that history is very powerful to society and all its members and we need public historians to help make that power relevant.

The Saginaw Post Office (now known as the Castle Museum)
In 1889, Congress approved one hundred thousand dollars to construct a new post office in downtown Saginaw. The architecture was inspired by Saginaw’s French heritage and the building was referred to as the ‘French Chateau.’ The architect William Aiken created the corner towers of the building to represent the defensive feature of frontier life. The post office opened in the year of 1898 and still stands in downtown Saginaw today. It has faced demolition twice because of the need for a larger facility. Concerned citizens fought for the structure and placed the building on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. The building is now used as a museum that displays the history of Saginaw. The inside of the building is gorgeous and has not lost its post office feel.

Questions a visitor might ask:
Why is or what makes this site historical? What time period is the site from? Why is this historical site important or why do we care about it? Why is the site located where it is? What is the site used for now?

Questions a historian might ask:
Why is or what makes this site historical? Why is this site important or why do we care about it? How does the site depict what the area was like during its time? What qualifies a site to be a Michigan registered historic place and on the National register of Historic Places? Who is responsible for the historical site (who built it, designed it, and thought of it)?