Connecting School and Home Experiences
(question #1)
My mother is a folklorist for USU. She loves oral histories. I have very early memories of my mother transcribing audio recordings that she had taken from people she interviewed. She was always interviewing people for work and for our family. I am very grateful that she interviewed people like my great great Grandma Sarah and Grandma Maurine. These are women that were very important in my family, but I was young when they died, and never had the privilege to know them in person. However, because my mom interviewed them and had it recorded, I am able to listen to them and get to know these wonderful women that made up my family. I never thought about these oral histories as being historical. I always just thought of them as being cool stories about my dead grandmothers. However, when I was in the 11th grade, I had a brilliant history teacher that taught U.S. history in a way that made it come alive to me. No longer was history just a boring subject you read out of drab textbooks, but it was stories just like those of my grandmothers, that made the subject suddenly so exciting to me. After that connection that I made in Mr. Soffe's class, I have been passionate about History.
As a teacher, I hope to do the same as Mr. Soffe did for me. I want the students to be able to connect with history, or even people from history. A way I could do this is to have students put themselves in the shoes of a historical person, and give them a writing prompt on what they would do or say. I believe when students make these connections they will learn, as I did, to love history too.
Wow--how neat that your mom is a folklorist for USU. I can see how that early experience would definitely shape you and instill in you a love of history.
ReplyDeleteFrom me, what I took from this posting is that history can be much more powerful when it includes personal stories of real people--those whose lives preceded ours and influenced our own. I think this principle is valid whether these people are related to us by blood or not.
That's neat that you have oral recordings of your family members. My grandmother died a few days ago...and although I love written artifacts about her, there is something so special about her voice and I am extremely grateful we have it on record. It's great that you have your family members' voices recorded so that you can still have a very personal piece of your own grandmothers long after they are gone.
Thanks for your posting.