 |
Combing the stacks of the
New Brunswick
Provincial Archives |
by Cynthia Wallace-Casey,
PhD Candidate
University of New Brunswick
(Fredericton)
Last
December, the THEN/HiER blog was abuzz
with interesting discussions about family history in the classroom. As my
colleagues have pointed out, family history can “maximize student engagement
and learning” (Maddie Knickerbocker, December 3, 2013); it can “build an
enduring and evolving connection to the past” (Heather McGregor, December 5,
2013); it can “serve as entry points into the bigger picture of history” (Kate
Ireland, December 12, 2013); and can “open the door of possibility for building
research skills” (Jesika Arseneau, December 20, 2013). All of these arguments
are valid and worthy. They speak of history as a construct of the beholder—assembled
from traces and accounts—that, with a little bit of guidance, might enable
students to re-construct the narratives that frame their lives. With each of
these arguments, however, the writers have concluded their entry with a
challenging question. This is what I
would like to address.
This month, I have been given the rare
opportunity to work with a group of 11 middle school students, helping them to research
their family history.
This practicum has evolved out of my dissertation, which relates to ways in
which middle school students remember their past. Hence, as part of a school-wide enrichment program,
one morning a week, over the next four weeks, I will be
attempting to integrate
family histories into students’ social studies. I’d like to
share with you my experience of leading this group of students through the archival maze of family identities. In so doing, I hope to add to the discussion around
benefits and challenges associated with this approach to history education.
Because family history research
can be equated to looking for a needle in a haystack, I have organized my
lesson plans around four broad themes: What
I already know; What I want to know; What I can find out; and What I have learned. As a result, the
students are being requested to undertake a bit of family sleuthing each week; expand
upon these clues by consulting primary sources in the archives or online; and draw
meaning from the subsequent evidence they discover. The final project will
involve creating a memory book that documents what they have found, what it means
to the individual, and how it connects to larger events in Canadian history.
Such an approach is not without its challenges however.
First of all, it is important
to remember that for these students, “history” is anything that has happened
before their birth, and “the past” includes memories of their own
childhood. So, in this sense, family
history means working backwards from their birth, in approximately the year
2000. Likewise, when they speak of their grandparents, they are referencing a
birth-range between c. 1940 to 1960. This poses a challenge, because, although
many of the students have wonderful stories to tell about their family’s distant
past (stories that have been handed down through the generations), it is
extremely difficult to engage in archival research unless they have a specific
name and a specific date with which to work.
To make matters worse, in many provinces, records of birth for this time
period are not available (unless one wishes to pay a fee and wait several
months for a written response). So, in
such cases, vague references to grandparents are all that we have to begin with.
Telephone directories (available on ancestry.ca) are proving to be extremely valuable
for this purpose, because they enable students to make that first connection
with a past that stretches beyond their immediate memory (although even this
source is not universally beneficial to all students). Ultimately then, my first
challenge is to help each student to find someone in their family who was born
before 1922, because with this information they can tap into the most recently
available census returns of 1921.
Secondly, although I am only working with 11 students (and assisted by a
parent volunteer), undertaking this type of activity with an entire class would
be extremely difficult. Not impossible however, and not unfeasible either; because,
with the appropriate scaffolding tool anything is possible. What I am finding,
is that scaffolding tools are required that can be quickly adjusted to meet the
specific learning needs of each individual student—as their unique research
problem arises; and although there are endless streams of generic teaching resources
to be found on the Internet, with exception to the tools developed by Library
and Archives Canada (which provide a good start),
very few Internet resources actually enable students to engage in serious research
that is both genealogical and historical in nature.
So, in order to sift through the haystack of records available online, while
also accommodating diversity in prior knowledge along with learning
differentiations, I have found it necessary to design tools that enable every
individual student to unlock a ‘clue’ about their unique past, from a large
variety of archival sources. This is no small feat, since the online archival sources
for each province within Canada are woefully inconsistent, and knowledge of digital
records in other jurisdictions (outside of Canada) require an expertise that I
do not possess. Hence, my second challenge is to ensure that no student
be excluded from the inquiry process; and that every student experience
success (in some way) of finding something relating to their family.
Undoubtedly—and very unlike the popular television advertisements, in which
one click of a mouse opens the doors to your past—these students are
discovering that there are no easy answers. Instead, they are learning that family
history research requires precise examination, perseverance, patience, and
meticulous record-keeping. Along the way,
they are also experiencing (first-hand) how historians ‘piece together’ the
past from seemingly minuet scraps of evidence.
Yet, at the same time, they are reaping great satisfaction; because
within those eureka moments—when someone pipes out: “I found my grandfather!”—they
are beginning to feel exactly what it’s like to be a researcher. These are the real-life
moments that, in the words of Ted Christou (2010), confirm history to be “sometimes
messy, often tentative, secretively delightful, and wonderfully exciting”.
I look forward to sharing our
journey with you…
References:
Ancestry.ca (February 1,
2014). Ancestry.ca. Retrieved from http://home.ancestry.ca/?o_iid=41014&o_lid=41014&o_sch=Web+Property
Arseneau, J. (December
20, 2013). Family history as a gateway to learning about archives [Web blog
post]. Retrieved from http://thenhier.ca/en/content/family-history-gateway-learning-about-archives
Christou, T. (2010). “Get
thee to the archive: The teaching of history and the doing of history”. Education letter: A publication of the
faculty of education and the education alumni committee. Fall/Winter,
15-17.
Ireland, K. (December
12, 2013).Considering family histories in the elementary classroom [Web blog
post]. Retrieved from http://thenhier.ca/en/content/considering-family-histories-elementary-classroom
Knickerbocker, M. (December
3, 2013). Family histories in the colonial classroom [Web blog post]. Retrieved
from http://thenhier.ca/en/content/family-histories-colonial-classroom
Library and Archives
Canada (February 1, 2014). Genealogy and family history: Youth corner. Retrieved
from http://thenhier.ca/en/content/family-histories-colonial-classroom
McGregor, H. (December
5, 2013).Using identity, family history and family artifacts to connect with
the past [Web blog post]. Retrieved from http://thenhier.ca/en/content/using-identity-family-history-and-family-artifacts-connect-past
