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Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 52(7) April 2009doi:10.1598/JA AL.52.7.5 © 2009 International Reading Association (pp. 597–606)

Jane HansenTeachers can make U.S.

history come alive for

students by helping them

make emotional and personal

connections to it through

multiple literacies.

Multiple Literacies in the Content Classroom: High School Students’ Connections to U.S. History

On May 31, I met with Erika Price for the last time. All year I had been a researcher in her high school U.S. history class twice a week. I enjoyed my time, learned a great deal, and was trying to figure out what to write about her fascinating students. Erika and I discussed some possibilities, and she closed our meeting with these words, “Jane, the most important thing is to connect to the kids.”

Nine months earlier, prior to the first day of school, Erika started these connections; she phoned and e-mailed her urban students, saying hello to as many as possible. Then, on the first day, she created a collegial environment. At one point Erika displayed an outline of the U.S. on the smart board and ran up to move her home state of New York into place. Then she asked the students to choose a state and run up to move it into place. The room filled with energy. The students laughed and talked; they heard their own voices, they heard one another, and Erika heard them. They counted; they existed. They had fun.

During the final few minutes of that first class Erika picked up from their tables, one by one, sticky notes with the students’ names on them. She had placed the sticky notes on the tables before class, and now she engaged in a brief conversation with each student, sometimes referring to the class session they had just enjoyed, and sometimes referring to the contacts she had made the previous week. The connections between these 26 general-track students and their teacher had started to gel. The class consisted of 16 boys and 10 girls. Sixteen of them were African American, and 10 were white. In this grades 9–12 school with 1,350 students, this white teacher and her mostly African American students had started their yearlong journey.

In this article, I write about three types of connections Erika fostered in her successful classroom: the students’ emotional connections to U.S. history, their personal connections to history, and their connections to the state test. In a more general sense, this article is based on the notion that secondary-school content instruction may be in need of a new orientation. Instead of being framed in a cognitive perspective, if it can be framed, instead, within an

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adolescent literacy perspective, then it will encompass learning processes that are both cognitive and social (Behrman, 2003).

In particular, content instruction would then not be dependent upon a single print text. In accordance with adolescents’ daily use of multiple literacy skills to navigate multiple sources of print, instruction would include the use of various texts and varied language experiences. Thus, the definition of content literacy is to be expanded beyond engagement with a single textbook to a variety of sign systems, including the use of writing to learn.

In the case of this article, you will often see the students write. As a researcher in Erika’s classroom to study her students as writers in U.S. history, I analyzed my notebooks of field notes with this research question in mind: In what ways do the students use writing to enable various connections to U.S. history? I learned that writing helped these students to emotionally and personally connect to U.S. history. Plus, writing en-abled them to understand the demands of their state test. All of these connections helped them to appreciate their roots, their current lives, and maybe their future.

Students’ Emotional Connections to U.S. HistoryIn September the class studied slavery. The students knew of the capture of Africans by traders, and their enforced treks to the coast (some walked as far as 1,000 miles). They learned new information, in part, by studying websites. One site (www.pbs .org/wgbh/aia/part1/1h296.html) was about George Morland, the English artist who painted The Slave Trade in 1791, inspired by this poem of the same title written by William Collins, a friend of his. The students read it and their adolescent souls simmered with anger:

Two British captains with their barges came,And quickly made a purchase of the young;But one was struck with Ulkna, void of shame,And tore her from the husband where she clung.Her faithful Chief, tho’ stern in rugged war,Seeing his Ulkna by a White caress’d,To part with her, “and little son Tengarr!”His gentler feeling could not be supprest.Th’indignant tear steals down his ebon cheek,His gestures speak an agitated soul!

In vain his streaming eyes for mercy seek,From hearts long harden’d in this barter foul.With hands uplifted, he with sighs besoughtThe wretch that held a bludgeon o’er his head,And those who dragg’d him, would have pity taughtBy his dumb signs, to strike him instant dead.While his dear Ulkna’s sad entreating mien,Did but increase the brute’s unchaste desire;He vaunting bears her off, her sobs are vain,They part the man and wife whom all admire.

This poem not only haunted the students but also helped to set the stage for them as writers. In this classroom, the main form of text they read was not a textbook. They read—and wrote—many forms of text. Effective writing by varied authors counted.

Frequently, slaves captured like those in Collins’s poem waited in dungeons (some for as long as a year) until a slave ship arrived. Erika showed, on the in-teractive whiteboard, drawings of the Africans in the ships during the Middle Passage. Some were har-nessed together at the neck. Most were packed like sardines, lying on their sides, head to toe, bodies bent into each other.

These conditions are detailed in the history of Olaudah Equiano, captured in 1756 at the age of 11. Eventually he became a slave to an Englishman, taught himself to read, bought his freedom, became an abolitionist, and wrote a book—his autobiogra-phy (Equiano, 1789). In it, Erika told the students, he wrote about the Middle Passage as a “long, arduous nightmare...a horrendous voyage...with inconceivable conditions in the slaves’ hold...those who managed to drown themselves were envied.” Erika’s words raised the temper of the students’ emotions.

On another site, Moira (all student names are pseudonyms) learned about Alexander Falconbridge, a surgeon who traveled aboard slave ships and later became an abolitionist. He wrote a book in 1788, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, excerpts of which appear on the site, www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1h281t.html:

Traders frequently beat those Negroes…with great severity.... Instances have happened…when Negroes have been…instantly beheaded.... [T]he Negroes’ rooms soon grow intolerable hot... During the voy-ages I made, I was frequently witness to the fatal ef-fects of this exclusion of fresh air…. [O]ne instance

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serves to convey some idea, though a very faint one, of their terrible sufferings.... [T]he f loor…was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them…that it resembled a slaughter house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture a situ-ation more dreadful or disgusting.

Moira said, “I can’t read any more of this.... There were slaves on both sides of my family. My great-grandmother is still living and she told me about them. I went on the Internet and found out more. I did a project on it last year.”

The next day the class studied the short account of the Middle Passage in their text (Davidson & Stoff, 2004). It included numbers of the Africans who were captured and lived to land on this continent; the hor-rors lay hidden behind the figures. The authors pro-vided no details, no images. This bland text may have aroused no emotions on its own, but the students’ emotions had reached a high that the f lat text only increased.

They began to write letters to the publisher, Pearson Learning Group in New Jersey. Laptop open, Moira started:

I am a junior in high school, and our US history class has been using your book!

The section about slavery concerns me greatly be-cause of the lack of information. I do not think there is enough detail about the horrible journey my ancestors went through. You failed to mention how there was lack of space for the Africans to maneuver through the tightly packed ship. They didn’t have bathrooms, or the right nutrition to actually get them to the colonies.

Time was up. She finished it later, and tried to con-vince the publisher that it is inappropriate to portray the slaves’ journey without details, without disgust, without emotion. Without emotion!

As Patterson and Speed (2007) stated, it is impor-tant for teachers to help students challenge the infor-mation in textbooks. In the case of Erika’s class this emotional response by the students connected them to what they were learning—and to their teacher. They realized that she respected their culture, and them. Even though theirs is an era of high-stakes testing, they had a teacher who sees history teaching as more than coverage of content. In general, “A teacher who wants her students to understand the emotional as well as the

intellectual side of his-tory will engage her stu-dents in experiences that engage them in feelings and reactions” (Barton & Levstik, 2003, p. 359).

“There is little point in simply transmitting a story of the past to stu-dents in hopes they will remember it” (Barton & Levstik, 2003, p. 358), and Erika didn’t. For an entire year, she never lectured. Her students experienced and felt U.S. history. At the beginning of this section you saw how the students explored online. Some of them read a poem written over two centuries ago, a poem vivid with images of slavery. As Kane and Rule (2004) stated, “Poems can clarify for students some concepts that didactic methods of teaching cannot” (p. 660). Teachers use poetry to “tap into the affective realm of history learning” (Kane & Rule, p. 660) and to help students learn concepts.

The use of various texts increases the possibility that students will engage in rich conceptual infor-mation that promotes critical thinking. Luke (2003) has written about the importance of the Internet as a means to enable the reconceptualization of knowl-edge. It becomes contestable and open to criticism, and teachers play an important role in ensuring this possibility. Rich knowledge bases maintain stu-dents’ interests, as also reported by Walker, Bean, and Dillard (2005), in relation to the teaching of high school economics. The overall environment of the classroom can bring the content and students together.

In October, Erika’s class approached the American Revolution, and their historical engagements con-tinued. Several of the students became agitated dur-ing this unit of study, as the following dramatization shows. In a role-play of a historical scene, Erika bar-hopped. Stopping at each bar (table of students)—as colonial leaders had done—she persuaded the drink-ers to take courage against the British, “They have no right to control us!”

“Yeah! Yeah!” the colonists/students yelled, with hands raised as if holding mugs of ale.

It is important for

teachers to help

students challenge

the information in

textbooks.

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The Sugar Act (1764) and Stamp Act (1765) were two of the acts of control that upset these colonists. Britain had stepped in too close. The Sugar Act im-posed new charges on the colonists’ imports of wines, coffee, textiles, and indigo, so they started to smuggle. Then the British Navy started to patrol the coast, on the lookout for smugglers, who, if caught, would be tried without a jury. The Stamp Act forced the colo-nists to pay part of the cost of stationing British troops here. It also required them to pay a tax on newspapers, playing cards, diplomas, and legal documents. Plus, suspected violators of the Stamp Act also would be tried without a jury.

The colonists reacted to these Acts with riots and boycotts of British goods. Groups called the Sons or Daughters of Liberty formed to promote the manu-facture of cloth in the colonies and to circulate pro-test petitions. The colonists/students were becoming united. Some (in response to an option provided by Erika for an in-class assignment) wrote speeches to deliver at an upcoming town meeting. With drama, Zharlaine read the text of Figure 1.

The town meeting voted to stand together, but little did the students know what some of them would do with the British tea in a few years. Their tempers had only begun to f lare. U.S. history was coming alive. They were living it. The colonial period was not a calm period (and certainly not boring); this unit of study could not be, and was not, a calm, boring, f lat experience.

Students’ Personal Connections to U.S. HistoryIn Erika’s classroom, however, emotional connec-tions with the historical events were not the only avenue that brought the students into U.S. history. Connections with their own life experiences (and these also may be emotional) enabled the students to understand that their issues were also central to the citizens of past centuries and decades. As stressed by Moje (2002), the students in Erika’s class used people and events in their own lives to inform their under-standings of U.S. history.

Figure 1 Zharlaine’s Speech

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Within two weeks of the town meeting men-tioned above we, as a class, had gained our indepen-dence from England, but were mired in the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. We created them right after independence, when we were tired of heavy-handed rule and wanted no restrictions, and now we realized the need for a new document. Our Constitution came into being, but the concepts that underlie the provisions of it are difficult, according to Erika, and the class studied them via drawing.

She gave each student six vocabulary words, a square of paper for each, and directions to write defi-nitions and draw a picture of each word: confederation, executive, judiciary, legislature, tariff, and sovereign. I im-mediately latched onto the possible importance of the drawings for these high school learners.

As I walked among them while they worked, I saw much variation, often related to their out-of-school experiences. I saw careful drawings of the ju-diciary. Some of the students told me they had been in courtrooms, and could easily draw one. Sovereign also related directly to their lives. According to Todd it meant to govern themselves, as can be seen in his draw-ing (shown in Figure 2).

These terms are not just governmental jargon; they are personal terms and drawing them helped the students create meaningful concepts for them. Plus, Erika selected key drawings to share with the class, and referred to them throughout this unit of study. When the term sovereign arose on subsequent days she brief ly mentioned Todd’s drawing and used it as a bridge into the aspect of sovereignty she needed to dwell on that day.

Drawing, I saw time and again, can be an impor-tant form of writing for high school students, as are the various kinds of graphics they studied throughout the year. The study of history is not only a study of words; cartoons, graphs, and photos showed the students the evolution of the United States. Plus, as advocated by Alvermann (2002), the students generated visual, oral, and written texts in their teacher’s effort to provide them with opportunities to weave their own experi-ences, feelings, and interests into this history.

Now I will skip ahead to this century, to World War II. After December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that date, “a day that will live

in infamy.” Erika asked the students to write about a

day from their lives that will live in infamy, a day that

left an indelible imprint, an assignment that clicked

for me. In an earlier research project (Hansen, 1998),

I had seen students write essays about their own lives

that connected them to history, and this brought his-

tory to life. Erika, in my current setting, had already

written an essay of her own about a particular event

in her life—an incident when she and her friends had

embarrassed her dad, a teacher in the school. She read

it to the class with a current photo of her dad behind

her on the interactive whiteboard. It was now time

for the students to write about “a day that will live

in infamy” for them, and some of them wrote about

grandparents, others about the terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2001, and a few wrote about newborns

in their families. One student sat, staring ahead for

several minutes, and then wrote the following, which

I have shortened and altered slightly for publication:

A memory I will never forget is when I was six years old sitting in a courthouse all alone. My uncle walked up...I had been kidnapped by my own mom.... She had taken off with me and went into hiding. It wasn’t until a year later that I found myself sitting in the courthouse. From that moment on my life would be changed forever.

Figure 2 Todd’s Drawing

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As with the earlier drawings, these personal essays remained a part of the classroom currency. Collectively, they de-fined “a day that will live in infamy.” This is a historical concept the students know and feel. Roosevelt’s words live.

The end of World War II was as dramatic as the beginning, illus-trated by the students

when each of them assumed the persona of someone who lived through it. One boy became a Hiroshima survivor; another became Thomas Ferebee, bom-bardier of the Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima); and Robert created him-self as Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay. Using the Internet, each student (during class and outside of class) researched his or her newly assumed self. The task Erika had assigned was for each to create a scrapbook (Schur, 2007) to show later when this class of elderly survivors would meet to share their memories.

Robert’s scrapbook included the following letter he wrote to his mom as Paul Tibbets (this is a letter Robert created—not a historical document) in which he told her that he named the Enola Gay after her, a fact that amazed Robert when he did his research. Also, you will notice in his letter that Robert does not reveal that he will be dropping an “atomic” bomb, which he assumes would have been a military secret. He substituted a string of figures for the word “atom-ic.” Here is Robert’s letter:

Dear Mom,They have been making me practice the drop of

the &0640$ bomb. We are placed on one of the islands near the island of Japan. Today they have me f lying the B-29 for a test for the drop. The bomb bay door would not open today so we had to cut the test early. They said that maybe the B-29 might affect the plane’s f light. Sorry I can’t go into details. They said that I could name the B-29 myself. So I gave it your name, the Enola Gay. I hope you like it. I will write you again after the drop.

Love, your son

Paul

When their scrapbooks were complete, the class of survivors gathered to show their mementos, tell their stories, and share their memories. One girl told about her brother, a D-Day survivor, and Robert re-sponded, “I f lew a plane in D-Day, dropped bombs on bunkers. That’s where they saw my skills and asked me to pilot the Enola Gay.” Erika and I found the stu-dents’ engagement in this conference impressive.

The conversation continued, and Moira told about her boyfriend who was killed in the Pacific, but she still has his promise ring. Robert commented, “I was engaged at the time I piloted the Enola Gay.... My dad died in a plane crash when I was a kid. That’s when I decided to be a pilot.”

We also heard from Carlise, an African American girl who researched Mildred Hemmons Carter, the first African American woman trained as a pilot at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, but she couldn’t f ly in the Air Force because of her race and gender. In 1997 she finally received a medal of honor. Mildred Hemmons Carter is a person Carlise had never heard of and she became excited about Carter when she found her on the Internet.

Similarly, Delwin, an African American male who took on the role of a Buffalo Soldier, had never heard of the Buffalo Soldiers until this experience. Now he has a scrapbook for his grandchildren, with his name on the cover: Grandpa Delwin James I. In it he shows photos of “himself” from the Internet, the lyrics Bob Marley wrote for the song “Buffalo Soldier,” the stamp the U.S. Postal Service issued in 1994 to honor the Buffalo Soldiers, and a photo of the “actual” rif le he used during the war—which he “donated” to the Buffalo Soldier National Museum (which really exists). Also, Delwin includes his legacy, which begins:

I, Delwin B. James I, was a Buffalo Soldier during World War II. I was in the 92nd Infantry Regiment, a part of the United States armed forces. I am leaving this scrapbook of memories for my children, grand-children, and all of my descendants. We, as Buffalo Soldiers, might not ever get the recognition we truly deserve, simply because back then, Negroes didn’t get proper respect for their achievements. But I want, es-pecially for my people, but also for all other people, to know that we fought just as hard as the white man—even harder!

When their

scrapbooks were

complete, the class

of survivors gathered

to show their

mementos, tell their

stories, and share

their memories.

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the school’s fault that education is not equal between all people.

I asked Zharlaine to tell me more about blacks and whites at their high school, and she said,

I remember last year, one day in English class our whole class was talking, a bunch of us blacks and a few whites, about the chemistry class across the hall. It was all white girls and about three black kids. The white people have a higher learning ability. Us blacks like to play around and act dumb. It’s not our fault.

Zharlaine paused and I asked, “You said that white people have a higher learning ability. What do you mean?” Zharlaine replied,

The white kids can get everything right away. I have to understand everything one by one, and I can un-derstand anything. Mrs. Pierce says things more than once. Other teachers don’t do that. They treat you way different. Mrs. Pierce makes us feel smart. I want to be known. I’m here. Some teachers make us feel low.”

Whew! She said, “I’m here.” Some teachers didn’t acknowledge her. I asked what she meant when she said, “Some teachers make us feel low.” Zharlaine re-plied, “Even though the white kids don’t read better, they get put in a higher level. That gives us blacks the feeling that if we try we don’t get anywhere, so why try?” That was a strong, informative statement. I looked in her eyes, nodded, paused, and asked what she meant by an earlier comment, “It’s not our fault.” Zharlaine stated, “I mean black people like me. My mom is not behind me, not pushing me. It’s up to the teachers to push, to have fun, to make sure we have what we need to pass.”

And, Mrs. Pierce made sure, as we shall soon see....

Students’ Connections to the U.S. History State TestErika reviewed, every day. She began each period with various forms of review using the interactive white-board, handouts, or student interaction. It was quick, fast-paced, and important. The students learned the information they needed to know for the state test, and Erika’s responses of, “You are sooo smart” kept their energy high. Erika pointed out nuances of the

Yes, Delwin now knows who the Buffalo sol-diers were. Throughout this year I was surprised by the number of events, places, and cause–effect rela-tionships in U.S. history the students had not heard of—or didn’t remember hearing about—previously. They studied U.S. history in elementary and middle school, but 11th grade frequently appeared to be their first experience with it. It is Erika’s premise that the connections they make of an emotional and personal nature will help them to revere U.S. history. Its story is theirs.

The students became involved in the evolution of history, often due to their incorporation of intertextu-ality (Hynd, Holschuh, & Hubbard, 2004). They read and wrote from many sources, and considered infor-mation from within and outside the texts (broadly defined) that they were reading, talking about, and writing. In many cases they explored and read from websites (Kaplan, 2000). They looked carefully at spe-cific details, and studied the principles of democracy.

To a large degree, U.S. history is about what it means to be a citizen of this country—and what that feels like. Erika wondered whether the students were proud of this or not, and assigned essays to learn about their thoughts. They wrote in class and outside of class, and Zharlaine titled hers I am proud...I am not proud to be an American. She spoke to an issue dear to these students’ hearts; they were all in a general track, the third lowest in a four-track system, with honors being the top, college-bound second, and then gen-eral. Most of the students in this 26-student class were African American and all knew this was not a top class. Throughout the year, however, Erika said repeatedly, “You are sooo smart!” These words are in my notes frequently, and the students knew that almost all of them would pass the state test at the end of the year. Erika’s students have that distinction. Regardless, the system bothers them, as we hear in a paragraph from Zharlaine’s essay:

The right of getting an education is one of the most important things that makes me proud to be an American. [However, there] is racism in education because whites get placed in higher-level classes. The school mostly separates the whites and blacks and puts them in different classes.... There are more whites in advanced and honors classes than blacks. I think it is

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the forms I have shown throughout this article, and others, all of which I recorded in field notes gathered during the two long periods each week. For example, the class studied the Vietnam War by listening to—and discussing—the songs of that era.

Throughout the year Erika prepared for each class by creating a DVD. She pulled information from multiple websites and other sources, popped the disk into the projector when she and her cart entered the classroom where she taught this class (a physics class-room), and taught from the interactive whiteboard. The students saw and heard video clips, segments of speeches, music, and old photos. With the abundance of primary source documents available (Molebash, 2004), they had much to talk about as a class, with partners at their two-person tables, and in clusters of four. They wrote, read, used laptops, and drew. These students were busy; this class was engaged.

All but one of the 26 students in Erika’s general-track class passed the state test. Overall, at their high school, less than 80% of the U.S. history students passed. General-track classrooms can work. Large numbers of students do not need to feel disenfran-chised (Epstein, 2007).

This was an empowering classroom, the kind advocated by Tatum (2005), in which the teacher ac-knowledges that credible test scores, the development of academic skills, and the nurturing of students’ iden-tities are “fundamentally compatible.... The emphasis is on engagement and outcomes” (pp. 54–55). When these elements are kept in mind, educators are less like-ly to place an unreasonable emphasis on tests sponsored by governments who insist that literacy is learning to “read, write, and spell” (Knobel, 2001, p. 405).

A Closing ThoughtI entered Erika’s classroom to study her students as writers—to find out the role writing played for them as learners of U.S. history.

Erika entered this classroom to connect to her students—that was her number one goal. And Erika went in knowing that they would pass their state test. That information she would teach, for sure. Mainly, she would teach the students—and they would learn the information.

wording in various forms of a test question, and re-peatedly called various students by name for short re-sponses. They knew Erika was reviewing information that counted; in Virginia students must past the U.S. history test to graduate. These fast-paced reviews, led by a teacher who ran track in college, invigorated the class. Erika, who sees a movie a week, slipped movie comments into her pep talks. Her students and she connected at many levels. They were on a roll.

When we reviewed World War I, Erika engaged the students in the following actions during the first few minutes of three class periods. She placed sentenc-es with blank spaces on the interactive whiteboard and students scurried forward to fill in the blanks. Erika showed political cartoons, asking the class, “What does this mean?” and students offered answers. Erika showed posters and asked, “Why are they propagan-da?” Moira said, “They persuaded Americans to go to war against Germany.” We all quickly took a one-page, seven-question practice test and discussed it.

At one point Erika stage-whispered, “Let’s whis-per debate, Zharlaine. We’re running against each other for an office. I’m a Republican!” Zharlaine im-mediately caught on, “I’m a Democrat!” In less than a minute Erika ended the debate and turned to the class, “How many will vote for me?” No one. “How many for Zharlaine?” All hands went up! Erika made a few comments about this dramatization of democracy, high fived Zharlaine, and this student smiled her way to her seat at the back of the classroom.

Review continued as we each completed and dis-cussed a chart in which we compared a few points of President Woodrow Wilson’s plan for peace and a plan for peace the class started to create for their own school. Finally, the students wrote (in class and for homework) their individual versions of Wilson’s Fourteen Points for their school. In essence, as it turned out, the students (of course) gave themselves more control than they currently had. They also cre-ated their own version of the League of Nations.

Review was constant and real. It included all modes of learning: talking, writing, dramatizing, practicing, and connecting to self. The review worked. Given their form of block scheduling (two long and one short period each week), the quick reviews left considerable time to pursue new information. These pursuits took

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In January Carlise wrote the text in Figure 3, and Erika asked her to read it to the class for discussion on a day I was absent. Erika, however, thought I might want to hear it, as I, a person who has lived in the South for only a few years, had initially been surprised to learn that Lincoln is not necessarily considered a hero. I asked Carlise to read her essay to me.

I commented on her strong feelings, she elabo-rated, and we conversed a bit about Lincoln. Then I asked, “What in this essay is new information that you didn’t know before this class?” Carlise replied, “About Dred Scott and Abraham Lincoln.”

I nodded and then said, “Mrs. Pierce thinks that writing helps you learn things better. Do you think that’s true?”

Carlise explained, “You see what you’re writing down. When you just hear it, it’s not easy to remem-ber it. All the things in here, I’ll remember because I wrote.”

The students entered this classroom knowing of Erika’s reputation. This was her 10th year at this school and as a teacher. They knew her expectations were high, they knew they would learn their U.S. history, and they knew she (and they) would be very busy throughout each class session. When observers came (and there were several) they often commented to Erika, “This is a general track? It seems like a high-er one.” Yes, it seemed that way to me, as well.

I constantly wondered what role writing did play. The first thing I noticed was the pervasiveness of writing—not in the form of huge essay assignments—but in the form of many short pieces of in-class writ-ing. Erika often stopped and said, “Write about this for a few minutes, and then we’ll talk.” Also, the stu-dents continued some of this writing as homework. Sometimes they read their in-class or homework writing to the rest of the students for discussion and to gain an appreciation for one another’s thoughts.

Figure 3 Carlise’s Essay

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Epstein, R. (2007). Why high school must go: An interview with Leon Botstein. Phi Delta Kappan, 88(9), 659–663.

Equiano, O. (1789). The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African: Written by himself. London: Author.

Hansen, J. (1998). When learners evaluate. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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Hansen teaches at the University of Virginia,

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The frequent writing appeared to engage the stu-dents in a mode of learning that contributed to their ability to learn the content of U.S. history. Plus, the personal greeting and farewell from Erika each day this class met, her phone calls and e-mails to the stu-dents, and her recognition of each of them during class sessions allowed them to know that they count—and they are smart.

These smart students studied U.S. history in the kind of classroom milieu advocated by Percoco (2001) in his book about the importance of teaching about conf lict—which includes bringing emotions into the students’ experiences, talk, and writing. He wrote,

American Indians refer to the spiritual energy that f lows between all living things as ‘medicine’...may the power of ‘good medicine’ permeate...all of your rela-tionships in an effort to open the door of respect and understanding of the human community. (p. 8)

It’s my wish that within the human community smart students may find personal connections to U.S. history—and find the emotional fortitude they need to resolve, rather than foster, the injustices they right-ly feel.

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