For so long my students have been taught that history is black and white, that there is no grey area…there are dates and facts and that is all there is to history.  Then they walked into my class last year and I tried to show them that history is not just black and white.  I tried to get them to think critically and make arguments based on what they heard and what they knew.  My students fought this tooth and nail.  They couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea that there was no wrong answer.  I was very frustrated because I just couldn’t figure out how to help them get this information.  I tried to show them how to use argumentative writing in history to make their points and again I felt like I was hitting my head against a brick wall.  In reflection of the last year, I realize that I finally gave up on trying to teach my students this way and returned back to the same “black and white” way that they were used to but today gave me a tool that I can use to help teach my students to see the grey areas, DBQ.

There were so many wonderful things about DBQ.  I love how they have included two versions with each lesson.  I think that the scaffolding created is a great way to help students grasp and understand the task that are set before them.  I love the idea of bucketing!  As we sat through the presentation I found my mind reeling with possibilities.  I want to teach my students that history is interpretive and that the “grey” areas of history are one of the things that make it so interesting.  DBQ is an awesome tool for doing this and it doesn’t require that all of my students have a laptop or that we are in a lab.  It is a lesson that can be taught in the comforts of my own classroom using the minimal (overhead projector) technology that I have in my room.  I’m so excited about this, that I almost can’t wait to get home to start figuring out where I can work it in with my lessons as I streamline for next year!

The walking tour of the Chicago fire area was a bit of a let down.  I don’t know what I expected, I mean the fire happened a hundred and fifty years ago and the city has obviously been rebuilt since then, but it was not as intriguing or informative as I hoped it would be.  I did find two parts of the tour interesting.  Our first stop was at the Cardinals mansion where we saw some of the original wood block road that was used.  They used to lay a layer of sand down then cover that with wooden planks that had been dipped in tar, then cover the planks with wood blocks, designed to look like bricks, also covered in tar, and then cover the whole thing with a sealing layer of sand mixed with tar.  With all of that tar and wood, no wonder the city burned!  This was probably my favorite piece of the tour, as it was an actual piece of history, in its original spot.  It was great.

Wood Brick Road

Tree Rings in a Wood Block

I also found the relief houses interesting.  Someone on our tour pointed out that they were similar to the FEMA trailers that we have all heard so much about since Hurricane Katrina.  These houses came with one basic floor plan and were either 1 or 2 bedrooms based on your family’s size.  They gave families the supplies need and the plans, and then the families were required to put the houses up themselves…very interesting! I’m not sure that I could have done that, and my husband doesn’t have a carpentry bone in his body, so I find myself asking where would we be having been left with wood and nails, and windows and a plan, but no skill to do anything with it.