Little House on the Prairie

The Little House on the Prairie would be a wonderful place to take young students on a field trip. The site has a replica of the one-room cabin that is similar in size and shape to the cabin that Laura writes about in her book “Little House on the Prairie.” The cabin had furniture made of logs and a small fireplace. It even included Mama’s china doll that sat on the fireplace mantle. The well that Pa supposedly dug was located at the rear of the property. I was disappointed that the well was no longer working.

The historic site also featured the Sunny Side School that was used from 1872-1947. This school is complete with a potbelly stove, lunch pails, wooden desks and old wall maps. I learned that the curators of the historic site will present programs to classes that include a morning of lessons with a school marm to replicate the school experience of the pioneer era.

One other item featured at the historic site is a post office that served residents of nearby Wayside, Kansas, from the late nineteenth century to the mid-1970’s. The post office was a small wooden structure that included mailboxes with metal fronts that required a combination to open.

I discovered several treasures in the Little House gift shop that would be useful for teaching early settlement to students. I purchased an Album of Laura Ingalls Wilder that contains copies of great historical photographs and documents of Laura and her family.

Life

Today, our presenter, Sandra Matthews, asked our class to write something significant for every year of our life. As I hurriedly typed a few things that came to mind, I realized that I wanted to include details and specific feelings associated with my events. My mind created detailed images of these events also. However, as I wrote, I realized that I only had one tiny memory associated with an entire year of living. This makes me realize that when Laura Ingalls Wilder was writing her books, her memory may not have served her for historical preservation of facts. The author found it necessary to fill in the gaps with ficitonal writing to appeal to her audience and this it why the her books are considered historical fiction. I'm sure other authors do this same sort of filling in the "gaps" when their memory fails to sort out the details. This is an important concept for the historian to remember.

Another realization I had while typing is that I would love to leave information about my life for my children and the generations to come. Perhaps when this eHIKES mission is complete, I'll begin writing my life memoirs!

Agriculture Today

In the ten years that I have taught in the Parsons School district, I've only served a handful of "farm" kids from the outskirts of Parsons. These students' parents raised livestock such as cattle and horses and one of the students had chickens, but I wouldn't consider them the type of "farm" kids that rural areas have. I'm not sure Parsons would have served many "farm" kids in earlier years since the community was built around the railroad and had industrial businesses.

The experience I have to draw from is my own family background. One set of my grandparents were die-hard farmers. They planted several acres of wheat, corn, and milo each year; milked a dozen head of dairy cows twice a day; raised chickens, hogs and cows that were either butchered or were taken to the sale barn; bailed hay all summer; and were constantly fixing fence or machinery that was broken down. My father is also a farmer/rancher and at one time was the proprietor of the grain elevator in Gridley, Kansas. As I read Douglas Hurt's chapter Days of Uncertainty,I was painfully aware of the uncertainty that my family faced during the 1980's and '90's as I saw my dad becoming overextended at the bank and the profits from farming not covering the costs of his farming operation. My dad complained about the farmers who were using water from local rivers for irrigation systems, and he often mentioned that the corporate farmers were pushing the little guys out of business. In 1996, my dad was forced to sell his grain elevator/livestock feed business to a cooperative that he had been in competition with.

The biggest changes I see in agriculture today are the increased use of technology (tractors, combines, and computerized crop rotation), the farming of a multitude of acres by corporations instead of single farmers, and in the mid-west a shift from planting acreage to using the acreage as pasture for raising cattle. The government continues to be involved with payment for acreage that is overused and set aside by the farmer and will assist with disaster relief due to weather conditions. For more information about this service, one can contact a Kansas ASCS office or a county extension agent. But the best way to learn about current farming trends is to talk with a farmer!

Bakke Case

President Lyndon B. Johnson first coined the term “affirmative action” and from that point forward this typically referred to both mandatory and voluntary programs to affirm the civil rights of designated classes of individuals by taking positive action to protect them from discrimination.

In our court system, affirmative action has meant different things at different times. The Bakke Case of the 1970’s challenged the affirmative action ideas of previous years. Alan Bakke, a white male, felt he was being discriminated against because his scores were too low to meet the majority cutoff, but higher than the minority students who were accepted. Bakke claimed that the affirmative action plan of setting aside 16 of the 100 spots open for minority students denied him equal protection. He seemed to have a valid point since our Constitution makes it clear that people of all races must be treated equally under the law.

For young learners, I think the only concept that needs to be addressed in relation to “affirmative action” is for students to understand that our country’s heritage has been built on the precept that all people should have equal rights. I think it would be difficult for me to present information to third graders about past and present affirmative action programs without perpetuating racial problems. I can build schema for concepts of slavery, the civil rights movement, and women’s suffrage including the word “discrimination”, but affirmative action lessons will be left for their upper level teachers.

Vietnam - National Archives

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/vietnam-photos/images/bunker-sign.gif
"Home is where you dig" was the sign over a fighting bunker, 1968.
ARC Identifier: 532482

In third grade, I teach about the basic needs of humans such as food, shelter, clothing, and having a sense of belonging to a group. I chose this photograph of the Vietnam War to analyze with my students because it represents these basic human needs and allows for a great discussion of conditions of the Vietnam War.

As I analyze this image with my students, I would have them list the basic human needs on a piece of paper and identify in the photograph what represents that the soldiers needs are being met. This would open a discussion about the conditions the soldiers faced during the Vietnam War. For example, point out that the soldier on the left is eating out of a can - would this food be warm? how was the food delivered? would there be a variety of food to choose from such as fresh fruit and milk? The boots of the soldier in the middle look almost worn out - where would he go to buy new ones in the middle of the jungle? where would you wash your clothes? The shelter is a hole in the ground covered with limbs that have been thrashed together. How long might the soldiers "camp" out here? Would they have pillows and blankets?

Other concepts could be explored using this image as a springboard. Look at what the soldiers are wearing and then explore weather conditions in Vietnam. One of the soldiers appears to be holding a towel. Did he just take a bath or a shower? How did the soldiers build their shelter? What tools and supplies did soldiers carry with them? The soldier in the middle of the group looks like he is writing a letter - how would this letter get back home?

Ideally, I would follow-up the analysis of this photograph by having a Vietnam veteran visit my class. Students could generate questions based on the photograph and then ask the veteran for answers.

Truman Presidential Library

The Truman Presidential Library website contains many interesting and useful resources. Mo the Mule tells elementary students about the life of Harry S. Truman using photographs and a talking mule. This short video would be a good way to introduce Truman and then other links such as Where’s Harry could be accessed to further students’ understanding of Truman and his administration. I enjoyed reading several of the “Letters to Bess.” The letters could be printed out for students to read as the teacher projects a scanned image of the actual letter on the classroom projector screen. These letters could be used to make predictions or inferences about Truman’s life and then other resources could be used to determine if the inferences were actual facts. These letters showed the ordinary life of Harry before he became President. The 1948 Whistle Stop Tour looked useful for teaching U.S. geography skills to third graders. Other resources such as the Word Search puzzle and the Truman phrase puzzle seemed like busy work, but might serve a purpose with some students.

The Truman Library website included a link to The White House Historical Association website. There was a page titled “Everyday is President’s Day at the Whitehouse” that suggested three activities to teach K-3 students about significant Presidents and their accomplishments. This page was followed by a short quiz that would tie in with Kansas State reading indicators. There was also a link designed for grades 4-8. One of the pages was designed for the user to track the changes in physical structure of the White House during 200 years of its history as the home and office of the President. There were great photographs, drawings, and documents interlaced through text and one link included a time-line of Presidents. I was impressed with this site because the dates were clearly marked, the text could be accessed in a printer friendly fashion, and there were photographs of each president that could be enlarged on the screen.

War Without Mercy

Gaining an understanding of the knowledge in War Without Mercy was a somewhat difficult process for me. Before reading Dower’s book, I knew I would need to get up to speed with a review of World War II. Most resources I read didn’t make any reference to WWII being a “racial” war, but these resources were general in nature. After reading Dower’s monograph, I can see how prejudice feelings were rampant – on both sides. With the images and words presented to the American and Japanese public, it would have been difficult to feel any differently.
The high school textbooks and the filmstrips I viewed in the late 1970’s sure didn’t mention much about U.S. relations with Japan during WWII –other than the bombing of Pearl Harbor and taking pride in being the first to use the atomic bomb. Therefore, I learned to view WWII as a war to beat Hitler and the Nazis. I knew of Jewish concentration camps, but had little knowledge of Japanese internment camps – especially the camp located in Arkansas that housed thousands of American citizens (of Japanese ancestry.) These details of American/Japanese race relations were hidden away. The “textbook police” would not have wanted high school students reading about Americans cutting off the ears of its enemy or slitting Japanese jaws to harvest gold teeth. We weren’t exposed to the propaganda that was used during the war to make the Japanese race seem like barbaric heathens, and we certainly didn’t see cartoon images from 1940’s newspapers depicting Japanese soldiers as monkeys. There was also no exposure to the “kill or be killed” attitude.
As an educator, I think it is important to expose the “whole” story as much as possible. That is why teaching with images and documents from the original time period is worthwhile. Then students can form their own opinions. In third grade, I think it is necessary to expose children to different cultures and to compare and contrast these cultures so that students will be more prepared for historical content of WWII in the upper grades.