Final Thoughts

This semester has been quite a crazy one! I did not expect this course to be what it was. I expected another American history course with reading hours every night and writing paper after paper. It was a pleasant surprise to work on class projects and do research other than at the MSU library. I enjoyed having to blog because I felt like people were actually reading what I was writing as opposed to strictly writing for the professor and a grade.

My thoughts on what it means to "do" history have changed. I always thought history was just researching a topic a professor gave you. I never experienced a class where I could choose what I wanted to research and what interested me and work on a project of my choice. I also realized that history is not just a list of topics and events to learn about and know facts about. History is about how people interact with each other and interpret the past. I realize that history is all about questions and the more you find out the more questions you have, which seems backwards but is true. The more we learned about I-496, the more questions came up that we wanted to know the answers to.

Overall, I really enjoyed the class. It offered me a new perspective on history and history classes.

Last minute findings for the design team

In class on Thursday I was asked by the design team to try and dig up some last minute photos to incorporate into our exhibit. I was asked to find pictures of the GM plants in Lansing in the 1950s and any pictures of workers on the assembly line there during that time. I was able to find both suprisingly since the second request was a very specific one. I found a man named James R. Walkinshaw's wiki page through GMnext. I found images of the Lansing Assembly Plant in 1950 and 1955 on his page titled Co-oping int he 1950s at GMI

I was also able to find an image of two men working on the assembly line at the Olds plant in 1966 at Walkinshaw's wiki page titled Olds in Lansing.

At another site I was able to find an aerial photo of the Lansing Assembly Plant #1 which was taken after the highway was built. I decided to incorporate that image onto our classes Omeka in case the design team was interested in doing any type of comparison. I am hoping this helps the design to team to wrap up our exhibit proposal!

Oh, the satisfaction of finding what you're looking for..

After spending another long night at the wonderful MSU library I was actually able to find a couple of books full of fantastic pictures of Mackinac Island, past and present! Of course the book I really wanted was not on the shelf and the shelf was back in the basement with the books I wanted on the top shelf with no step stool around but whoever said anything had to be easy!

Of the books I was able to find, I found pictures of the harbor sequenced from the late 1700s up until the present as well as other developments around the island. I'd like to look into Census reports more if possible to find out how the population of the island has changed. So far I was able to find statistics for 2000 up until 2009 but I'd love it if I could go back farther.

I am working my way through the other books I found to get a more detailed understanding of the history of the island and creating an outline of ideas and facts that I have uncovered so far. I am not sure how detailed our background narrative for our final product is supposed to be or if there is a page length/requirement on it but I guess I will start writing and see where it takes me.

My goal over the next few days is to nail down my goals for the lesson and look through the GLCES to see where exactly this fits into the curriculum and what standards I can address with a lesson like this. I am glad I could find images and sketches of Mackinac Island in the 1700s and 1800s because I feel it is always good to have first hand documents for the students to look at and analyze.

I am slowly but surely getting my ideas together and organized! It is helping that my other classes projects are gradually wrapping up and I will be able to devote more time to history!

Exhaustion

I am at library attempting to do some research on individual project for class in the middle of a jam packed week of teaching and exams and library visits. I was able to find a quite large selection of Michigan History books and now I currently in the middle of digging through them to find information about Mackinac Island. For my individual project I would like to create a lesson plan based around Mackinac Island and its importance/value throughout its settlement. In the 1700's and 1800's it had great trade and military significance while today it is a historic site whose main value is tourism. I was interested in this idea because my family makes the annual 5 hour trek up to Mackinac Island for an Architects convention at the Grand Hotel every year. I've seen the fort and the old houses and constantly expanding harbor area and I thought it would be interesting to explore this more from a historical perspective than a tourist perspective. I will interested to look into what exactly has been preserved and hopefully in my lesson plan get the students thinking about how to decide what should be preserved and can be demolished. How do we determine what is "historically significant" enough to preserve for future viewers? What do we want to keep on the island that will be important for the future to know about it?

I originally thought of creating this lesson plan for 4th graders because that is usually around the time when elementary schoolers are learning about Michigan history and Mackinac Island is vital to Michigans history. After talking with Dr. K we discussed the thought of creating the lesson for high school students instead. I have not decide which road I want to take yet but I need to do that soon as it will determine the path I take for the lesson.

I am planning on going to the Library of Michigan this weekend to try and find more information. For now, I am taking my zombie self to bed and calling it quits for the evening!

Capital Area District Library

Today I visited the Capital Area District Library for the first time with Rachel and Nikki from class. We worked with David Votta in the Forest Parke Library and Archives working to find images of houses that had been demolished to construct I-496 and their residential cards when available. David is going to email Nikki the digitized formats in the next few days and we should have about 20 or so documents to incorporate into the exhibit.

Once we finished looking for these images, David directed us upstairs to a newspaper clippings file on I-496. From that we were able to make copies of articles discussing a variety of aspects of the construction from the amount of money spent on the project, to opening dates, the process of naming the highway, some information on the relocation going on and many more images to go along with the demolished houses found in the archives. Overall it seemed very productive. Since I went with members of the design team it was interesting to hear from them directly what kinds of things they were looking for and still needed and I feel we found a lot of information and documents that were still needed to keep the exhibit design moving forward.

Overall a great trip!

Class with no Professor

Yesterday was my first experience having a class with no professor to lead us and control us! I was worried things might not get done and the two groups might have trouble communicating but I felt we did great! The design team communicated very well with the research team about where they were going with the project and what they still needed. The first half of the hour seemed a little unorganized to me when the design team was getting there stuff organized because the research team did not have too much to discuss I felt. We settled that quite a large group would be going to the Library of Michigan on Friday morning/afternoon but of course my math class is held on Friday!

I will be interested to see how Thursday goes as most of the research team is not doing major work until Friday. I am planning on going through our class Wiki and looking more in detail as to what the design team still needs.

Research visit to the Library of Michigan

This morning I visited the Library of Michigan with Christina, Brandon and Amanda from class. We dug through a bunch of old newspaper articles trying to find out about General Motors' role in the construction of I-496 and how the highway might have affected their business and employees afterward. Suprisingly, we uncovered a lot of stories and information that the other groups were working on and we felt that instead of just skipping over it and letting them know we found information, we decided to read through those as well and make notes. We were able to find a few pictures, which I will be posting for our class, one of which is above. This is a picture from The State Journal and shows men putting up a new sign for I-496 which is interestingly enough nicknamed Olds Freeway after R.E. Olds. I found this very interesting because I was investigating the role of the automotive industry on the construction of I-496 and the freeway is nicknamed after the man who ran the industry, so to speak, in Lansing.

Overall I found it to be a very interesting and productive visit. I had never been to the Library of Michigan and being able to sit and dig through old newspapers from the 1950's - 1980's was incredibly interesting.

Visit to the Michigan Historical Museum

I recently visited the Michigan Historical Museum with my class and went on a tour of the museum exhibits and got a behind the scenes look at some of the things that go into creating an exhibit. I had never been into the actual musem exhibits and found it quite interesting to be able to walk through with Maria Quinlan Leiby and hear about what went into creating the exhibits. I would love to go back and take my time through the exhibits.

I felt that being able to talk with some of the people who help to design and construct the exhibits helped me to get a much better idea of what all goes into the process. We are working on creating a plan for an exhibit centered around the contruction of I-496 through Lansing and it has been hard for me to visualize and know what needs to be thought about because I have not had any museum studies courses or done any type of work involving museum exhibits in the past. So for me, this was a great learning experience from that perspective.

From the perspective of our project in class itself, I am not sure yet how effective the tour was in our focusing our project. We discussed the controversies that arrived in creating some of the exhibits, for example the 1960's exhibit, which may help our group in deciding what approach to take and what to be aware of.

After visiting the website for the Michigan Historical Museum I found an interesting brochure for Michigan Teacher's which shows many of the acitivities and lessons and places around Michigan that the Historical Museum contributes.

Re-Creating the American City

As part of my background reading for our class project on the construction of I-496 through Lansing, I read the book Breakthroughs: Re-Creating the American City by Neal Peirce and Robert Guskind. Breakthroughs focuses on 6 urban cities which were all rebuilt by their community members who took matters into their own hands to save their neighborhoods. These cities include New York, Portland, Boston, Lincoln, Cabrillo Village and Vermont's Stowe Recreation Path. These are all stories of the uncommon turnarounds urban communities can acheieve when faced with government decisions that destroy urban communities.

The introduction of the book discusses the importance of communities to work together and for local governments to give the people a chance to voice what they want. The introduction discusses as quite length why urban cities are thought of the way they are and why some neighborhoods are avoided. They discuss the drugs, murders, muggings, gangs and other frightful aspects of "city living" that draws people away from the city. Quite frankly, this was scary and made me afraid to want to go into an urban city. They discussed how even though parts of big cities are tourist attractions with upscale shopping centers and beautiful parks, they are still very dangerous. While it is important not to ignore the reasons people avoid big cities, this part of the introduction did not do too much to make me want to go to a big city.

The proceeding chapters of the book discussed each case study at length, describing the community's involvement to stop the deterioration of the neighborhoods and to rebuild them. In every story the community is very actively involved and the book highlights specific community member's stories and gives the emotions that were in play at the time. I felt that by the end of the book you really got to know each of the community member's stories.

While the community was highlighted and you got to know the people involved and what they did and how their individual story fit into the larger story of the rebuilding of the city, it is always important to ask what is left out? What isn't being talked about? I felt the book did little to look at the side of government or the city leaders and tell any of that side of the story. I would have been interested to find out why these neighborhoods in these cities were either chosen to be abandoned, as in the case of the New York neighborhoods, or why the highway was chosen to go through certain neighborhoods, as in the case of Lincoln and Boston.

Why was the construction of I-496 controversial?

The construction of the highway I-496 set forth a controversy in the city of Lansing. The highway cut through the cities largest black community destroying the houses and business in its path. The fact that a close knit community was being leveled could make anyone upset. Their histories and childhoods are being demolished and they are left nowhere to go back to. I feel the time period and housing circumstances during this period caused more controversy. This was all occurring in the 1960’s when segregation was still highly present whether talked about or not.

I found it interesting to read about why this neighborhood was chosen. After reading Matt Miller’s article in the Lansing State Journal titled "Looking back: I-496 Construction: A Complicated Legacy", I read that the construction of new roads often occurred down “the paths of least resistance” where the community could not fight for their homes. The community did fight for better housing circumstances and relocation assistance although these efforts were not always successful.

What was most unsettling to me was that this community was losing their homes and businesses and had great trouble relocating due to the segregation. The black community could not move anywhere they wanted, whether they did not have the money or would not be sold houses in certain neighborhoods.

Some overall questions that arose while I was reading and thinking about the situation were:
- It was difficult for the black community find new housing, if the construction of the highway was occurring today would the same controversy exist?
- The leaders of the city proposed that the destruction of this community would help with the integration of the rest of city. Was this really the case?
- What did the city leaders think about the construction of the highway? Did they see any downfalls or negatives?
- What other factors go into deciding where a highway in constructed?
- What implications did this have for the people who could not find housing? Did they move elsewhere?
- What implications did this have on businesses that were demolished? Were they able to start the business up elsewhere or were they forced to seek new employment?
- The highway cut through the largest black community in Lansing, what did this mean for the white community? Were they affected at all and why not if they were not affected?
- Does this situation tell us anything about the relationship between the black community and white community at this time?

East Lansing Historical Site Visit

I visited another historical site but in East Lansing this time instead of near my hometown. I decided to choose a historical site more fitting to my character and interests and therefore I chose to visit Central School in East Lansing. Being a resident of East Lansing for the past 4 years I have passed by this building many times. I knew it was an old building that is most likely currently used for children based on the grounds surrounding the building.

Central School was built in 1917 and is recognized as the oldest schoolhouse in East Lansing and is also one of the oldest public, off-campus buildings in the city. Central School served as an elementary school while also being used as part of the teacher training program at MSU. Due to an increase in population the school was closed as an elementary schoool in 1984.

While the building is being preserved for its historical significance of its use and architecture, it is still being used today as a nursery school which is managed by MSU. I am not sure if I would take a class to visit or not. It could be interesting if you were talking about the time period and could point on the similarities and differences in schoolhouses between then and now. It may be interesting to the students to imagine living back when this was an elementary school and connecting the past with the present.

Examining State Curriculum Standards

I chose to read through Illinois' State Curriculum Standards for History. Illinois seperates their standards into general "Learning Standards" and more specific "State Goals for History". Learning standards include things such as identifying and solving problems, sharing ideas, working with groups, using technology and making connections. I feel these are very broad standards that are things meant to be accomplished on a day to day basis. When it comes to the state's "Learning Standards", History is grouped in with the Social Sciences. The Social Sciences include anthropology, economics, geography, history, law, political science and sociology. It is directly mentioned that all of the social sciences are connected and that students need to realize how they relate to each other in order. However, Illinois does treat History as a seperate subject which has its own goals to meet.

Illinois breaks down their standards by grade bracket instead of individual grade. They specifiy standards for Early Elementary, Late Elementary, Middle/Junior High School, Early High School and Late High School. The general trend seems to be pretty well lined up with Indiana and a few other states where the early elementary grades focus on the local community, holidays, traditions and general ideas of time (past, present and future). Once the students reach late elemetnary school is when they start learning about specific events and U.S. and World history. The goals for each grade bracket are very specific about what time periods, events and topics should be discussed. For example in Middle/Junior High School students should be able to describe how the people of the Huang He, Trigris-Euphrates, Nile and Indus river valleys shaped their environments during the agricultural revolution, 4000-1000, B.C. There are four sections of specific content goals for each grade bracket and each section has multiple goals for U.S. and World History.

The state standards do include a section on goals for developing historical thinking skills. The first section of History Goals is titled "Apply the skills of historical analysis and interpration" and in this set of goals students are expected to ask historical questions, compare stories of events, read stories and analyze and compare different historical interprations of an event. By late high school students are expected to "analyze historical and contemporary developments using methods of historical inquiry (pose questions, collect and analyze data, make and support inferences with evidence, report findings)" I would say that Illinois definitly encourages historical thinking in their students.

One last thing I thought about while reading Tyrrell's "Historians In Public" was the emphasis on American history over other types of history in schools. Tyrrell discusses the push for more American history in schools because of American's apparent lack of knowledge over their country. While reading the book I began to think of my history classes throughout high school and I would say this alligns right up with my high school experience. I remember talking a lot about U.S. history and not much about the rest of the world. As I read through the chapters on schools I began to get confused because the chapter was describing how little Americans know about U.S. history and how a lot of people are upset and U.S. history should be taught all throughout schooling but then at the end of the chapter they begin to bring in the argument that students do not know anything about the world and are becoming isolated from the rest of the world. So what is more important and is it important that History maintain a subject all its own? Illinois seems to have equal content goals for U.S. and World History. They also seem to feel that History is important enough to be its own subject. In the standards they discuss how important it is for a student to be able to examine and analyze past events in order to understand the events of today. They also discuss how learning history will help students to "define their own roles as particiapating citizens." History has definitly maintained an important status in the state of Illinois.

Is the end of the world coming in 2012?

As an assignment for class we were instructed to watch any show airing on The History Channel. It took me longer than expected to be able to find one I was interested in watching because most of the shows on are Pawn Stars and Axe Men. These shows to me don't seem to be the type of history I was looking for. I settled on a series called The Nostradamus Effect and the episode I watched was titled Extinction 2012. The series is all about the prophecies related to the supposed coming of the end of the world. This episode takes a look at several prophecies and draws connection between them. They discussed the Mayan calendar, Hopie Indian prophecies, astronomical calculations for the gallactic allignment, Nostradamus' predictions himself, Time Wave Theory and the computer age causing a global market and financial crash.

The show started off by saying they would neither refute nor encourage any of the prophecies, they were simply giving the facts and details behind the prophecies. I personally felt the show seemed to encourage the prophecies rather than remain neutral. The people they interviewed were authors of books supporting the end of the world and astronomers were believed the coming gallactic allignment would result in cosmic tragedy for Earth. The narrator mentioned that some people do not believe in these prophecies and predictions but never interviewed anyone who did not believe it. I feel this gives the view that anyone informed on the subject believes it is true.

While watching the show I began questioning why this is on the History Channel. What kinds of history is included in this show? It seemed to me that the show is all about what is going to happen in the future, not what happened in the past. The show discusses the prophecies which were made in the past and how their outcomes will effect the future. To me, the History Channel feels that history is about researching the past and looking to see if the past gives any information about the future. This is quite literal for this episode because they are discussing prophecies. They are using multiple pieces of evidence from all throughout history to show why the end of the world might be coming.

Ken Burn's "The War" Video

Recently in class we viewed part of the epsiode titled "FUBAR" which is part of the series called "The War" produced and directed by Ken Burns. I viewed clips on the making of the series before viewing the episode itself so going into viewing the episode I expected a new perspective on World War II than I had seen previously. I expected it to be harsher than what I had previously seen because the clips discussed how people had never heard the story quite as they did when viewing the episode. When the producers of "The War" discussed how it is important to document memories because the World War II generation is slowly disappearing, I could relate to that and it made me more interested. My grandfather fought in the war and was at Normandy on D-Day. He never talked about it in the past and the only reason I knew he was there was because my father had told me a couple of years ago. The war is never brought up in my family and when I had to interview someone who lived through the war I had to interview my other grandfather who stayed in Michigan for the duration of the war instead of interviewing my grandfather who was abroad in the fighting. This was until recently however. Over the past few months my grandfather has begun bringing up the war on random occasions and discussing the places he had been and what it was like in Eastern Europe. My family guesses that it is because he is getting older and has been in and out of the hospital quite often recently and he may be thinking more about the things he tried to hide and not discuss. If my grandfather had continued to keep all of this stored away then my family would never know the history of this time from this perspective. For this reason, I was very interested in watching this film because I felt I would get the perspective of the soldier that I had never really been able to hear about.

I did not know what FUBAR meant until I looked it up after viewing the episode. The images, videos and interviews shown in the film truly portrayed the meaning of this word I feel. It did not occur to me, before discussing the film in class, to question what the images and videos were actually of. It is definitely quite possible that images and videos were not actually of what the interviewers were describing. This shows me how powerful a film can be and makes me question how relevant all of the films you see actually are. For people who do not know better, they will take the images and videos as true to what the film is discussing. As a future teacher this makes me wonder how many students will view films about history and see past images and videos that are not actually of what they are learning about. I don't feel this is being true to history. Yes the images and videos must have happened at some time but if they are being talked about as something they are not, that is not accurate history.

After thinking about what is missing from the movie, or what the film makers leave out of this story, I think a major aspect they left almost completely out was that of the decision makers in the war. The film was focused on the things that went wrong during the war and the bad decisions that were made and how that affected the soldiers who were fighting, yet did not have any of the people who made those decisions speak on it. The rare times they did, they made the people seem like they were all for it. The film is discussing a global war and discusses more troops than just the American troops yet does not get the point of view from those men.

I thought the film did a good job as drawing in the audience however. The film shows the interviewees in the midst of the war and also includes their family and friends from home. Giving the story of them as men in the army and as civilians at home draws on the emotions of the viewer and makes them seem more real.

Mary Lyon - Pioneer in Education

After searching around the website of radio show "Cavalcade of America", I decided to listen to an episode titled "Mary Lyon - Pioneer in Education" which aired in 1937. The epsiode described Mary's life and discusssed how she changed higher education for women by opening the first public college for women in the country. The epsiode in general reminded me of a movie, with narration and conversations and musical interludes, which had a calm atmosphere to it. I felt as though I was listening to a heartwarming story about a woman and her journey to better the world. While the epsiode was entertaining to listen to, I felt it did not have much historical context to it. The narrator tells the audience that women were not accepted in schools of higher education very well and that Mary Lyon opened the first public college for women but the rest is open for interpretation. I felt that the episode was more for entertainment purposes than for historical purposes.

One thing I found particularly interesting in the episode is how they portrayed what men and women felt about the issue. The episode gives the audience the idea that all men were against women being educated and all women for very much for it. This portrayal is very misleading I feel. While the women's movement was making a push for the educating of women there were also many women who were against this. The same goes men, there were men who were both for and against the education of women. Just because you are a man does not mean you think women should not be educated and just becauseyou are a women does not mean you think women should be. I feel this is important for people to know and the episode overlooks this stance.

Is there something "wrong" with history?

After reading Alan Brinkley's "Historians and Their Publics" and Part I of Ian Tyrrell's "Historians in Public" I thought about the question, is there something "wrong" with history. I do not believe there is something "wrong" with history. Both author's discuss how specializations are threatening historians and their work and how they are able to communicate history to the public. I agree that specializations can be threatening when trying to explore the entirety of history but I only agree when the specializations are sufficiently narrow. On the whole, I think specialization is important. Brinkley discusses the benefits of these new specializations by discussing how they draw in new audiences who feel they have been excluded and feel some tie to this newly explored aspect of history. I agree with Brinkley on this and I feel this is a great outcome of specialization. Yes it may be more focused and yes it may narrow the audience more but it also has the possibility of bringing new meaning to history and new interest in history for the audiences it does reach. Everyone has a favorite time period, event, culture or general topic in history that they find fascinating. Having these interests is what encourages one to keep reading and keep exploring and push for further understanding of that part of history.

One of my goals is to become a high school History teacher. Ian Tyrrell discussed how "historians have faced at least three broad categories of audence..." and one of them is high school history curricula. I would undoubtably fit into this category of audience and I found this aspect of Tyrrell's work particularly interesting. There were various points in his book that focus directly on the history curriculum in high schools and how there was a push for national history standards in the past. While I agree that most people are very ignorant when it comes to American History, I am strongly against national standards in any curriculum. This goes back to the idea of specialization that was discussed earlier. Every teacher needs to specialize their class to fit the needs of their students. Every student is different and has different interests. Therefore, in order to engage students teachers must be able to alter what they teach. If they are stuck teaching specific topics, with controlled texts and resources and exams and their students are disengaged, then the students will not learn and it is back to square one. After completing projects on student learning, being a student myself, and spending much time in high school classrooms, I have found that students learn best when they are interested in the topic at hand. Therefore, I feel it is more important for people to be enthusiastic and interested in learning about some aspect of history than trying to know everything about history.

While academic scholars are fantastic resources for reading about and trying to understand the past, they are not my first resort when I read about history and I would not expect that my future students will read the works of academic scholars first when they learn about history for pleasure. Nonacademic resources can be great tools for understanding the past and I feel it is important to incorporate them into a classroom as well. . Tyrrell states that, "It is also true that for knowledge of the past, the public and the media often turn to nonacademic resources." He discusses the History Channel and while I do not watch the History Channel on a regular basis, it has become a popular channel for many Americans.

Farmington Masonic Temple and Farmington Township Hall

The historic landmark I visited recently was the Farmington Masonic Temple in downtown Farmington, Michigan. The building is located in the historic district of the city along with many other landmarks including the cities first post office, the first quaker meetings, cemeteries and houses. The Farmington Masonic Temple and Farmington Township Hall was built in 1876 and served as the home to the Township Government until 1963. The Masonic Lodge still occupies the buildings top floor while the first floor is used today for dances, banquets and other festitivies.

One thing I found quite interesting about the architecture and design of the building is that above all of the windows there are various symbols displayed all around the building. I have heard that the Freemasons put symbols into everything they do and that they do everything with a specific meaning behind it, that may only be a secret to them.

After reading about this historic landmark and visiting the site to take pictures, I thought about what kinds of questions a visitor and a historian may ask if they were to visit this landmark.

Some questions I thought a visitor might want to know the answers to were:

- How old is the building?

- What is the building used for?

- What is a Masonic temple?

- What do the symbols on the ouside of the building mean?

Some questions I thought a historian be interested in were:

- Why was the building made into a historic landmark?

- What about its past and/or current use is the public interested in today?

- What is the importance of the building?

- What was the building used for in the past?

- What is the building being used for now?