Abstract:

Michelle Ivy, an NBCT in Florida, praises Brodsky Schur’s book for the clear strategies presented to help students “recreate history”, while questioning how to implement them in classrooms limited to specific tests, such as the AP. Schur provides a host of appendices, worksheets, and hands-on activities.

Citation: Brodsky Schur, J. (2007). Eye witness to the past: strategies for teaching American history in grades 5-12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Full Text:

By Joan Brodsky Schur
2007 (256 pp./paperback)
Stenhouse Publishers
ISBN: 978-157110-497-7
$20.00

Reviewed by Michelle B. Ivy, NBCT
History & Law Teacher
Douglas
Anderson School for the Arts
Jacksonville, FL

What immediately struck me as I read this book was the author's
clear enthusiasm both for her subject and for her students.
She is committed to creating an atmosphere where her students
become involved in the practice of history as participants
through the study and actual writing of diaries, travelogues,
letters, newspapers, election speeches and scrapbooks. All
these strategies are laid out for the teacher practitioner
in clear directions with specific examples of student work
and a multiplicity of resources.

Schur wants her students to become "eyewitnesses" to history,
to in effect recreate history for themselves. Her five strategies
require a lengthy series of exercises for the students to
enable them to participate fully in the first-person account,
but she provides clear directions for each step to make
it possible for the teacher and the student to create their
own historical documents; diaries, travelogues, newspapers,
etc.

Ms. Schur has provided a plethora of resources in the appendices,
including worksheets that will encourage the history teacher
to actually use Schur's strategies in the classroom, especially
given her enthusiastic endorsement of the value of these practices
in creating children who love and understand American History.

In particular, middle school students would benefit tremendously
from the hands-on approach this book advocates. It is not
equally clear, however, that a classroom that is limited by
tested curriculum, such as an Advanced Placement class, or
a state where American History is a tested subject, would
allow the kind of time that these activities would require
from the class. Teachers who face these kinds of time and
content-coverage limitations will find Shur's strategies difficult
to carry out in-depth, though the support offered by her guidelines
and worksheets could acclerate the process.

Even with those strictures, I am anxious to try some of these activities
with my students next year, and I encourage other American
History teachers to do likewise. To instill the kind of understanding
and appreciation for the experiences and lives of our ancestors
that the author promises will make it well worth the effort!

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