History Comes to Life in the Cemetery! Teach 8th Grade History on a Field Trip to a Headstone…
Presentation Format
Poster
Intended Audience
All Audiences
Presentation Description
Teacher candidates had the unique opportunity to work in a real-world classroom environment—a cemetery—to discover more about their own local community by learning who lived and died there, and then conducting research through public record about them. From that research, they were able to delve into the real history that occurred in the local community of Brunswick, Georgia and then branch into what occurred on a larger scale of wars, national events, sickness, economics, etc. After their research and lesson planning, the teacher candidates took two local eighth grade classes to the cemetery for a field trip. There were 11 teacher candidates and 55 middle grades students, so there was a ratio of 1:5-6 teachers: students. The teacher candidates taught lessons about people buried there, their contribution to local history, state history, and national history, and how all of that tied to the 8th grade Georgia History state social studies standards. Through their work at the cemetery, teacher candidates helped the middle grades students discover the racial divides that existed between the African Americans and Caucasians during life, but especially during death and burials throughout history as they compared differences in how the two groups were buried, differences in headstone inscriptions, differences in burial plot and grounds upkeep, differences in death rates at varying ages. By way of the field trip, middle grades students used critical thinking skills to discover that “white” families were buried together, while “black” families were not. While making this discovery, they traced the dates of death of these families to the Civil War era and made these connections to slavery and separation of families. The middle grades students and teacher candidates also discovered differences in wealth and status, even in death, between the two races.
This poster session will show visuals of discoveries that were made in a local cemetery such as segregation, socioeconomic status through titles, jobs, and social groups, and data that includes death rates among infants due to illness. Other discoveries show differences among racial groups in the upkeep of the graves, that families were buried together according to one race but separately per another race during the Civil War due to slavery, and in content on headstone inscriptions.
This poster session will demonstrate the teacher candidates’ achievement of three overall service learning objectives via this experience. First, teacher candidates learned to enable community engagement and promote leadership by directly working with the administration, faculty, and students of Glynn Middle School, the staff at Palmetto Cemetery, and the Service Learning staff at the College of Coastal Georgia. Second, teacher candidates experienced an enhanced understanding of teaching engaging social studies course content by using a real-world classroom environment—the cemetery—as a classroom for teaching social studies and tying other content knowledge to the project. Finally, teacher candidates developed critical and creative thinking and reflection skills by designing social studies lessons and activities that utilized creative, hands-on methods and ideas for tying social studies content to their other content areas.
Location
Embassy Suites Hotel
Start Date
4-13-2016 5:00 PM
End Date
4-13-2016 7:00 PM
Recommended Citation
Hartman, Sarah R., "History Comes to Life in the Cemetery! Teach 8th Grade History on a Field Trip to a Headstone…" (2016). Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016. 91.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gss/2016/2016/91
History Comes to Life in the Cemetery! Teach 8th Grade History on a Field Trip to a Headstone…
Embassy Suites Hotel
Teacher candidates had the unique opportunity to work in a real-world classroom environment—a cemetery—to discover more about their own local community by learning who lived and died there, and then conducting research through public record about them. From that research, they were able to delve into the real history that occurred in the local community of Brunswick, Georgia and then branch into what occurred on a larger scale of wars, national events, sickness, economics, etc. After their research and lesson planning, the teacher candidates took two local eighth grade classes to the cemetery for a field trip. There were 11 teacher candidates and 55 middle grades students, so there was a ratio of 1:5-6 teachers: students. The teacher candidates taught lessons about people buried there, their contribution to local history, state history, and national history, and how all of that tied to the 8th grade Georgia History state social studies standards. Through their work at the cemetery, teacher candidates helped the middle grades students discover the racial divides that existed between the African Americans and Caucasians during life, but especially during death and burials throughout history as they compared differences in how the two groups were buried, differences in headstone inscriptions, differences in burial plot and grounds upkeep, differences in death rates at varying ages. By way of the field trip, middle grades students used critical thinking skills to discover that “white” families were buried together, while “black” families were not. While making this discovery, they traced the dates of death of these families to the Civil War era and made these connections to slavery and separation of families. The middle grades students and teacher candidates also discovered differences in wealth and status, even in death, between the two races.
This poster session will show visuals of discoveries that were made in a local cemetery such as segregation, socioeconomic status through titles, jobs, and social groups, and data that includes death rates among infants due to illness. Other discoveries show differences among racial groups in the upkeep of the graves, that families were buried together according to one race but separately per another race during the Civil War due to slavery, and in content on headstone inscriptions.
This poster session will demonstrate the teacher candidates’ achievement of three overall service learning objectives via this experience. First, teacher candidates learned to enable community engagement and promote leadership by directly working with the administration, faculty, and students of Glynn Middle School, the staff at Palmetto Cemetery, and the Service Learning staff at the College of Coastal Georgia. Second, teacher candidates experienced an enhanced understanding of teaching engaging social studies course content by using a real-world classroom environment—the cemetery—as a classroom for teaching social studies and tying other content knowledge to the project. Finally, teacher candidates developed critical and creative thinking and reflection skills by designing social studies lessons and activities that utilized creative, hands-on methods and ideas for tying social studies content to their other content areas.
Program Abstract
Take a journey through a “cemetery” and experience a visual of lessons created from headstones, see what teacher candidates learned from their research in public record of ordinary people, and discover how they tied this together to 8th grade Georgia history social studies standards. Learn how to make history come alive, and discover fascinating facts about your local cemetery such as how to discover socioeconomic status from headstone inscriptions and if your cemetery is segregated!