TAH > Writing History

About Writing History

Writing creates history. From the decrees, treaties, letters and journals that provide evidence of the past to the books and essays that interpret the evidence into a reasoned narrative, words dominate our sense of history. More importantly, written language makes possible the differentiation of the present from the past and creates the distance that permits us to think about the past. Preliterate cultures wrap their history, tradition, myth and religion together. Literacy affords a culture the opportunity to review what went before. Because history remains an essentially written understanding of our nation’s past, understanding history and historical thinking depends on understanding writing.

“Writing History” is a Teaching American History grant proposal by the New Bedford (MA) Public Schools in partnership with Bristol Community College and the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, for the benefit of 18 districts in Southeastern Massachusetts. The project seeks to develop the tools teachers use to link history and writing and, through this, improve student understanding of American history. Building the program around the theme of ‘Work and Home’ this Teaching American History project will employ a series of seminars based on the Massachusetts American history standards, with a particular focus on the economic and technologic issues and turning points emphasized in the state curricular framework. We have chosen this theme because it will familiarize Southeastern Massachusetts’ teachers with vital influences in the formation and development of the United States, influences that few textbooks and fewer teachers explore.

In addition, the historical content of the seminars will connect with our pedagogical theme of writing. Teachers will learn to recognize the identity of key writing and key historical skills, as embodied in the state standards, which uniformly begin with describe, explain, analyze and other actions essential to both writing and history. Teachers will acquire new research-based strategies aimed at building their students’ abilities to both develop and demonstrate their historical thinking through writing. Given the premium on writing placed by the new statewide tests of student achievement in American history, this pedagogical approach is both timely and necessary. Colloquia on writing in the history classroom offered through this teaching American history consortium have uncovered a strong desire in teachers at all grade levels to increase their knowledge of using writing to teach history and to build their confidence in their ability to construct meaningful writing assignments. They recognize, as does the research, the intimate tie between learning about the past and writing about the past.

Writing History has three fundamental goals and a fourth more speculative ambition. The project’s basic goals are:

Increased teacher knowledge of the effects of historical events, technology and economics on ‘Work and Home’ in the time periods they teach.
Increased teacher knowledge, recognition and use of the shared skills in historical thinking and writing, specifically description, analysis, use of evidence, and reasoning.
Increased frequency and rigor of history-writing demands on students by teachers involved in Writing History.
Improved history test scores of students in classes taught by participant teachers

The project will achieve these goals through a series of seminars, each equal to half a graduate-level course. Over 240 teachers of American history – half from consortium elementary schools and half from secondary schools – will participate in these seminars, 100 of whom will take a second seminar and qualify for earning graduate credit. A subgroup of those completing graduate credit will compose guidebooks – one for elementary-level teachers and another for secondary-level teachers – on using writing to build historical understanding