First, I would like to make the comment that I believe everyone in the class has really good ideas for their final projects. What is also wonderful is that I feel our projects are more the part of a collective effort, and it is great that we all got to exchange ideas during Tuesday’s class.
My idea for the final started off quite innocently. I’ve always known that John Evelyn, the famous 17th century diarist, bares a relation to me on my grandmother’s side. I’ve always had an interest in learning more about the man, yet I’ve never found the time to read his diary; until just recently. This new found interest in Evelyn has given me direction for my final.
In short, the idea for my project is geared towards helping students learn how to read primary sources. I would like to take segments from Evelyn’s diary, Vaclav Havel’s Open Letters, and Fredrick Douglas’ writings and get students to read and analyze them. To equal out the playing field, I would also allow students to choose from women in history, such as , Florence Nightingale, Martha Ballard, Dorothea Dix, etc. The main point of this exercise would be give students the necessary tools for conceptualizing primary sources, as well as getting them to take away the “big picture” from the various writings.
To keep them interested, I would also want them to choose anyone they would like to be from history and get them to act out a certain part of a speech, letter, etc. They would be able to do this in groups to make the effort collective. Of course, their ideas would have to get approved by me, their imaginary teacher. This would be made necessary to eliminate the chance of a student choosing somebody controversial, or offensive.
I sincerely hope this will develop fully in thought as well as in practice.
What do you all think?