I was teaching seventh grade after many years in early elementary grades. Seventh graders were wonderful--full of curiosity and adolescent hormones. One morning they’d fly full force into debate about the patriarchy’s oppressive effects on women as depicted in advertising in popular magazines. That afternoon, they’d ask me to go to the library and check out their favorite children’s books, and couldn’t I read to them for an hour? Teaching seventh graders was never dull.

My curriculum was mandated as an interdisciplinary study of Colonial America. Through working with the Teaching for Understanding framework, I was thinking of unit topics that seemed more-rather-than-less Generative (that is, fascinating to these adolescents and to me and central to an appreciation of both American history and history as a discipline). Unfortunately, my own background as an historian was mottled with superficiality, so my own understanding and interest were weak. To me, Colonial America seemed dry and dusty, and I feared that my students either felt the same way or would soon learn from me to view history as dull, unless I found a way to be interested and to engage them.

But what interested them? Like most adolescents (or adults), these students were fascinated by people and spent a good deal of time and energy in observing and reflecting upon the behaviors of those around them--call it gossip if you like. Could we gossip about the people of history? I began thinking of ways to use that primal fascination to help my students find an interest in Colonial America.

Meanwhile, my parents called from Asheville, North Carolina. They were taking a course in the College for Seniors that focused on biography as a source for historical information. Maybe there was something there? I supposed that we could see biography as a highly developed genre evolving from the same roots as gossip. Maybe a study of Colonial America through biography would dispose my students to be interested in the Colonial period? It certainly piqued my interest.

The more I thought, the more I realized how rich the potential was for Colonial Biography to be generative in the pursuit of understanding. The people I knew who loved history all had historical favorites--Jefferson, Gandhi, Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and they knew all about various aspects of their lives. Perhaps I could link my students’ interest in individuals as diverse as Kareen Abdul Jabar, Helen Keller, and Ringo Starr to the categories of information that biographies address. We could compare these biographies of “personal interest,” as I called them, to biographies of influential Founding Fathers and to individuals across a broad spectrum of Colonial lives. We could continue the work we’d begun on assessing historical sources for point of view as we considered what could be seen of the period through these lives, as well as what could not. Thus, the unit would help to bring home once again the importance of using a number of sources thoughtfully. Ultimately, it would support my students in challenging the naive belief that history was the study of facts and truth, helping them to reconstruct their notions about history as interpretations of accounts based on evidence. Suddenly, a “dry and dusty” period had gained life for me, and I suspected it would for my students, too.

We were ready to begin our six week unit on Colonial Biography.

Pictures of Practice Contents Introduction The Colonial Biography Unit (7th Grade History) A Year of Seventh Grade English A Year of Eighth Grade Science The Jazz Unit Snapshot Using the CCDT to Develop Generative Topics