High School History Teacher
Peace Corp Timeline
This is an example of an assignment called, “Kids as Curators” made by using the presidentialtimeline.org website. In a project like this, students will be in charge of creating a museum exhibit of a specific place, event, or person. Students will be tasked with researching what they chose, assembling primary source documents, and presenting them in a fashion that explains the history what they chose. The benefits of a project like this are many. Students get to design the project as they see fit, interact with primary source documents and asses what they think are the most important documents, as well as write and explain why they think those documents are so important. This example is based on the creation of the Peace Corps, and it was made by me and a fellow student teacher.
Here is one of the first documents that we used on our "Kids as Curators" project. This is a letter, written by a female student at Green State University, that expresses her wishes to "answer the call to youth." She is referencing JFK's University of Michigan Speech that called for the youth of America to go out and amongst the world's people to assist them and to make the United States more open to its world neighbors. The writer makes two distinct pleas to President Kennedy. The first is a plea to help the world in any small way, stating that it is the duty of the youth of America to aid the world not only as American citizens, but citizens of the world. The second plea if for President Kennedy to find a role that the women youth of America can fulfill. She argues that countries around the world do not only need dams, bridges, and defense highways, but also education, sanitation, and child care that she believes women are best suited to do.
Next is a document that comes midway through our project when the Peace Corps has been officially established and working in various places around the world. It is a school's newspaper that details the new library that has been opened thanks to the Peace Corps. This is only a section of the newspaper as a whole, but in it you can see the work that the Peace Corps has already managed. They updated the school's old style of library with new books, and the new modern system of borrowing and arranging books. The newspaper makes mention of a gift from an American middle school that allowed them to buy over 100 new books, and that they plan by the end of July that year to have over 1000 books to lend.
The final document is a letter written to Jacqueline Kennedy after the assassination of her husband. The letter was written by a student in Malaysia and extends the sympathy of her entire school to Ms. Kennedy during such a hard time. Specifically, the student notes how their school has three men of the Peace Corps there, and how through them, the students have learned to respect the Kennedy Administration and the vision of President Kennedy for not only America, but the world. It demonstrates the effect that the Peace Corps had around the world, and just what it meant to people outside of America.