Driving Question: In what ways, are all historical agents "diverse" and "complex" characters?

Project Overview

The title “Sectional Journals” plays on words, with “sectional” referring to an emphasis on the “Sectional Crisis” leading up to the Civil War and a push for student understanding of sectionalized and diversified Civil War perspectives. The word “journals” symbolizes not only the personalized nature of history, but also the fact that students collaborated to create a final “diversity journalism project” that has characteristics of a newspaper. The entire theme of the project is that students are “journalists of the past” trying to “interview” a multitude of perspectives in the Civil War era of American history. In doing so, I hoped that students develop an understanding and appreciation for historical inquiry. The project was staged in four phases, with three formative phases and assessments, and one summative phase and assessment.

Our Process: ELA

In collaboration with Georgia Studies, ELA scholars examined the difficulties that teens have encountered during the COVID19 pandemic in addition to other challenges that quickly propel their transition from adolescence to adulthood without the skills needed to ensure a smooth transformation.

Employing the Georgia Standards of Excellence, students will engage in robust analyses of the Coming of Age concept within both fiction and nonfiction, evaluate dramatic monologues, and interpret visual literacy.

Our Public Products: Rites of Passage

Student original Rites of Passage models will show ways that their communities can support this important stage of development during each phase. It supports the African Proverb by emphasizing the integral role that community plays in raising the child.

Our Process: Georgia Studies

Phase I

Georgia Studies scholars embarked upon a 4 phase journey in their academic journey to answer the driving question, In what ways, are all historical agents "diverse" and "complex" characters?

Phase II: Photo Journalism

Phase III: Interviewing the Past

Georgia Studies scholars were tasked with writing a brief article after “interviewing” a particular assigned historical figure for a Civil War newspaper. They were provided with an array of primary and secondary sources. They had to fill three roles:

-Journalists working in the Civil War context (April 12, 1861 – May 9, 1865)

-Historical figures responding to journalists in this Civil War context

-Students of history who are filling in “historical gaps” with their own background knowledge

Our Public Products

Phase IV

As historical journalists, scholars created a newspaper that incorporates articles, interviews, and photographs that were all based on their regional preferences. Scholars’ newspapers highlighted some of the topics analyzed in Phase I and Phase II. Scholars were tasked with finding relevant photography (primary sources) as introduced in Phase II, and text-based primary and secondary sources as introduced in Phase III. All of the sources and questions tied back to the assigned region.

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