Sara E. Thomas
In the original book of New Haven’s Neighborhoods there are profiles of important people within the neighborhood -- owners of important businesses, organizations, churches, etc. Along with an interview of each person, there is a contour line drawing of each person. The first year that I teach I would like to focus on buildings, as I planned above. The following year, I would like students to repeat the process, however instead of going through the process with buildings and architecture, I would like them to learn to take portraits of the people who represent each neighborhood. Students will need to successfully represent each person through an image and will have to use placement, lighting and camera angle in order to tell something about the individual in the image.
Students will go through the same process of creating a Google My Map, and will also go through learning Feldman’s process, but this time for discussing portraits instead.
Each student will then be assigned an oral history of someone who used to live in the neighborhood they’ve chosen. I would like to pre-select these people so that each group has at least four different individuals and each one is from a different time period. This way along with looking at the maps students will be able to place a voice to the changes that were taking place in the neighborhood at the time. Along with buildings students will also research people living in that neighborhood at that time. Each student in the group will be responsible for researching the life of one particular individual from that neighborhood. Hopefully in this way students will have about four different personal views of the same neighborhood.
Students will present their neighborhood and the person whom they have followed throughout a lifetime in that particular neighborhood. Once students have gone through this process -- looked at and analyzed photos, listened to oral histories, looked at and compared maps, they will be challenged to choose a new person who lives in the neighborhood now to highlight. Students will also add these individuals to their Google my maps, using the place marker tool. Students will include information about the person, and quotes from them about the neighborhood. In this way the map will contain history through maps, buildings and first hand accounts of each neighborhood.
Next students will each choose a present day inhabitant of the neighborhood to highlight. Each student will write their own oral history of an inhabitant of their chosen neighborhood. They will take portraits of that particular individual, record their oral history, and also photograph buildings and landmarks, which are currently in the neighborhood and are of important significance to their interviewee. This will be the second part of the book, where portraits are added.