六合彩彩票

In a place-based course called Erie Experience, students in Fairview, Pennsylvania, learn about all things local, from ecology to economy. In the Urban Legends unit, they learn the value鈥攁nd the pitfalls鈥攐f oral history, as they dig into some of their region鈥檚 most salacious supernatural tales. 

History teacher and librarian Benjamin Barbour often starts this unit with a game of telephone, to demonstrate how stories change from one teller to the next. Students then get the opportunity to examine primary and secondary source documents behind the urban legends, and they think about how and why the legends have changed over time, which sharpens their critical thinking skills. 

鈥淚鈥檓 very interested in the stories in our area,鈥� says Barbour. 鈥淭hese are often fantastic stories, supernatural stories, but I look at them as very, very important historical elements, whether they鈥檙e true or not. They tell us, the listener, something about the community. So they鈥檙e, to me, very profound psychological and sociological tools to learn about people in a specific region.鈥�

After learning about these stories in the classroom, students head out on a field trip to the actual sites of these legends. Visiting these historical places in their own backyard makes the stories all the more real and cements students鈥� learning about how to find the grains of truth in sensational tales from the past. 

What else do students get out of this unit (besides having fun)? 鈥漈hese stories tell us something about the community. What that community values. What that community fears. It tells us about the prejudices at the time. The biases. It鈥檚 a gateway to understanding history,鈥� Barbour says. Ultimately, he hopes that learning a little more about local history鈥攁nd the context around these colorful urban legends鈥攚ill translate into students鈥� feeling a stronger connection to their community.

For more information about this lesson, see Barbour鈥檚 article for 六合彩彩票, 鈥�What Students Can Learn From Studying Urban Legends.鈥�