Dialogue with the Past - (American Association for State and Local History) by Glenn Whitman (Hardcover)

About the Book

Oral history is a marvelous force for empowering young people with a love of history. Peppered with useful tips, examples from students and teachers, and reproducible forms, along with an comprehensive bibliography, this book will be a vital and inspirational tool for anyone w...

Book Synopsis

Oral history is a marvelous force for empowering young people with a love of history. Peppered with useful tips, examples from students and teachers, and reproducible forms, along with an comprehensive bibliography, this book will be a vital and inspirational tool for anyone working with secondary students to plan and carryout oral history projects.

Review Quotes

Dialogue with the Past is a comprehensive and innovative resource for the secondary school educator. Containing an excellent balance of theoretical and practically applied methodologies, the publication provides field-tested oral history strategies that allow an educator to implement mandated curricula while integrating creative, interactive, and thought-provoking instruction. Mr. Whitman's strategically crafted volume is highly recommended for any educator interested in providing a personal dimension to the instruction of history. Dialogue with the Past supports the mission of the Consortium of Oral History Educators: 'Preparing the next generation of oral historians.'

Dialogue With The Past brings vibrant currency to middle and high school oral history. Whitman's writing is articulate, passionate, and richly detailed. Both novice and experienced oral history educators will find the inclusion of ready-made worksheets, assessment rubrics and connections to standards most valuable. A 'must have' for educators who want to bring the study of history into the present and preserve the stories that illuminate our past.

As a teacher who uses oral history creatively in his classes, Glenn Whitman shares his enthusiasm, expertise, and high expectations in this handy manual. Dialogue With the Past offers teachers wise advice and a detailed design for implementing student oral history projects.

Glenn Whitman has provided history educators with a fresh look and approach to making history palpable and real for young people. In the hands of teachers, Dialogue with the Past will, indeed, provide opportunities for teachers and students to do just that, dialogue with the past.

Glenn Whitman provided a comprehensive, thorough, and current overview of the field of learning and teaching oral history. . . . The book has become just what the author intended it to be: 'An all-encompassing resource to aid [teachers] in the integration of oral history programs.'

Glenn Whitman's Dialogue with the Past leads us through the steps teachers can use to conduct oral history with K-12 students. But his book is far more than methodology. He writes with the authority of a decade of experience working with students, as well as numerous interviews with teachers and students about their experiences with oral history projects. Whitman also shows how oral history projects meet history standards, why experiencing history through interviews is more likely to remain with students than reading about it, and how students package oral history projects by presenting and binding or otherwise preserving them. In the end, oral history projects are one of the best ways to ensure civic engagement in a civil society. This book will serve educators concerned with history, anthropology, lived experience, and art, to improve the written, oral, communications and analytic skills of any group of students, while at the same time deepening their personalization of history and sense of community.

High school students and middle school students not only can learn history but also can do history. Indeed, they often do history better than they learn it. Teachers are ready to get their students into a Dialogue with the Past. Whitman not only persuades that oral history is important, he also shows how to teach students to do it, every step of the way.

Teachers hoping to foster students' understanding of how history is shaped and provide a firsthand experience of how historians work will find a comprehensive guidebook in Dialogue with the Past.

Whitman, an experienced teacher, has written a clear, practical, and readable book that lays out why teachers should use oral history and how they might integrate methods into their middle- and secondary-level history classes. Whitman provides a step-by-step guide for readers to implement their own versions of what he terms his American Century Project. . . . This is an excellent, much welcomed resource to help teachers and teacher educators elevate oral history to its rightful place in the center of history pedagogy. Summing up: Highly recommended.

About the Author

Glenn Whitman is currently history department chairman at St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland. He has been using oral history as an educational methodology with students at three independent schools since 1991. In 1997 his work with students was recognized by the Oral History Association's Pre-collegiate Teaching Award. Whitman has been active in regional and national oral history activities for many years. He has served as an At-Large board member for Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region and presented at the Oral History Association's annual conference. In addition to sharing his work with oral historians and educators through conferences and workshops, Whitman wrote 'Teaching Students How to Be Historians: An Oral History Project for the Pre-collegiate Classroom' (The History Teacher, Fall 2000).