PCHS students use ’Hamilton’ to take a new view on history
November 13, 2024 at 11:28 p.m.
Teaching history in New York can be a bit rigid in terms of getting students engaged, said Port Chester High School teacher Elizabeth Messina.
“Especially in Regents-based courses, it’s somewhat difficult for teachers to push themselves to have creative opportunities for students,” she said. “Because it’s such an overwhelming curriculum, there’s just so much to cover and do, it’s hard to veer away from that.”
But for the last two years, the school has partnered with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to partake in its Hamilton Education Program. The partnership blends the realms and disciplines of theater and history in a way that puts engagement in the spotlight.
Following the success of “Hamilton,” the Tony Award-winning musical created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the non-profit started the initiative in 2015 to give Title 1-eligible schools access to historical documents, recordings of interviews with the show’s creator and guides on how to view history through a different lens.
It culminates with students making a trip to New York City to watch a matinee performance of “Hamilton” at the Richard Rogers Theatre. This year, Port Chester U.S. history students got to visit Broadway on Oct. 30.
The program provided 45 tickets to the performance at a discounted price of $10. But to ensure that the opportunity was available to as many high schoolers as possible, the district covered admission.
“We were able to work with Dr. Katherine Sinsabaugh to make sure the school was able to subsidize the cost,” she said. “As long as a student handed in their permission slip on time, they were going.”
While Messina was quick to admit the program is popular amongst high schoolers because of the show, the staff are drawn to it for what it pulls from their pupils.
“It lets us have students step into the shoes of Lin-Manuel Miranda, but without the focus being on Alexander Hamilton,” Messina said. “Instead, they focus on taking a primary source and turning it into a creative project.”
The Hamilton Education Program was brought into the district last year after theater teacher Christina Baurle shared her previous experience with it.
“Christina brought up that a school she used to work with took part in it and we really started having conversations about the possibility of bringing it here,” Messina recalled. “She put in our application for the program in the spring of 2023 and we were accepted.”
In her experience, Messina has seen two ways students can participate in the program.
“Different classes move at different speeds,” she said. “Some, like the AP courses, have to move faster and allow students to have a little more freedom with what text they’re using. But when I do this with our English Language Learners (ELL), I have them focus on either the Stamp Act of 1765 or Patrick Henry’s speech at the Second Continental Congress.”
After researching their chosen topic, students are challenged to interpret the facts in a creative way, such as a monologue, skit or poem.
“I think it’s a very interesting way for them to look at these things. I think most students don’t really think the historical figures of this era were fueled by the same emotions they feel, so we ask them to tap into those feelings,” Messina said. “They watched a performance of ‘The World Was Wide Enough” and thought about the perspective of who wrote those historical documents.”
The history teacher said the open-ended process led to students submitting projects she likely would not have seen in a traditional assignment.
“One of my students wrote a monologue from the point of view of King George III where he asked why people didn’t understand that he was protecting them through the Stamp Act,” she said. “They really started seeing that there are multiple perspectives to all of these events.”
Messina said the creative freedom brought out sides of her students they’re not always able to demonstrate in her classes.
“I especially saw it with our ELL students,” she said. “As they were looking through our mentor texts from the musical, they saw a style of writing that they weren’t used to. Seeing them adjust and become more comfortable with the assignment was really fun to see as a teacher.”
They were also the group that Messina kept an eye on during the trip to Broadway on Oct. 30—she identified them as the students who most likely didn’t know what they were getting into.
“There were a lot of theater kids who were obviously excited about going to the show,” she said. “But for some of my (ELL) students, it was their first Broadway experience.”
Since Messina was able to watch “Hamilton” for the first time last year—something she’d been trying to do since the show first premiered in 2015—she was able to direct her focus on how her class was taking in the performance this time around.
“I paid extra attention to see what their faces were like during the first song. It was incredible to see them under the glow of the lights while they were in awe of it all,” she said. “They had been listening to the music for a couple of weeks beforehand or maybe they saw it on Disney+, but it’s nothing like actually being there and witnessing it. I can’t wait to see that again next year.”
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