Who's Your Source?

As a child, I remember enjoying television crime series and was hooked by the who-dun-it. Somewhere in the dialogue, you’d inevitably hear, “Who’s your source?” 

It was common knowledge to viewers that police couldn’t use “hearsay” or a non-credible source. Somewhere in our modern-day reporting, millennials have missed that. Our students don’t bother to “check their sources” or evaluate informants. Perhaps that is why source-evaluation ended up in the Common Core Writing for Information Standards (CCSS.ELA-Literacy W 7,8 ).

In our age of information overload, there is perhaps no more vital skill to teach our students than how to evaluate sources for credibility, accuracy, reliability, and/or bias. In that evaluation process, students often have to learn to return to primary sources as they frequently provide us with the measuring stick for evaluation.  

Primary sources inspire inquiry. However and whenever you use these rich resources, it causes the students to question. That’s right. They are forced to move from the concrete to get to the “why” and “how come.” Primary sources start with observation and move to questioning, setting the stage for deep understanding. That in itself is good pedagogy that engages the learner.

There is no end to the ways in which a teacher-librarian could work with colleagues to change the delivery of lessons. For example, to change the Emancipation Proclamation they could have students dig up old newspapers from around the country from shortly after the November 19, 1863 delivery of the Gettysburg Address. The reaction to Lincoln’s short speech was drastically different around the nation. We hold this speech near and dear in history, yet newspapers in Chicago, London, and Harrisburg reported it as a flop.

In the New York Herald, you will find articles side-by-side on the Gettysburg Address as well as a new method for pulling teeth painlessly with nitrous oxide. We tend to teach history separate from chemistry, but there’s an example how a primary source can bridge a gap and help eliminate the silos that exist within our buildings. Students can be transported back in time with all the details of life as “we” knew it.

We frequently associate primary sources with history and research within that discipline. However, primary sources can extend into other disciplines just as easily: speeches can be used to teach grammar as well as history; the research on a drug’s efficacy could be integrated into chemistry; original magazine publications such as National Geographic can provide the background information on topics from exploration to geology.  Primary sources can become the springboard for instruction in almost any discipline. For example, a photo of the Ford assembly line from 1910 (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a20510/) could arouse curiosity and connect to prior knowledge, before lessons on the Progressive Era, inventions, labor laws, or biographies.    

For decades, if not centuries, there has been a debate as to whether Thomas Jefferson “fathered” children by his slave Sally Hemings. To settle this, both sides have returned to primary sources and are supporting their position via documents. To all this they have added DNA testing, and the argument still rages on [https://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-brief-account]

Please don’t miss the great ideas in this issue. These articles will help you and your peers understand how to use primary sources, how to connect these ragged-old-things to the millennial student, and hopefully offer you many ideas for linking these historical gems to real-world instruction. Primary sources will help reach our millennial learners, who live in the here-and-now, about life way-back-then.