Lindsay Stewart
Easton Middle School
‘Picturing the Past’ Blog post
The Civil war art I would choose to use in my classroom would be the 15th Amendment piece that we viewed first on our 2-day trip. This piece first struck me because of it’s similarity to a bulletin board I did with my classes based on the Bill of Rights. Using the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, students created a visual statement with a 1 word caption that represented a right guaranteed to U.S. citizens and put them up on the bulletin board around a copy of the document that I placed in the center. This is similar to the concept map or web we discussed while talking about this piece.
Having just begun coverage of reconstruction with my 8th graders, I would use this piece of artwork as a springboard by projecting it, without it’s title, and asking students to explain what they see; similar to how we were first introduced to the work. I would then ask students to re-read the 15th amendment from our textbook to themselves. After reading we would revisit their original analysis of their work see if they still felt the same way about the piece, or if they wanted to alter their thoughts.
After giving students time to make a more educated analysis of the work, I would walk them through each facet of the print. This is where the technology in my classroom will be a great help. By projecting the work on my smartboard, I have the ability to cover up what I don’t want students to focus on, magnify specific scenes, and highlight details that might have been overlooked – like when we overlooked the scene of the African American casting a ballot. When I was first introduced to this work I was overwhelmed. There was a lot of information within the piece and I found it hard to focus in on one thing. With the smart board I can help eliminate some of those distracters and use the print as a tool to teach the rights in the 15th amendment.
After a more in depth guided analysis, I would ask students to move into small groups and brainstorm on the benefits or purpose behind this particular portrayal of the 15th amendment and if they think this is a fair representation. I would hope to pull out of them that this is a very optimistic and positive representations of the 15th amendment and that it could have been used as propaganda of some sort. As an extension I would ask the students to create what they would think was a more truthful representation of the 15th amendment. I would tell them it does NOT have to look like the art we were studying, but I want it to show what the 15th amendment was actually like at the time. I have been stressing with my students that the Civil War was neighbor vs. neighbor and people didn’t wake up after Appomattox and befriend their cousin, neighbor, etc. who was killing people they knew and loved – there was a lot of trouble in joining the Union and the Confederacy. I would hope to see a bit more contention or animosity in their artwork – something closer to the feelings of the general populous at the time. I would close with a simple discussion question: How would this artwork make people feel at that time? I would hope they would be able to respond that the Northerners would applaud the artist and be very happy with such works, but the southerners would generally disagree with it and find it offensive.
