A Note for Teachers

This project is the culmination of more than a decade of assigning local history document collections to my college and (dual credit) high school history students. I have had success assigning them to students by individual event/organization (i.e., asking, "What do the documents on student walkouts reveal about South Texas schools during the period?") or as a combination covering several topics (i.e, "What do these documents, together, reveal about South Texas during this period?").

The student response to these documents/projects has been overwhelmingly positive, often even from students who are not otherwise overly committed to the course. Because the topics are rooted in conflict, they work well for showing how things were, what people did to try to change that, and (because students live in the present) how things have changed--or not--since then. The subjects are new to almost all of my students, but nearly every semester I have had a student report back, after speaking to family about their project, that a relative was involved in one of these events.

My biggest successes with these collections have come from assigning them as a two-step term project: first, a short paper analyzing the documents related to a specific topic; second, a simple creative project (a poster, zine, Storymap, etc.) based on that paper. During finals weeks, the hallways and bulletin boards of Del Mar College are often plastered with these posters, (hopefully) teaching students and faculty alike about our collective history. I explain to students that these are public history projects (and some students choose not to include their names). We also discuss how different media connect with different kinds of audiences (an audience of one professor for their class paper vs. an audience of other students for their posters).

A student StoryMap project:

Student poster projects:

Though ultimately less fun for me, I have also asked students to turn their papers into blog entries. Some of these essays have since been cited by Swarthmore College's "Global Nonviolent Action Database" as well as by the Library of Congress--an impressive reach for an introductory course assignment!

A student blog:

Alternatively, in class, I have also assigned one reading per student and then asked that student (or group of students) to tell the class the 3-5 most important specific details (i.e., that farm workers were paid less than minimum wage, that high school students were physically abused at school, etc.), which I list on the class board. Then, together, we bring these details together and attempt to understand what, broadly, was going on in South Texas in the mid-20th century (the agricultural economy, segregation, poverty, violence, etc. -- and how they were related).

These documents/projects can also be used in conjunction with public monuments (for example, the Hector P. Garcia statue at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, a historical marker in downtown Corpus Christi recognizing the 1966 farm worker march, a historical marker at Del Mar College, Lavernis Royal's sculpture in the stairwell of Del Mar College's Harvin Center) or with documentary films on Hector P. Garcia, the farm workers' march, or the student walkouts.

More student posters and zines are on the front page of this site (at the bottom, below the links to the sources). I would also love to hear how other teachers and students use these collections!

Dawson Barrett

Associate Professor of History

Del Mar College