“After hearing my
grandfather’s stories, I began to understand why he commanded such respect in the family,” Anderson says. “I would never have learned about the Bataan Death March had I not spoken with him. It wasn’t a topic covered in any of my classes. “He didn’t like to talk about those days,” she adds. “It brought up bad memories and nightmares. I saw it in him. He would talk about it on one day, but his nightmares would continue for weeks.” Anderson delivered a presentation about the Bataan Death
students, Anderson could sense a lack of enthusiasm. “Some students just
A group of Anderson’s students dressed from the WWII era for the WWII USO Dance. Courtesy of Michele Anderson
weren’t interested, which was disappointing,” she says. “It made me realize that the stories were more interesting when they came directly from my grandfather. I needed to find a different way to teach the topic.”
She successfully applied for a Michigan Humanities Council
March at Eastern’s 13th Undergraduate Symposium in 1993 and brought her grandfather as a guest. The audience was so engaged that Anderson and Burns had difficulty getting out of the building after the event. While it was her grandfather who sparked Anderson’s interest
in oral history, EMU professor of history and philosophy JoEllen Vinyard influenced her teaching methods. “Our classes took field trips to cemeteries, museums and
historical archives to look at primary sources,” Anderson says. “We visited the site of Al Capone’s hideout in Traverse City. Professor Vinyard taught us that learning history isn’t confined to the classroom.” Field trips have been part of school curriculums for decades.
But Anderson inserts other components in class outings that deepen her students’ knowledge of the significant events associated with the site. “During one trip to Fort Wayne in Detroit, I created a lesson plan about the Treaty of Springwells,” says Anderson, who has been teaching at John Glenn since 1998. “The students reenacted the treaty signing by playing historical characters—either Americans or leading chiefs from local Native American tribes. Then we compared their treaties to the historical treaty. It was amazing to see how close the students’ treaties were to the real one.” Anderson continually
develops new teaching methods to further engage her students. When she first covered the Bataan Death March and related her grandfather’s stories to her
Remembrance boards produced by Anderson’s students
line the hallway leading into the Vietnam USO Dance. Courtesy of Michele Anderson
28 Eastern | SUMMER 2015
grant opportunity to fund oral history interviews, and the oral history project became a central part of her curriculum. For the past three years, Anderson’s students have conducted interviews with World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War vets as well as local defense plant workers. The videotaped interviews are submitted to the Library of Congress for its Veterans History Project. In addition, her students create “remembrance boards,” tri-fold
poster boards displaying photos, documents and brief write-ups about the lives of deceased vets. Boards from past years line the walls of Anderson’s classroom. One honors a World War II soldier who fought the Japanese in a series of battles in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, a campaign that’s rarely covered in high school textbooks. Another board honors a student’s grandfather, who sent messages via Morse code during World War II while stationed in the Pacific. During the school year just ended, Anderson’s juniors and
seniors researched deceased Vietnam War vets, selected through their own families, a local VFW or American Legion, or the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website. While students gathered information online and designed their boards in class, Anderson would envelop the room with period music from a Motown greatest hits CD. One of the guest speakers they got to interview was a veteran who created anti- Communist leaflets to be dropped from U.S. aircraft on North Vietnam. “There isn’t one right way to
teach a subject; you have to use multi-sensory methods,” Anderson says. “If students just answer questions from a book, then only the good readers will excel. We’re trying to create depths of knowledge by taking what we learn and making something new. The remembrance boards allow students to explore areas that interest them. Some students from Inkster began researching veterans
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