Tony Chiado

The refrain about the dullness of United States History is common enough. A large country spanning several centuries, US history feels distant to students both temporally and spatially. And across that distance, the importance of US history often dissipates before it reaches students. The remnants of those histories, by the time they arrive in the classroom, don’t pack the same punch.

But students have a natural born curiosity about the world around them. They know neighborhoods, street names, landmarks, and maybe even some local historical figures. Connecting the history of the community around them to the larger narrative of US history contextualizes and makes relevant the subject matter that students must know to be responsible, compassionate, and impactful citizens.

When I taught American Literature at Metro High School in St. Louis, I always sought to surround the texts my students read with historical context. Reading Walt Whitman’s poetry, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Langston Hughes’ poetry, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, and August Wilson’s “Fences” (to name a few), my students studied the larger moments in which those texts were produced aiming to understand the extent to which contemporary events shaped the production of literature.

At the same time, I knew students needed a better understanding of what those contemporary events looked like. With Gatsby, students explored the boom of St. Louis in the 1920s, alongside the nation, and examined the rise of the city’s art deco architecture, speakeasy culture, and terraforming of the historic city to the emergence of the automobile. With Fences, we explored St. Louis’ history of redlining, urban renewal, and racial segregation drawing parallels to Wilson’s Pittsburgh and cities across the nation during the 20th century.

Upon moving back to Seattle, I shifted from teaching American Literature into a U.S. History position. And the importance of connecting local history to U.S. History became even more clear. In everything we examine as a class, I work hard to pull relevant documents for students to explore. Why briefly gloss over redlining when we can look at the real maps that existed and discuss how that has impacted the geography and built environment of the city today? What good would looking at the Great Depression do if my students didn’t know about the massive Hooverville on the city’s tide flats south of downtown?

The rapid growth of the west via the arrival of the transcontinental railroad, anti-Chinese sentiments boiling over into violent expulsion, Japanese-American internment, white flight following WWII, the racist and classist basis for zoning codes: Seattle and Washington, and cities and states across the nation can be used as case studies over and over again to contextualize the national trends that have shaped our collective history. And in doing so, students begin to understand why the community they live in looks the way it does. It not only gives a local reference point for US History, it also provides a modern perspective. Because they see the city around them today and are beginning to understand the forces that shaped the city, they are better able to evaluate the long-term consequences of policies. This in turn allows students to begin to think about what must be done to right the wrongs of history. There’s a real practicality to embedding local history into the study of a national history.

It’s more work as a teacher. The curricular framework isn’t readily available. Local museums and historians, I’ve found, are more than happy to help put resources into teachers hands and support them with filling gaps in knowledge. But embedding the local context into the national curriculum is so, so worth it. Particularly because I have a deep passion for local history and its rarely told or forgotten stories, my energy for the topic radiates through my lessons and the work done in my classroom. Students feel the passion and understand why history matters: because we live it, both the input and the output. It surrounds us and we become it. And with that knowledge, we are emboldened in the present to act.