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Boston Desegregation Educational Resources

Welcome to the Boston Desegregation Educational Resources page! We believe that students should be learning about history through the help of primary sources, since primary sources help make history real and exciting. However, we understand going through the archives and locating documents, as well as researching and understanding them, can be time consuming, and often is not a realistic goal during a social studies class period.

To help you with this dilemma, we have created educational units that contain primary source sets, and multiple activities that you can do with your students to incorporate primary source learning into your classroom. These units range from day long lessons, to weekly units, that you can customize to fit your class size, class length, and to fit in with your units addressing Desegregation and Court-Ordered Busing in Boston, Massachusetts.

We want your students to connect with our collections, not only because our records contain rich resources to help them better understand local content, but also because primary sources allow for more critical thinking, discussion, and historical context for students. Take a look through our pre-made units, and invite your students to view history through the eyes, thoughts, and written words of the people who lived it.


Teacher Materials

What happened during Desegregation and Forced Busing?
Give your students a quick overview of desegregation and forced busing using this abstract.

Timeline of Events
Help your students locate main events and place them within historical context using this timeline of the busing crisis.

Key People and Terms
Help your students understand the key vocabulary and important people, organizations, and documents related to desegregation and forced busing in Boston.


Lesson Plans/Primary Source Units

Unit One: Timelines Using Primary Sources 
This unit will allow students to interpret and construct timelines that show how events and eras in various parts of the country are related to one another. Students will also be able to show connections, casual and otherwise, between particular historical events and ideas and larger social, economic, and political trends and developments. For some versions of the activity, students will be able to explain how a cause and effect relationship is different from a sequence or correlation of events.

Unit Two: Charting, Graphs, and Primary Sources
This unit will allow students to interpret and construct charts and graphs that show quantitative information. Students will also be able to explain how a cause and effect relationship is different from a sequence or correlation of events, even distinguishing between long-term and short-term cause and effect relationships.

Unit Three: Exploring the Truth in Primary Sources
This unit will allow students to distinguish between historical fact from opinion as well as interpret the past within its own historical context rather than in terms of present-day norms and values. Students will also be able to distinguish intended from unintended consequences.

Unit Four: Comparing and Contrasting the Past
This unit will allow students to interpret the past within its own historical context rather than in terms of present-day norms and values.

Unit Five: Meeting Historical Figures through Primary Sources
This unit will allow students to interpret the past within its own historical context rather than in terms of present-day norms and values.


Additional Resources 

“Using Primary Sources”
http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/primarySources.html

“World History Teacher’s Blog”
http://worldhistoryeducatorsblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/primary-sources-teaching-students-to.html

“The Teaching Channel”
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/reading-like-a-historian-curriculum

“Stark and Subtle Divisions: A Collaborative History of Segregation in Boston”
https://bosdesca.omeka.net/

“Primary Source Discussion Questions”
https://www.tn.gov/assets/entities/education/leaders/attachments/tdoe3-summer2015LP-Creating_Primary_Source_Discussion_Questions.pdf

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