I
have been off the grid for a few weeks. Celebrating my 25th Wedding Anniversary
in our 50th State - Yes – Hawaii! And of course no celebration would be
complete without presenting a workshop on the Common Core and Nonfiction. I
really wasn’t sure if I was more excited about being in Hawaii or getting to do
a presentation in one of the best locations on this planet.
I
presented a workshop for the Hawaii Association of School Librarians (HASL) on a Saturday
morning program with over 30 attendees.
Several attendees joined us remotely via the Internet from other
islands. Marc Aronson joined us
via Web-ex for part of the workshop.
Our main focus was on Common Core, Nonfiction, and the important role
point of view has in the standards as well as reviewing what a “cluster of
resources” would look like.
Attendees had time to work in groups and create clusters before the
workshop drew to a close. This
HASL Help session just flew by. I brought several autographed copies of
Marc’s latest book The Skull in the Rock
to giveaway but the big hit of the morning was Marc and Marina’s book – Sugar Changed the World – I gave away
five autographed copies of this book.
Sugar has a rich history in Hawaii.
Several
unique resources were uncovered in my research for this workshop. The workshop was held at the Pearl
Ridge Elementary School Library on Oahu and our host librarian was Loretta
Nelson. I want to thank Loretta
for helping me pull out great local samples of resources right from the library
shelves to use during the workshop.
I
created a cluster of resources on sugar plantations from the library catalog
within several moments.
The
resource that intrigued me the most was the – Register of the Grove Farm Plantation records and papers of George N.
Wilcox, Samuel W. Wilcox, Emma L. Wilcox, Elsie H. Wilcox and Mabel I. Wilcox, Lihue,
Kauai, HI : Grove Farm Homestead, 1982.
This 114 page soft cover booklet provides a detailed description of the
life that was Grove Farm Plantation – right down to specific household inventory
when the estate was settled.
This
cluster started with Sugar Changed the
World for the broad perspective and then narrowed down to the local history
of Grove Farm Plantation booklet then
I added a work of fiction titled – Plantation
Child and Other Stories by Eve Begley Kiehm. We then moved into electronic resources, which included the
resources available at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, which currently has an
exhibit showing until the Summer of 2013 entitled Tradition and Transition:
Stories of Hawai‘i Immigrants.
The museum has a searchable library and archive of artifacts as well for
educators to use. http://bishopmuseumlib.lib.hawaii.edu/
Web
resources to include: Hawaiian
Sugar Planters’ Association – Plantation Archives http://www2.hawaii.edu/~speccoll/hawaiihspa.html
and one of the best web sites I would recommend is the Hawaii Plantation Village web site which is an outdoor history
museum that tells the story of the life on Hawaii’s Sugar Plantations (1850 –
1950) Great resource with PDF at bottom of the web site front page.
You
could add more resources about sugar plantations from around the world or focus
in on a specific geographic location.
You could compare and contrast different types of plantations. What was different about a tobacco
plantation or a cotton plantation as compared to a sugar plantation? Students can research to find evidence
and first hand accounts of life on plantations. There are many variables to include in a cluster of this
nature.
I
want to thank Patty Louis and Diane Mokuau, Co-Presidents of HASL and Michelle
Colte, VP of Programming at HASL for the wonderful welcome and to all the enthusiastic
participants on a Saturday morning. Mahalo! I look forward to a return trip very soon:)
See
the November 2012 Issue of School Library Journal for more on clustering in the article that
Marc and I just has published.
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