LESSON STUDY
OLAUDAH EQUIANO AUTOBIOGRAPHY

III. CONCLUSIONS

1) What issues and questions were the focus of your lesson study?

• Teacher Question: Can students learn that the Triangle Trade was an economic system from Equiano’s experience?
  
• Student Question: What can you understand about the Triangle Trade by looking at the map?

2) In terms of the lesson’s historical content, what did the students learn and what did they not learn?

What the students learned:

• Students learned that each region within the 13 colonies traded a different commodity depending upon local resources and skills
  
• Students were able to identify the historical agents within the triangle trade: the 13 colonies (Northern, Middle, and Southern), commodities, and multiple countries (across Atlantic)
  
• That people were traded as “commodities” within the triangle trade.
  
• Students were empowered to draw own triangle trade map.
  
• By creating own representation of triangle trade, the students were able to draw economic conclusions, spatially place regions, identify trade routes, and decipher geographical significance of regions.
  
• Students learned that there were multiple trades routes (many triangle trades) and that trade routes could be mapped out as multiple shapes (four, five, six points of departure and arrival as opposed to three).

  What the students did not learn:

• The students did not understand the degree to which people were a valued commodity within the triangle trade.
• Students could theoretically understand that profit was inherently part of the triangle trade (basic understanding of capitalism), but not the degree to which profit was driving the triangle trade.

3) In terms of the reading, writing, and historical thinking, what can the students do well and in what areas are they struggling? Be specific as possible.

• Students were able to make an argument and have evidence to support it, however they had difficulty seeing the “big picture.” Such as, “all this information pulled together means this _____________.”
  
• As teachers, we need to empower the students to make interpretative and inferential statements in their writing. This skill is present during class discussion, but not reflective in the writing.

4) What can you say about the possibilities and challenges of using biography as a focus in your teaching of history?

• Students are fascinated by an individual’s story within history. They enjoy a closer look at one person’s life as a way to identify with that time period.
  
• Biography is not as useful and effective without placing the individual within historical context and historical contingencies.
  
• Biography works in giving a lens on human agency and allows for students to accept people as historical agents.
  
• It is difficult to reverse popular myths (i.e. Disney) of historical figures. For example, students in some classes wanted to understand Pocahontas’ significance in American history as a heroine of her people and all Native Americans, rather than as her limited role as a cultural broker between two very different groups of people.
  
• Sue Scott, “Biographies can enhance an understanding of the time period for elementary students. However, I would not study one particular person to develop an understanding of a historical time period. Biography can be used as a supplement not as a focus for a time period. Biography might also be used to emphasize a particular trait you want to point out in historical inquiry. For example, how we emphasized Pocahontas as a diplomat between two cultures. How diplomacy is essential in dominated another.”

5) What intrigues you about the work students produced? What is worth further investigation?

Low

“People made money of the Triangle Trade. Master made slaves grow tobacco and sold it to England. England went to Africa and traded tobacco for slaves. Southern traded rum for slaves. Candiz traded Southern for fish, salt, and wine.”

Medium

By using a map I can understand what was sold and what countries were involve din the Atlantic trade. For example, England, West Indies, Africa, and the thirteen colonies traded among each other. Commodities like cash, gold, iron, sugar cane, people and cotton were traded across the Atlantic Ocean. Other commodities guns, furniture, cloth, and rum were manufactured in England and traded across the Atlantic. England profits more than Africa, the West Indies, and the thirteen colonies Humans are traded with other items like rum and sugar. Africa and the thirteen colonies traded more commodities than England.

High

The map of Europe, Africa, and the thirteen colonies, helped me understand the cycle of trade, and how the traders exchanged the different commodities. The commodities were: codfish, tobacco, sugar, cash, iron, guns, rum, cloth, lumber, and people. People were actually traded, just like any other commodity. These people were Africans who were kidnapped from their homes by other Africans, and sold to traders. The traders then sold them out to places like the West Indies, the thirteen colonies, and Europe. It was an economic system, because in this cycle, there was an agreement of trade, or a way of bargaining with others (unless you were a kidnapped African!). This economic system was called the “Triangle Trade,” otherwise known as “The Slave Trade.” It was a convenient way for England to make a profit, because raw materials would be sent there and manufactured, and then the traders would sell the products. That’s what I learned form the map of the thirteen colonies, Europe, and Africa.

The Slave Trade was a bad system for many Africans who were kidnapped. They were taken away from their homes, then piledi n a cargo ship for up to four months, and to top it off, they were treated like any other commodity. There was no telling whether the slaves would stay alive or not during the long voyage, with lack of air and lack of space. Though the Slave Trade was an example of an economic system, it was unfair to those people who were traded like any other commodity.

6) What issues and questions emerged that you did not anticipate?

• The original idea was to produce one paragraph on the triangle trade, but we had taught so many concepts and new information that it was difficult for the students to do so.
  
• The high level students could consolidate all the information in one paragraph.
  
• The students had more questions about the Triangle Trade as an economic system. They were engaged.
  
• Students were really interested in the exchange of manufactured goods and raw materials. What did it mean to be the center of production? What constituted production?
  
• Student’s are wedded to their historical inaccuracies such as Pocahontas, that Virginia was the center of colonial trade, or that Equiano was exceptional because he could write.