I Got A Letter from the Government
Episode
Through the story of Benjamin Banneker and his letter exchange with Thomas Jefferson, students examine some of the tensions and contradictions between the professed ideals of the United States and and to consider the ways that enslaved people used the professed ideals of the United States to argue for their own liberation.
Curriculum Materials
Standards & Frameworks
These documents map the activites in this module to numerous national and state standards and frameworks.
Basic Lessons
These activities consist of viewing the episode and responding to the discussion prompts embedded in the episode.
The Conversation Continues
This activity consists of additional discussion prompts and resources that delve into the issues raised in the episode.
Timelining to Understand
These activities ask students to place the events discussed in the video in a larger historical context by working with a timeline of US history.
Opening Up the Textbook
These activities ask students to consider the implications of the dominant narrative by seeing how the story in the episode is (or isn’t) talked about in their textbooks.
Document Analysis
These activities pose questions related to one of the stories presented in the episode by providing students with curated, sometimes modified, documents with headnotes and guiding questions.
Into the Archives
These activities ask students to (1) generate their own questions and plan larger inquiries into the historical record regarding the stories presented in the video, and then (2) find, evaluate, and interpret historical documents to develop a research claim.
Deep Dive Read
These activities ask students to closely read, annotate, and interpret complex primary texts mentioned in the episode.
Creative Responses
These activities ask students to practice perspective taking and use creative expression (poetry, music, visual arts, media production, etc.) to deeply process the stories presented in the episode.
Connections, Echoes, and Projections
These activities extend the themes of the story presented in the episode to other events and into the future. These resources and activities help students see how we can use an understanding of the past to make sense of more recent events and imagine a different future.
Additional Resources
These are additional resources that may be useful for teachers and students.