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Teaching
House Museums
by
Helen McKenna-Uff
For all their
differences, some of the similarities between Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe
are striking. Both were innovative
nineteenth century authors who dramatically altered the world literary scene. Whitman revolutionized poetry; Poe invented
the modern detective story and also helped pave the way for the modern
psychological novel. Both authors
struggled financially, toiling away at poorly compensated editorial and
critical writing when their hearts were devoted to poetry, suffering the
frustration of not having their works receive the respect that both were
certain they deserved. Both also lived
for a time in the Delaware Valley.
Because they were not wealthy, their homes there were far less grand than
those of some other well-known American writers, writers like Harriet Beecher
Stowe and Mark Twain of Hartford, Connecticut, but because of their popularity,
their houses have been preserved, and they stand today as important museums
dedicated to the teaching of their lives and art. Close to the Delaware River, Whitman had a residence at 328
Mickle Street in Camden, New Jersey, from 1884 until his death in 1892, and Poe
lived at 234 (now 530) North Seventh Street in Philadelphia (across the river
from Camden) from 1843-44. Recently,
both Whitman's and Poe's homes have undergone renovations; both are open to the
public and available for teachers to bring their students. This piece investigates how the Whitman
House and the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site collaborate with teachers
to provide rewarding educational experiences and to develop pedagogies that
make creative use of these artifacts.
***
Some teachers use house
museums as a way to introduce their students to a particular subject without
first exposing them to any of the work or history of the resident. Unfortunately, the results can be
poor. Here's one scenario: A bus pulls up in front of a museum. A teacher stands up and reminds the group,
"Now you know, this is the first trip I'm taking you on this year. These trips are expensive and I went to a
lot of work to get us here. If you
misbehave, I'm warning you, that's it.
Listen to everything you hear at this museum because there's going to be
a quiz. And we're going to be studying
this author in the Spring [it's now November] so the more you learn now the
easier this will be in April."
Twenty-five eighth graders reluctantly rouse themselves from their seats
and drag their coats and bags behind them. They are greeted by a guide who asks
them, "What works of the author have you read?" "None." "Who can tell me what this author is famous for?" [No response.] "Why do you think your teacher brought you here
today?" "To get out of the
classroom." "Well, I have a
lot to tell you about and little time to do it in. Let's try to make the most of this experience and have some
fun." The group listlessly
shuffles in behind the guide.
The above scenario,
thankfully, is becoming less common as house museums devise ways to make their
sites more education friendly. What is
obvious to museum workers is that the more care teachers take to prepare their
classes for field trips, the more rewarding those trips become for students.
Improving preparatory
materials to help focus the visits of future school trips greatly enhances the
experience for the students. Teachers
have long-term relationships with their students and can build on prior lesson
plans to make smooth transitions into new material; they know their groups and
know what works are most likely to capture their students' interests. According to Margaret O'Neil, who was until
recently curator of the Whitman House (she is now Research Interpretive
Specialist for the State of New Jersey), "Often the students come with no
background. It's nice when the teacher
has planned in advance and the teacher has taught Whitman. Using the preparatory materials that we've
sent them makes such a difference. The
students come, and they're excited."
Recently, both the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site and the Walt
Whitman House have developed handbooks to assist and encourage teachers to
prepare their classes to visit these sites.
***
Under the National Park
Service program called "Parks as Classrooms," the Poe site received a
grant to develop a teachers' handbook.
The site had been using a handbook compiled many years ago, a
cut-and-paste affair that was embarrassingly outdated. Park Ranger Joanne Schillizzi was assigned
the job of handbook author and went to the task with zeal. One of the benefits of writing a new
handbook was the opportunity it afforded the site to formally request feedback
from the teachers who visit. Schillizzi
developed a questionnaire to survey teachers and students to see what they like
and don't like. In addition, Schillizzi
asked the teachers what they would appreciate in terms of support
material. In order to understand the
teachers' needs, Schillizzi familiarized herself with curriculum standards, and
age-appropriate activities. Teachers
wanted the museum to (1) encourage critical thinking; (2) get students to work
as teams; and (3) provide as much interaction as possible.
Teachers'
responses to Schillizzi's questionnaire were reassuring: most said that they didn't want to see the
program changed at all. Schillizzi
recalls that many of the teachers mentioned appreciating how often rangers
quoted Poe; they felt that, "If
the students are going to be in Poe's home they should hear Poe’s actual
words." Most of the teachers who
bring students to the Poe site teach English.
However, the needs and perspectives of the teachers were varied. The site had been providing teachers with a
lot of biographical information about Poe prior to a school visit. The teachers were very clear about wanting
more historical information to be made available to them beforehand. As Schillizzi reports, "They wanted
easy access information that would help put Poe and his stories into context
with his times and contemporaries. They
also wanted 'fun facts,' things that would help enliven what they were already
doing in the classroom. We did the
research for them and then gave them the resources so [that], if they wanted
to, they could direct their students to do further research. Also, teachers wanted to know where Poe got
his ideas. They don't have time to
research someone like Mabbot [a Poe scholar who tracked down, with astonishing
care, Poe's sources for all his major works]. "
When asked what the Poe
site offered that the teachers most valued, the responses were sometimes surprising. One teacher especially valued the emphasis
we put on the fact that Poe could not function when drinking, dispelling the
myth that alcohol inspired Poe creatively and helped him to write. Another teacher had spent time with her
fourth-grade students illustrating the value of inflection and expression when
reading aloud, which was reinforced by the ranger's recitation of Poe's
works. Some come to the Poe site to
illustrate to their students some of the principles of how to write a short
story; others come to investigate the work of Poe in cultural context,
Philadelphia's heritage, or architectural style.
Museum
staff at these sites do in-depth research of the resident's life and
times. Teachers who are teaching a
topic for a day, a week, or even an entire semester, would not be likely to
have the time to research this one author at the level of the site's
staff. Indeed, a major reason to visit
a house museum with a classroom is the staff, whose job it is to present the
subject in a way that hopefully inspires the visitor to develop his or her
interest further.
For
the handbook, Schillizzi looked over the curriculum standards, and, with those
in mind, compiled research resources, including primary sources that are often
quoted in the standard Poe biographies.
Students
may use the primary sources to gain understanding of Poe's life, to recognize
that various Poe biographers have edited this material to support their biases:
that Poe is a maniac or a drug addict, a hack, etc. In fact, one chapter of the
handbook, "A Reputation Ruined," illustrates how Poe's enemy, Rufus
Griswold, libeled Poe and manipulated primary source material to back his
lies. A student activity in that
chapter has students investigate the subtle ways that Griswold changed the primary
material, exposing the students to scholarly inquiry and sound research
skills.
***
As
at the Poe site, a typical school tour of the Whitman House starts with a
video. O'Neil often conducts a slide
presentation to "give them [the students] some context and background of
how new the United States was. There
wasn't a cultural identity formed yet."
I asked her to describe an ideal student visit to her site. What she described was an actual visit from
fifth-grade students of the Oaklyn Public School, Oaklyn, New Jersey, led by
Linda Hess. Hess was one of the
teachers who wrote the handbook for the Whitman House and developed the pre-
and post-visit lesson plans for the fourth through sixth grades, consisting of
six or more classroom sessions. The
project was funded by a grant from the Geraldine Dodge Foundation.
O'Neil
regarded the Oaklyn students' visit as one of the most rewarding experiences
she had had with a school group. As she
recalls, "Hess had found many interesting tie-ins for her students. Oaklyn Public School is in the shadow of the
Walt Whitman Bridge [a bridge that spans the Dealware River, connecting
Pennsylvania to New Jersey]. The bridge
is what the students associated with the name 'Walt Whitman.' Hess used the bridge as a point of
departure. The class went into the
history of how the bridge was named.
Another unit investigated how other famous or familiar objects got their
names. Hess tied this unit in with some
of the objects in the collection that the children would see when they visited
the Whitman House. Among the objects
and their makers, they studied the history of daguerreotypes, named for
inventor Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre.
They learned about the Philadelphia hat-maker, John B. Stetson, and the
style hat that was named after him.
Hess told her class that when they visited the Whitman House they would
see a daguerreotype of Whitman and the trademark Stetson hat that belonged to
him: "The students came to the
Whitman House so excited about Walt Whitman; they were jumping out of their
skins. They made really interesting connections." Showing the students the famous frontispiece
from the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, an engraving of the
daguerreotype of Whitman in which he is dressed in casual attire, shirt collar
open and hat cocked, O'Neil remarks, "I often ask the students why they
think Walt would have chosen such an image. I ask them, 'if you were writing a
book for the first time, what kind of picture would you like of yourself? Would you be all dressed up, or would you be
wearing your baseball cap?' So this one
little fellow was just squirming—he had to speak—and he said, 'Its like the
free verse of clothes.' So he absolutely
made the connection. This is someone who is not following the rules, who's got
his own agenda. It was wonderful. So what a valuable experience they had as
fifth graders."
Hess
chose poems to read with her fifth-graders that she believed were the most
accessible, including "I Hear America Singing." The students then wrote their own
Whitman-esque poem, "I Hear Oaklyn School Singing," cataloguing all
the things that they cherished in and about their school. Obviously, the preparation
beforehand—coordinating lesson plans with Whitman's writings, his home, and the
objects in it—allowed these students to gain a deep appreciation for the author
and poetry in general. The success of
this experience with fifth-graders led O'Neil to remark that "It's
unfortunate that we don't get them here until high school. Teachers have it set in their mind that this
is not appropriate for younger grades."
As O'Neil observes, 'One of my favorite of Whitman's poems is
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." I
think it comes in handy so often, because it's very accessible. I think tenth graders could absolutely understand
what he's doing there. There's
something so compelling about his reaching through time and saying, 'You, the
next generation, or so many generations hence.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt.' It really reaches out to you from
beyond. I think you'd have to be pretty
hardened not to have that reach you. I
think that's a good place to start. And
when you visit here, you can go down the street and see the river. He could go down the street and ride the
ferries, which he loved to do."
When
asked about the value of visiting a place in person as opposed to talking about
it in the classroom, Hess said she could "talk about Whitman until"
she's "blue in the face" and the children might still not be able to
put his life and work into context.
Hess said that she herself is a "visual and tactile" style of
learner and that visits and field trips greatly help those kinds of
students. "Seeing his little
home," she said, "his actual deathbed, the shoes he wore, help to
bring the man to life."
***
I
have worked at the Poe site for six years and have seen first-hand how
mesmerizing Poe's home can be. Craig
Ranshaw is a good example of a teacher who loves teaching Poe, and he spends no
less than thirteen weeks covering Poe with his students. "The first week," he says, they
are "immersed in Poe's biography.
They see videos. They work on a
timeline." Then the class is
introduced to four story genres: humor,
horror, mystery and psychological. The students select one genre to
investigate. For humor, they look at an
example of Poe's and one of Mark Twain's; for mystery, they look at Doyle's
Sherlock Holmes; for horror, Lovecraft or King; for psychological, they read
"Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and Poe's "William
Wilson." The next task is to
compare and contrast the two examples from the genre they've chosen. They analyze the writing styles of each
author and explore how the life histories of the various writers may have
influenced the work. For their poetry
unit, Ranshaw asks his Maple Shade, New Jersey, eighth-graders to explore four
themes: Romance, Love, Beauty, and
Death. Reading Poe's "The
Raven," "Annabel Lee," and "The Bells," the students
must identify, through citation, which of these themes is encountered in the
poetry. His students also work with
themes in Poe stories: domestic
violence and alcoholism in "The Black Cat"; the social commentary of
"Never Bet the Devil Your Head" and "The System of Dr. Tarr and
Professor Fether."
Ranshaw
appreciates visiting the Poe site for "the tangible evidence of Poe's
physical presence. It's so cool that he actually lived there. It makes him a more live figure, just to see
where he had been." Already
familiar with Poe's family, students could envision the day-to-day existence of
the family in this barren little house.
He said two locations in the house, in particular, visibly affected his
students. One was the claustrophobic
basement, which may have inspired Poe's horror tale "The Black
Cat." The other was one of the
bedrooms, where the students sat on the floor and read aloud Poe's
"Annabel Lee," thought to be Poe's memorial to his wife,
Virginia. The ranger had explained how
sick with tuberculosis Virginia was and how much the little family struggled
and agonized to keep her healthy and comfortable. Students marvelled:
"Virginia was actually here."
When recalling the visit, Ranshaw laughed, because his students
chastised him: Why, they wanted to
know, hadn't he covered Poe's contributions to the science-fiction genre? After thirteen weeks of preparation they
wanted more!
Most
people think of Poe much like his melancholy and tortured protagonist in
"The Raven." They are surprised
to hear of long hours of disciplined work, surrounded by reference books and
clippings. It is difficult sometimes to
paint this picture of Poe in the minds of visitors who are sure that Poe was
some madman in the attic who merely recorded spontaneous visions and
intoxicated hallucinations. "Look
at how twisted his stories are!" they protest. "He'd have to be insane to come up with that material." As one teacher remarked, she likes visiting
the Poe site because we "explode the myths" of Poe getting ideas from
alcohol or drugs, and instead show how he created in response to what was
popular in his day. Poe had to compete
with every other would-be writer in America, who, Margaret Fuller complained,
would write a story because they needed money to buy a new hat.
Instead
of Poe-the-maniac, school groups hear about Poe-the-brilliant-editor (as the
scholar Daniel Hoffman has noted, Poe was a "genius of
compression"). A portrait of the
Philadelphia of the 1840s is contrasted with the present-day city. Students are introduced to Poe the loving
husband who referred to his wife's bout with tuberculosis as "five years
of insanity with awful moments of sanity." They hear about Poe and Charles Dickens meeting in Philadelphia
where they lamented the nonexistence of international copyright laws. The struggles of Poe's daily life help
illustrate how brilliant work can arise even when an artist is asked to cope
with what seems to be insurmountable obstacles. Many visitors think of Poe in New York, where he published
"The Raven," or in Baltimore, where he died and is buried. But it was for the six years that Poe spent
in Philadelphia that he was in his top form, cranking out an astonishing number
of original works while editing and criticizing the work of others. When Virginia was diagnosed and her life was
despaired of, Poe, who had lost his birth parents, his foster parents, his
brother and grandmother in his early life, started to go downhill. The family moved to New York and, as Arthur
Hobson Quinn states in his book, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography,
"when Poe left Philadelphia . . . he left happiness behind him." Students leave not just with the impression
that Poe wrote creepy stories but with a better understanding of how minute and
daily choices add up to a life.
***
In the early part of the
twentieth century efforts began to preserve Whitman's home. People from all over emerged with items that
had belonged to Whitman: his hat,
shoes, bed, and so on. When you tour
the site, you see photographs of how the place looked in Whitman's time. Many of the items in the photos are in the
home today. It is a wonderful feat of
restoration. As O'Neil observes,
"Usually when you see Victorian restorations they're grand, huge, wealthy
people's homes. Whereas, this is how
most people lived, in small spaces with lots of patterns and different colors
all juxtaposed in a tight space."
As a young man, Whitman worked with his father, who was a house builder. The family moved through Brooklyn and soon
after they built one house they would move and build another, with Whitman
doing some of that work himself. O'Neil
points out that "This type of house is the type of house that he would
have worked on. The silhouette of the
streetscape right now, the little two-story wooden house sandwiched between the
three-story brick masonry houses, that's how it was when he lived here. So the three-story brick houses were built
in the mid-1850s and that was the newer style.
It just made his little house seem all the more humble, and he referred
to it as his 'shanty,' his 'chicken coop.'
It would have looked like something that was just waiting to be torn
down to build another three-story masonry house."
"One
of the important things happening while Whitman spent his time here was the
growing urbanization of particularly this part of the country," O'Neil
continues. "And certainly you have
examples of that here in Camden. When
he's living here, Elbridge Johnson is down the street, one block over. Johnson
is working on his inventions and, ultimately, he is the founder of Victor
Talking Machine Co., which then became merged with RCA. We developed a chart of technological
innovations, some of the major things happening in Camden. For example the first telephones were in
some drugstores in Camden by the year of Whitman's death. What he was best known for during his time
here in Camden was the Lincoln lectures that he did. Most people are surprised about that. It was a very dramatic presentation with a recitation of 'O
Captain! My Captain!', everybody teary-eyed."
During
the Civil War, Whitman would often visit the camps and hospitals of the
soldiers to try to alleviate suffering.
O'Neil is often asked how Whitman would have felt about the prison now
across the street from the house. A
thoroughly prepared interpreter, O'Neil had a passionate response, "It
really bothers me when people say, 'Walt would have been right at home with
that.' What a superficial understanding
of Whitman. How can this great champion
of freedom have felt comfortable with a prison across the street? And all the wasted lives. I think about how Whitman would have felt
and we find evidence in his poetry, 'Unscrew the locks from the doors! /
Unscrew the doors themselves from the jambs! // Whoever degrades another
degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me";
"I speak the password primeval . . . . I give the sign of democracy; / By
God! I will accept nothing which all
cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.' It's such a wonderful expression of freedom."
O'Neil
has a clear vision for the Whitman site:
"The state owns the buildings adjoining Whitman's house. Currently Whitman's home is the only one
open to the public and interpreted.
Maximum capacity is 20, but that's very tight. We have these other spaces which so much could be done with. One of the things I've wanted to do since I
first came here is to have a poetry room or a poetry corner where you can see
the printed word on the wall and then you pick up a headset and hear someone
who can really recite poetry beautifully reciting that verse. I'd like to help put Whitman in context with
nineteenth-century poetry: Edgar Allan
Poe, Longfellow, and other contemporaries could showcase what a departure
Whitman was from the others. I think
people can't really quite get that unless you expose them to some of the other
poets of the time. And I'd like to
offer some of the poets who came after Whitman, whether they acknowledge their
debt to Whitman or not. So that's what I
would love to do. We have the space for
it."
O'Neil,
having interpreted Whitman for some time now, could not resist some cataloguing
of her own: "We have artifacts
that I'd like to exhibit. We have
letters, first editions; we have an embarrassment of riches. And they need to be displayed but they need
to be displayed correctly, with environmental controls. There's a lot to do with these other
buildings, so the question is how to organize these spaces. I think it would be good to have some fresh
perspectives."
***
At the Poe site, we are just now catching our
breath. The site was closed for
fourteen months for unexciting structural repair. Now that we are finally reopened, we are looking at the site with
fresh eyes. Big changes could come, or not. We're planning to plan. In the meantime, the schools keep
coming. Schillizzi notes: "Traditionally, we didn't get visits
from fourth-graders, now we are. This
brings us a whole new challenge.
Different age groups have different curriculum standards. The handbook is targeted for middle school
because statistically that is the largest group of students that we get. Ideally, we would offer different reading
levels and activity levels for different age groups." For now, teachers can adapt the handbook to
their needs.
The value of house museums is their ability to open
up new perspectives on a writer's life and culture, to remind students of the
vitality of literature and history.
O'Neil remembers feedback she got from one group, music to the ears of
any museum guide. "The students
were asked, 'What do you remember? What
did the visit mean to you?' One of the
students just hits the nail on the head when he said, 'Before we saw his house
and saw all his stuff, he was just some guy in a book, and didn't seem
real. And once we saw his stuff, I
believed that he really existed and was a real person.' It seems like the obvious conclusion, but I
think it can't be stated enough. How
many things are kids inundated with as they sit in a classroom and look at
books? It really does make the subject
come alive when they have another kind of experience. And there's that whole issue of the different styles of learning,
the visual learner, the tactile, and so on.
Lots of those needs can be addressed in a setting like this."
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