ABSTRACT
Children and young people are interested in others their age, and this applies to their historical peers too. Students are fascinated to fi nd out about others near their age who lived in other times and places and who have made contributions to history. Th ey begin to realize that history is their story too. When we introduce students to young soldiers through the letters they wrote and photographs taken of them, or to diaries of children traveling West, they want to know more about them. Th ey want to learn about the time period and places in which they lived and the events they were involved in. Preservice teachers using the primary sources report their students’ reactions to our methods class. “Was this really written in 1862 by someone my age?” a child might ask, when looking at a copy of an actual diary of a young girl traveling West with a wagon train. Students are intrigued when they see a photograph of Johnny Clem who joined the Union army as a drummer boy and became a lance corporal at age 11, or read about Sybil Ludington, age 16, who rode 30 miles at night during the American Revolution to tell soldiers to meet the British. Th ey are inspired when they learn that 9 months before Rosa Parks’ famous refusal, Claudette Colvin, age 15, was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat, or that Phyllis Wheatley, a colonial poet and a slave, at age 14 became the fi rst black poet to be published in America.
