November 20th

After recovering from my bedridden week, I wanted to continue to hammer home the political conversations we were having earlier in the month. They were all incredibly excited about their Saturnalia party coming up, but I didn’t want to let them forget that we were learning about history for a particular goal. 

I presented them with the idea of identity. Cold calling, I asked a student: “Where are you from?”

“America?” He cocked his head to the side, letting some of the high-ability student anxiety begin to brew a bit in his expression. Before that could happen, I asked another student the same question:

“Where are you from?”

“Like, what city?”

“Just where.” I repeated. “There aren’t any wrong answers, I just want to know what you think.” Suddenly, it went from a question with right or wrong answers and turned into a game, a puzzle to solve. 

“From my house!” On piped up. A few students giggled. 

“From Indiana?”

“From Crawfordsville?”

After testing the limits of the question, they looked at me, waiting for an answer. I explained to them that, in the ancient period, people didn’t really identify with a country. Rather, cities, city states, and towns were how people would label themselves. Someone would say “I’m from Athens” far before conceptualizing “I’m from Greece.” Close-knit community identity was very important. 

Then, Mrs. Lawson dumped out a jar of coins and sorted out quarters, putting them under the table projector. She laid them out by state, the tail side showing different motifs and symbols for state identity. Side-by-side, I showed them images of ancient coinage from Greece and Rome. Most looked the same: a face on one side, an image referring to the history of the city-state on the other. 

There were gasps from the crowd of students. 

“Why are our coins just like the old ones?” One student asked with enough drama that I was convinced that if I didn’t answer the question, it would chew at him for the rest of his life. 

“Because we like to cheer for our favorite teams, right? You wear a jersey of your favorite team, you cheer for your state, you root for America in the Olympics. And a lot of the time, that competition is a good thing, right?”

“Like when I cheer at the basketball games?” A girl asked. 

“Exactly! Most of the time, it’s great to compete! It helps us to do our best. But sometimes, these sorts of symbols can start to mean some meaner things about different people. Competition between states could lead to wars, and did.” I explained. 

I handed them their activity: making a coin in the style of the ancient examples to represent their city. As they worked, I hoped they would quietly ruminate on the lesson I had explained to them, thinking about how artificial symbols can lead to good and bad. Instead, they chattered openly about it with each other. A few students were taken by the idea of ancient warfare, something I promise they would get to hear about during their field trip, but the majority of them were up in arms once again considering how people can arbitrarily be discriminatory. 

I didn’t expect much; I thought that their compassionate discussions of slavery, women’s rights, and class disparity earlier in the month would be the best they would be able to accomplish with third graders. Again, the underestimation of these students hit me. They held beautiful and respectful conversation, trying to think of ways to balance identity with kindness.