Hamilessons

Congratulations to our alum Addie Matteson on the publication of her Hamilton-themed Hamilessons in School Library Journal! She writes:

I teach in a Title I school, and I knew many students would connect to Hamilton’s difficult childhood. My library also has a budding maker space. While I doubt Miranda sees Hamilton as a product of the maker movement, to me it is an excellent example of something created out of curiosity and passion—which is what being a maker is all about.
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Before starting, I needed to grapple with a parental advisory-size roadblock: the language. Hamilton’s lyrics are complicated, and most songs have a word or two that I can’t play in a fifth-grade classroom.

In the end, I created two close-reading lessons—“Hamilessons”—focused on the songs “Farmer Refuted,” “You’ll Be Back,” and a clip from “Right Hand Man,” which collectively illustrate four perspectives from the early days of the Revolution. The lessons were framed by the question: How can art help us understand the world …

We began by thinking about the choices authors and artists make. I posed the question: Why hip hop …

I’ve been floored by the growing impact of this show on my students. Many have listened to the whole cast recording. They refer to it in their history lessons, and they rap in the halls. They’re hardly alone. With the current #EduHam initiative, allowing 20,000 high schoolers, most from low-income families, to see the show for $10 and perform their own raps onstage, Hamilton’s educational potential seems limitless … My own favorite response is from the fifth grader who came in one Monday holding Chernow’s biography. He’s reading it—a few pages at a time.

My principal, who witnessed my transformation into a superfan, calls these lessons my Genius Hour project. I think of them as my form of Hamilton fan art. I didn’t create an animated storyboard or an a cappella video. As a school librarian, I connect students to the stories they will fall in love with.