Historias Americanas: Integrating Local Culture into the Teaching of U.S. History
Amy Hill
American history has been taught, generation after generation, in the Rio Grande Valley of Southern Texas, with little inclusion of the contributions of national and local Hispanic men and women. Missing were those who made major contributions in agriculture, the military, science, and the arts—people who not only enriched their own communities, but the United States as a whole.
Over the past two years, StoryCenter has been honored to play a role in an innovative program in the Rio Grande Valley of Southern Texas. The project called Historias Americanas, was a three-year intensive for K-12 educators, designed by project partners, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the Museum of South Texas History. The intent was to improve the quality of American history education in the Brownsville and Edinburg school districts by building on student and community knowledge and shining a light on the cultural wealth of the area. Local history was melded with the broader history of the United States to fill in faces that were blatantly missing from textbooks.
In 2020, StoryCenter collaborated with project partners to guide approximately 65 teachers through the online digital storytelling process, which enabled them to share their stories about living and working in South Texas, next to the U.S.-Mexico border. Some of the stories reflect the reality of families living on each side of the border, and others focus on previously unrecognized geographic and cultural treasures discovered right under foot.
The storytellers returned in 2021 to tell new stories, this time reflecting on the impact Historias Americanas had on their teaching and on their relationships with students. The program made a tremendous difference to educators in the Rio Grande Valley. Local history was given its well-earned space in the curriculum, making history more relevant and allowing students to take pride in their story. StoryCenter not only helped drill down to educators' individual stories, but also helped evaluate the success of the overall program. Beyond these successes, the hope is that the participating teachers will be inspired to share their newly developed digital storytelling skills in their own classrooms with their students.