Samantha St. Lawrence, one of the English teachers spearheading the project, stands holding a copy of the book.
Photo by Garen Sahakian
Published 11/19/2019
Article by Vedanti Bhargava
On Oct. 18, the school library and several sections of the main building transformed into a pop-up museum to educate Lexington High School students about the novel There There and the rich history behind its subject matter. There There, Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange’s debut novel, was the summer reading book for 9th through 11th grade students.
The pop-up museum was the first of its kind and involved the entire Lexington Public Schools system, from elementary school teachers all the way to the superintendent, Dr. Julie Hackett.
The book begins by describing violence committed against Native Americans in the past and connects those acts to the contemporary urban indigenous population of the United States. The pop-up museum was a means to help students better understand not only the novel’s characters, but also indigenous people’s history as a whole.
The museum included a series of exhibits such as student-made collages of characters from the book, original poetry, and other student and teacher-made artwork.
“[The thinking behind this was to show how] whether it’s fictional characters like in There There or the figures you see in history, how they are a product of the time and place that they come from. So I’ve always found that when teaching books in English class this question of what’s happening in a historical moment really matters,” Samantha St. Lawrence, one of the English teachers spearheading the project, said.
St. Lawrence also credits the changes in Massachusetts social studies requirements , which have encouraged more inclusive content at each grade level.
“I think this project has increased our interest as a school in talking about Native American history, which has been something really cool to see,” St. Lawrence said.
A number of people helped make this event possible, including Jane Day, the English department head, who helped make the exhibits, and Robert Collins, the Social Studies department head, who helped to spread the word. Katherine Manning, a 9th grade history teacher who partnered with St. Lawrence on a similar project, Homegoing, two years ago, Associate Principal Baker, Principal Stephens, and many more were also part of the planning team.
The museum was met with enthusiasm from the LHS community.
“I thought the pop-up museum was fantastic. It was exciting to not only work with the other departments but to have all these people participating here. It was a great and exciting way for kids to get involved in the conversation and to have more knowledge in place before they heard [Tommy Orange] speak a few days later,” Harriet Wallen, a librarian on the planning team, said.
While reading There There, St. Lawrence was surprised by how little she knew about indigenous culture and hoped to incorporate it as a large part of the English curriculum. This idea presented some challenges, as not all students wanted to spend time reading a school-assigned book over the summer.
However, she acknowledged that reading the book is very important because awareness is the first step to shedding light on the Native American experience. Hence, she found that the exposure to marginalized voices outweighed any issues in the process.
“Seeing Tommy Orange made me realize that Native Americans can look a lot of different ways and can come from a lot of different places, and those sorts of takeaways, while they sound may be simple, are exactly what I would hope for,” St. Lawrence said.
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