Suggestions for Teachers
This website is a work in progress. We’ve taken a particular approach to the Study Questions which we hope will be useful to you. The intent was to approach the text from a variety of pedagogical angles (some comprehension oriented questions, some designed to help students think about the text in relation to their own lives, some ideas for more in-depth projects), and from a variety of thematic angles (family, social action, political issues, social problems, etc.). We invite you to browse through, modify ideas and materials as appropriate for you and your class, and send us any suggestions you may have for how this section can be improved.
We are collecting additional materials and handouts that faculty from across the College want to contribute to the site. Right now, we have a few samples; please help us develop this page by sending us your ideas and assignments. Later this year, we might want to build a part of the site where we post students' projects, so please keep us posted about the work students do.
Hearing from you about how you and/or your students are using the website will be most helpful to us, and possibly to the creators of future Common Reading sites, so please send us your comments and suggestions. We thank you for your interest and support.
History, Political Science, American Culture – Obama was born in 1961, and moved to Indonesia in 1967 where he lived until 1970. He and his family members were undoubtedly influenced by the events of the 1960s. Here's an idea for an activity.
Sociology - Students can investigate their neighborhoods, interview neighbors, etc. to learn more about their communities. Tara J. Hickman (Archives and Social Science) developed an assignment that could be useful.
Communication Skills - Sean Galvin (Liberty Partnership and Communication Skills) taught Dreams from My Father in his CSE120 course in Fall 2008, and has contributed: comprehension questions for chapters 1-3, small group activities for chapters 4-17, general questions about the text, and vocabulary guides for chapters 1-6.
Evelyn Burg has offered an activity designed to help students think about community organizing and what they might do in their neighborhoods.
Mass Media - Dreams from My Father is full of references to television shows, radio programs, performers and other cultural events, often with particular attention to the evolving roles taken or given to African-Americans. Students could trace the changes in American culture by studying each of these references and developing a presentation.
Music - In Chapter 3, Obama refers to listening to Top 40s radio; we know that now he listens to his I-Pod. In Chapter 4, he mentions listening to Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder; in Chapter 5, it's Billie Holiday. Although we don't know which he heard first, we can make a pretty safe bet that he's listened carefully to both Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin," and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come." Have your students create a radio broadcast in which they play the songs that Obama references, offer their interpretations of those songs, suggest what Obama might be listening to these days, and/or recommend some music that he should check out. In an alternate version of this kind of activity, students could offer samples of music from their native countries that Obama might have heard in his travels.
Community Organizing - Lorraine Cohen (Social Science) has developed an activity through which students will learn more about community organizers -- their work, their mission, their hopes. It requires students to interview organizers, and then think carefully about what they learned about the organization, the organizers and themselves both through researching the organization, and through conducting the interview.
Co-op, Career Development - In Chapter 7, Obama writes about his career choice: become a community organizer. He describes a couple of his first jobs, and also writes about a couple of job interviews he has, including the one that leads to his work as a community organizer in Chicago.
Obama and Reading - Marie Hanlon developed an assignment that asked students to read an article by Michiko Kakutani about Obama and the books he reads. Marie sent us her work last March; it inspired us to develop the Arts Blog. Take a look at what Marie asked her students to do, and see some of the responses her students wrote.
Psychology - Lakshmi Bandlamudi (Social Science) contributed several questions that ask students to think about a variety of psychological issues that are part of Obama's narrative. The memoir is filled with psychological issues about attachment, identity development in the context of race, travel and multi-culturalism and the questions are a guide to explore the same. Each of the questions could be expanded into a longer assignment.