“George, it’s Over”: Breaking Up in US History Class

by Colleen Worrell, Secondary Technology Integration Coordinator 

It’s mid-October, not April 1st. However, that didn’t stop Ms. Williams and Ms. Potito from hatching a plan to fool their students today -- all in the name of learning. Their 10th grade US History students are studying the American Revolution and the teachers used a fake break up note to set the stage for an activity designed to help their students reconsider the significance of the Declaration of Independence.  

“Hey. I’m not sure how to start this letter…" 

Class began with a break up note that each teacher allegedly “found” and read aloud to the class. (Full Disclosure: they later told their students that they would never share anything personal about a student, especially out loud in class!) The letter had “AC” breaking up with “GB” for a variety of reasons, including being taken “for GRANTED” and wanting to “see what it’s like on my own.” Students tried to guess at the initials (“must be two Freshman!”) before each teacher shifted the discussion back to the topic at hand by playing a humorous music video, “Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration.” The video caught students’ attention by remixing Timbala’s popular song “Too Late to Apologize” in order to playfully comment on the historical moment surrounding the Declaration. Only after they watched the video and responded to hints from their teachers (“hmmm, the video reminds me of that break up letter I found…”) did students realize that the note was a hoax. They laughed as they figured out that they had been played. Many students commented on the fact that they should have known; after all, “No one breaks up in a letter anymore.”

Students enjoyed bouncing thoughts about the video and its images off of the fake break up letter their teachers used to set up the activity. The discussion helped to set the tone for the in-class writing assignment:

To show you understand why the colonists wanted to “break up” with King George III, you will create a break-up letter yourself, but with a twist. Because no one really writes letters anymore, you will write a series of text messages between you and the King to explain WHY you want to break up using all the nitty-gritty details that we’ve studied in class so far.

Crafting their text messages with break up songs like Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Ever Ever Getting Back Together” and Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” playing in the background, students drew on their understanding of the events leading to the Declaration of Independence, as well as their own creativity and sense of humor, to construct their digital break up scenarios. The two classes merged to create a sort of narrative role-play, with one student taking on the voice of the King and the other the Colonists.  Using a shared Google Doc, each student pair simulated text messaging back and forth in order to “break up” in a thoroughly modern way.

Toward the end of session the teachers prompted them to think about consequences of their carefully chosen words: “How do you want to leave it? What are your final words going to be? Do you ever want to work with them again?” (See this Sample Break Up Texts to see how one pair of students ended their “relationship”).

In the wrap-up for the lesson students shared some of the reasons their texts pointed to as a reason for the break up. Their examples linked events like the Boston Tea Party to larger issues of representation and self-governance. As importantly, students were able to reconsider their original misconceptions about the Declaration of Independence. Rather than signalling the end of the Revolution, as they originally thought, the document was the start of a long, complicated process. In the simplest of terms, the Declaration was a break up letter.

Put to song and translated into contemporary “text speak,” this is a lesson that these US History student are not likely to forget.