Primary Source Seminar: PlanMORR

Pre-visit Preparation:We encourage teachers to print and distribute their pre-visit packet to their students (this packet is given out in digital format during the teacher workshop). We ask that teachers and students complete the pre-visit activities because during the students’ visit they will be examining various primary documents from a human rights angle. The pre-visit activities help ensure that students are mindful of their own, modern human rights conceptions and how those conceptions might complicate their interpretation of the past. In our experience, students who have prepared for their visit are more engaged and gain more from participating in the Primary Source Seminar. *Completing some or all of the pre-visit activities is strongly encouraged, but not mandatory. Students should, however, arrive having had some prior classroom discussion of human rights.

Teacher/Chaperon Involvement:
We believe teacher/chaperon involvement is an important part of a successful Primary Source Seminar. Because we have a small curatorial staff, we must wear many hats—our duties involve everything from lesson planning to student instruction to document security. And since document security may only be facilitated by a museum specialist, we need teachers and chaperons to help us work with and encourage students during the seminar activities. We ask that visiting groups be accompanied by more than one adult. We have found that seminars run best with 1 or 2 teacher/chaperons present per 15 attending students. In our experience, the more adult involvement/supervision in place, the better the students tend to stay on task/engaged in the activity. Groups of over 25 MUST be accompanied by a minimum of 2 chaperons.