Eight Plays Of U S History Globe Fearon

Working With Eight Plays Of U S History Globe Fearon in the Classroom

This book has been around long enough that most people who use it already have a copy gathering dust somewhere. Globe Fearon published it as a teaching tool for US history classes, and it follows a straightforward format: eight dramatic scenes covering pivotal moments in American history, written so students can perform them or read them aloud. The intention was decent. The execution has some rough edges you need to know about. I used this text with a group of tenth graders a few years back. The concept works if you treat it as a starting point rather than a complete curriculum. Here is what that actually looks like on paper. The book covers eight specific periods or events. Each play is structured with character parts, stage directions in brackets, and dialogue that stays fairly close to primary source material where available. It is not academic in tone, which is both its strength and its weakness. Students who sit through these performances usually remember the emotional beats better than the causal connections between events. That is something to keep in mind when you are planning your unit.

The first thing I did was pull up the actual historical records for each scene before handing the book to anyone. One of the plays has a scene set during the Constitutional Convention that simplifies the debate over representation to a binary conflict. It glosses over the smaller states' actual negotiating position, which was more nuanced. If your students ask questions about that, you need to be ready with the real context. The book gives you the drama, but you supply the accuracy.

How to actually use this text

Assign roles based on enrollment. If you have a class of thirty, you split each play into two performance groups or add narrators and minor parts. I usually have students take the dialogue home and mark their lines three days before rehearsal. That gives them time to read through the surrounding chapter in whichever textbook you are using alongside this. Rehearsal runs for about forty minutes a day over three days, and a run-through takes another day. Then you perform. It adds maybe a week to your timeline. Factor that into your pacing calendar before you commit to it. One practical problem I ran into that nobody mentions: the copyright on some of the later editions is unclear, and if you are scanning pages for distribution or projecting them, you may hit licensing questions from the publisher. I stopped trying to digitize it and just worked from the physical copies. It cost me nothing extra and saved me from an administrative headache.

What the text gets wrong or leaves out

The eight plays skip over several important groups and perspectives. Indigenous nations appear only in peripheral roles in most scenes. Enslaved people and free Black Americans are largely absent except in contexts where they serve as background to white protagonists. If you are teaching a diverse classroom, this omission will show. You will need supplemental readings to fill the gaps, or students will walk away with an incomplete picture. Some of the dialogue relies on dated language that can read as caricature rather than history. I had a student in one unit ask why everyone in the Revolutionary War scene sounded like they came from the same town. That is because Globe Fearon homogenized regional speech patterns for simplicity. You can acknowledge that and move on, or you can spend time discussing how dialect in educational texts shapes student perception. Both approaches work. Just plan for the discussion.

Alternatives worth knowing

If your school has access to Living Books or similar dramatized history collections, those tend to have better research support. The plays are longer, the language is more careful, and the accompanying teacher guides address the historical debates directly. They cost more to acquire, which is why many districts still reach for Globe Fearon first. Another option is having students rewrite the plays using primary sources. It takes more class time, but the engagement is higher and the learning sticks. I prefer this over simply performing the existing text, though I will admit it is harder to manage logistically. The Globe Fearon version of Eight Plays Of U S History remains usable if you treat it as a framework rather than a final authority. It gets students speaking history out loud, which is not nothing. Just make sure you are standing next to them with the real facts when the curtain goes up.