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Folklife Resources for EducatorsSponsoring Organization InformationFolkstreams Cowboy Poets - Teaching Guide Teaching guide for grades 10-12 to accompany an excerpt of the film “Cowboy Poets,” created by Kim Shelton in 1988. Fourteen minutes of the 50-minute film are chosen as a focus for the teaching guide. The film excerpt documents Wally McRae, a cowboy poet from southeastern Montana, a third-generation rancher and gentleman-philosopher, who uses his poetic gifts to make personal statements about continuity within the ranching community and the strength of cowboy traditions under siege in the modern world. The teaching guide and film explore the topics of cowboy culture and poetry, family ranch life, environmental conservation, and community resistance to a giant coal corporation in the neighborhood. The entire film is also available as streaming video on folkstreams.net.
Sponsoring Organization: Folkstreams Generic Lesson Plan Generic lesson plan for grades 10-12 for use with films available as streaming video on folkstreams.net. Lesson plan template offers suggestions for viewing films as literary texts and primary sources, analyzing documentary filmmaking techniques, and guiding students in reflecting on the traditions, sense of place, identity, and beliefs of American cultural groups and communities.
Sponsoring Organization: Grand Generation Discussion Guide Discussion guide for grades 10-12 to accompany the film “The Grand Generation,” created by filmmakers Marjorie Hunt, Paul Wagner, and Steve Zeitlin in 1993. The 28-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, is a portrait of six older Americans from Maryland, Mississippi, New York, Washington, D.C., New Mexico, and Tennessee, each with their roots in a unique cultural heritage and their own distinctive perspectives on the nature of aging. The discussion guide and film consider the issues of creative aging, diversity, race relations, gender roles, hard times and resilience, creativity, the cycle of life, and technological change in the lives of the featured elders.
Sponsoring Organization: The Men Who Dance the Giglio - Teaching Guide Teaching guide for grades 10-12 to accompany an excerpt of the film “The Men Who Dance the Giglio,” created by filmmaker Jeff Porter in 1995. Nine minutes of the 28-minute film are chosen as a focus for the teaching guide. The film excerpt documents the Saint Paulinus Festival and its 2.5-ton giglio statue carried by 125 men in a Catholic religious procession through the streets of the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. The teaching guide and film explore the topics of community and neighborhood festivals, Italian American culture, ethnicity, and sacred and secular celebrations found in urban areas. The entire film is also available as streaming video on folkstreams.net.
Sponsoring Organization: The Music District - Teaching Guide Teaching guide to accompany an excerpt of the film “The Music District,” created by filmmaker Susan Levitas in 1996. Nine minutes of the 56-minute film are chosen as a focus for the teaching guide. This excerpt profiles the "Junk Yard Band," a Go-Go group who explain and perform a pop music genre popular among African American youth in Washington, D.C. As Go-Go bands became popular in D.C. clubs and communities in the 1980s and 1990s, young people started break dancing contests and developed a distinctive musical style combining call-and-response lyrics with funk, jazz, rhythm and blues, and popular music. The discussion guide and film explore the topics of African American popular music and dance found in a vibrant urban youth culture noted for its creativity and improvisation. The entire film is also available as streaming video on folkstreams.net.
Sponsoring Organization: The Painted Bride – Teaching Guide Teaching guide for grades 10-12 to accompany the film “The Painted Bride,” created by filmmakers Amada Dargan and Susan Slyomovics in 1990. The 25-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, features traditional wedding customs practiced among Pakistani Muslim immigrants in Queens, New York. It follows a mehndi body painting artist as she creates intricate designs on the hands and feet of a bride-to-be while the bride’s friends sing humorous songs mocking the groom and future in-laws. The teaching guide and film explore tensions between American and Pakistani ideas of gender roles, identity, clothing, and ritual, including issues of cultural diversity in an immigrant community.
Sponsoring Organization: Pilebutts: Working Under the Hammer – Study Guide Study guide for middle and high school students to accompany the film “Pilebutts: Working Under the Hammer,” created by Maria Brooks and Archie Green in 2003. The 28-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, features the camaraderie and tough, risk-laden work of men and women of Oakland, California’s Pile Drivers Local Union Number 34, who drive the pilings for structures such as bridges, docks, freeways, and skyscrapers in the San Francisco Bay Area. The guide can be integrated into social studies and language arts curricula and serves as an introduction for students to labor culture and history in its focus on an occupational community in the Bay Area.
Sponsoring Organization: Quilts in Women’s Lives – Teaching Guide Teaching guide for grades 10-12 to accompany an excerpt of the film “Quilts in Women’s Lives,” created by filmmaker Pat Ferrero in 1981. Fifteen minutes of the 28-minute film are as a focus for the teaching guide. This excerpt features three women quilters -- artist and teacher Grace Earl, artist and Bulgarian immigrant Radka Donnell, and African American traditional quilter Nora Lee Condra. The teaching guide and film explore the lives, art, work, and philosophy of the three women quilters from different backgrounds. The entire film is also available as streaming video on folkstreams.net.
Sponsoring Organization: Red Alexander: Shipwright and Folk Artist - Study Guide Study guide for middle and high school students to accompany the film “Red Alexander: Shipwright and Folk Artist,” created by Archie Green and Chris Simon in 1998. The 25-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, focuses on the life and craft of a retired shipwright whose exquisite models of working ships mirror his fifty-year career building ships on the Oakland Estuary in California. The guide can be integrated into social studies and language arts curricula and serves as an introduction for students to labor culture and history in its focus on an occupational community in the Bay Area.
Sponsoring Organization: A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle - Curriculum Guides Three curriculum guides to accompany the film “A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle,” created by filmmaker Tom Davenport with Daniel Patterson and Allen Tullos in 1986. The 57-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, traces the history of the Landis family of Granville County, North Carolina, over the lifetime of its oldest surviving member, 86-year-old Bertha Landis. In the film, her sons' gospel quartet, "The Golden Echoes" rehearses and performs during a Landis family reunion. Family members also describe their migration North, work, race relations, music, and family ties. The site includes a film study guide by Beverly Patterson for 8th and 9th grades that explores African American history, music, family life and culture, and film as a social and historical document. Also available is an intergenerational film discussion guide by Paddy Bowman that offers ideas for considering issues of Jim Crow segregation, voting rights, gospel music-making, and faith and resilience in African American families. In addition, the site includes a teaching guide for grades 10-12 by Paddy Bowman focusing on aspects of the film mentioned above plus background essays on gospel quartets, Bertha Landis, and Granville County, North Carolina.
Sponsoring Organization: Sweet is the Day: A Sacred Harp Family Portrait - Teacher's Guide Teacher’s guide for grades 6-8 to accompany the film, “Sweet is the Day: A Sacred Harp Family Portrait,” created by Jim Carnes and Erin Kellen in 2001. The 59-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, tells the story of the Woottens, one of the key singing families who helped Sacred Harp music survive and flourish for more than 150 years in the South. The film intertwines scenes of family gatherings, singing conventions, and farm life in the Sand Mountain region of northeast Alabama with family recollections and songs from the shape-note tradition. The teaching guide and film explore shape-note music and Sacred Harp singing, including the importance of the tradition in the lives of families in the Sand Mountain community.
Sponsoring Organization: Unbroken Tradition – Teacher’s Guide Teacher’s guide for grades 3-6 to accompany the film “Unbroken Tradition,” created by Joey Brackner, Erin Kellen, and Herb Smith in 1986. The 29-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, is a portrait of Jerry Brown, a ninth generation potter from Hamilton, Alabama, whose forebears first set up a potter’s wheel in Georgia around 1800. The film takes the viewer through the steps of making a churn from digging the clay and preparing it for the potter’s wheel, to actual turning and firing of the piece in the kiln. It also includes Jerry’s explanation of how he came to the potter’s trade relatively late in life. The teacher’s guide and film explore issues relating to the continuation of this family tradition over generations, the making of stoneware pottery, and the importance of pottery in daily life in the past in the American South.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Other Organizations: Woodsmen and River Drivers – Teaching Guide Teaching guide for grades 10-12 to accompany the film “Woodsmen and River Drivers,” created by filmmakers Michael Chalufour, Karan Sheldon, and David Weiss in 1989. The 28-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, features men and women who worked for a lumber company in Maine before 1930 and who share their recollections of the logging industry. Documentary footage illustrates the dangerous and exhausting work of cutting trees by hand, hauling logs to the river with horses, and floating them down to the mill. By encountering firsthand accounts of arduous physical labor and the seasonal round of old-time logging in the film and teaching guide, students gain perspective on work and occupations in their own lives and communities, including how occupational folklife contributes to a sense of place.
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