A generation of American youngsters is gaining a new respect for the Revolutionary War hero and the first POTUS, George Washington, through the Broadway phenomenon Hamilton that has brought the birth of America to life. An article by on the Education Next website describes the collaboration between Hamilton creator Lin Manuel Miranda and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
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Hamilton Goes to High School
How students are learning U.S. history from the hottest show on Broadway
Wayne D’Orio joined EdNext Editor-in-chief Marty West to discuss the Hamilton Project on the EdNext Podcast.
It’s 10 o’clock on a Wednesday morning at New York City’s Richard Rodgers Theatre, and the buzz in the house is palpable. The matinee of Hamilton, the acclaimed musical about the “10-dollar founding father without a father,” won’t start for four hours, but the audience of 11th-grade students is ready. While most of the play’s actors aren’t even in the building yet, the show is about to begin.
Backstage a group of about 35 high schoolers take selfies, warm up their voices, and pace. They are getting ready to mount the same stage where the play that won 11 Tony Awards is presented eight times a week. In a flash, Okieriete Onaodowan, the actor who plays Hercules Mulligan and James Madison, appears in the wings.
“EduHam” is on.
Long before the play about the nation’s first treasury secretary opened in February 2015, its creator, writer, and star Lin-Manuel Miranda knew his work would be useful for teachers. That’s because before Hamilton won a Pulitzer, a Grammy, and all those Tonys, before its cast album was streamed a half billion times on Spotify alone, before the top ticket prices soared to a Broadway record $849, Miranda debuted the show’s first song, “Alexander Hamilton,” at the White House Poetry Jam in 2009.
When video of the four-and-a-half-minute performance hit YouTube, the number-one comment posted was, “My teacher showed us this in APUSH,” Miranda told Newsweek, using the acronym for the AP U.S. History class.
So six years later, when the play first opened at the Public Theater, Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow invited Lesley S. Herrmann, then executive director of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, to be his guest at the show. The two had common interests. It was Chernow’s 818-page biography of Hamilton that had kindled Miranda’s interest in the material and that became the inspiration for the hit musical. Gilder Lehrman, based in New York City, is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting history education.
As soon as the stage went dark that night, Herrmann turned to Chernow and said, “We have to get this into the hands of kids.”
Students Onstage
Fast-forward to that Wednesday morning at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, in November 2016.
As the students look over their material and emcee Onaodowan goes onstage to welcome the audience, Lulu Rivera stands by himself. The Harvey Milk High School junior will perform a spoken-word piece about Hamilton’s best friend, John Laurens. Rivera based his piece on the long, intimate letters the two wrote to each other. Clad spectacularly in black and wearing a pair of platform boots, Rivera says, “I tried to dress like history, but mostly like Prince.”
During his performance, he’ll earn solid applause from the 1,300 students in the audience. But the most raucous reception will be saved for the rock-’em, sock-’em performance of Traci Ann Pauda and Madeline Ferraris from the Brooklyn School for Music and Theatre. The duo portray Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth (Eliza) Schuyler, and his mistress, Maria Reynolds, locked in a fight over their man, swapping insults and even shoves as the crowd hoots its approval.
Later in the program, after another group of students trade invectives in a rap battle, Onaodowan comes onstage and jokes to the audience, “That hurt my feelings. I know they were acting, but …”
The student performances are the capstone of their participation in EduHam—officially known as the Hamilton Project—an in-class history curriculum based on Hamilton. After their presentations, the students will participate in a “talkback” session with members of Hamilton’s cast, break for lunch, and then return to watch the matinee performance of the play.
During 2016–17, its pilot year in the New York Public Schools, the education program has become almost as successful as the play itself. As it wraps up its first year, the program will bring 20,000 11th graders to the 46th Street theater to perform and to see the play; that’s one out of every four juniors in the nation’s largest school district. EduHam expanded to Chicago in February 2017, and it followed the touring company when the play opened in San Francisco in March.
The total number of students served at the end of the school year will be more than 35,000, says Sasha Rolon Pereira, the director of Gilder Lehrman’s Hamilton Project.
“In the next four years, we will reach 100,000 kids in 50 to 100 cities,” adds James G. Basker, Gilder Lehrman’s president.
The full article is available online at the EducationNext website.
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