Visiting the Americans Exhibit with ELAS 980

By Professor Diego Hernandez, ELAP

After a week of preparatory activities in the classroom, our ELAS 980 class (a high-intermediate speaking/listening class for English learners) visited the “Americans” exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian. I am pleased to report that all of our students were able to visit on the same day. Most students joined me on the bus from the Takoma Park/Silver Spring campus, and a few students met us there.

We arrived a few minutes before the museum opened and took shelter from the cold November rain under the museum’s generous entrance shelter. Although we were cold and wet, the time we spent waiting for the doors to open provided us the opportunity to see who else was visiting the museum. There were busloads of children from local schools on field trips and small groups of tourists.

Inside the exhibit, students found objects that largely showed stereotypical images of Native Americans on many different kinds of products. I had asked them to identify 2-3 identities American Indians had assigned to them by white culture based on the objects they observed in the museum. As I circulated among the students in the exhibit, answering questions when I could, I saw students entering the side galleries to learn more about the Trail of Tears and Pocahontas. Many students took advantage of the hard-copy guides and touch screen consoles in the middle of the exhibit that offered descriptions of each object in the exhibit. They took photos of objects and notes that would help them prepare for their presentations comparing American Indian identities and immigrant identities.

After seeing eagle feather headdresses on various objects, one student wondered how they hunted eagles to get the feathers. Another student was looking at a TV test pattern from the 1950’s and thought it might be a game before reading its description. Many students gravitated to the three Barbie dolls on display; some mistakenly assumed the clothes on the Barbies were authentic before reading the description of those objects. Several students didn’t know what the Tomahawk missile was, but once they learned it was a weapon, they were able to make connections between the missile and other weapon-related objects in the exhibit.