Downey, L. “A Century of Veterans: Researching Our Local Cemetery.” (2009)

Teacher Lindsey Downey describes a unique place-based project designed to uncover the stories of veterans and their families from their local community. The author gives a step-by-step account of how this project developed from setting goals, displaying students’ work, and reflective writing (to “notice deeply”). The steps of the project are described in some detail, in particular how students approached finding primary and secondary sources of information, culminating in a Veteran’s Day ceremony, during which students read out their own eulogies for local veterans. Although this unit was specifically designed with Veteran’s Day in mind, the process could be adapted to investigate the lives of other local people, using the cemetery as a starting point.