Amistad Comes Alive For NMS Eighth Grade

By Jeff White

Amistad was shown to the eighth grade last Friday, and bodies that were fidgeting at the outset were made still by the movie’s dark, brutal opening sequence, which brought a hush to the auditorium.  

Students viewed the critically-acclaimed film in a culmination of a month-long unit on the ill-fated Spanish ship, which was taken over by the slaves held captive on it and brought to Connecticut in 1839. Outside the packed auditorium, life-size replicas and detailed projects addressing various aspects of the controversial case comprised the “Amistad museum.” Although the unit involved English and art classes, its genesis rested with first year social studies teacher Paul Esposito, who thought that the unit would provide a different way of covering the required slavery curriculum.

The power of the movie, which took two school days to complete based on its length, was no doubt aided by the fact that these eighth graders had been living the lives of Amistad characters for the past month. Finally, they had a chance to see a dramatic rendering of scenes that up until then had only come alive through research.

“I think the kids really got into it,” Mr Esposito said.

Students followed the story of the slave ship from the perspective of Cinque, the slave hero who led his people to take over the Amistad. Seven journal entries were required to coincide with the seven stages of the story, from the capturing of the ship through the Supreme Court trial that gave the slaves their freedom. “We tried to give [students] the sense that they were these people,” Mr Esposito explained.

Toward that aim, students each had to study a character from the story and research his or her specific roll in the Amistad’s tale.

Students put together poster-board biographies on the captured Africans Cinque, Burna, Bagna and Moru, along with other characters such as the Reverend James W.C. Pennignton, John Quincy Adams, and Theodore Joadson. For the African tribesmen, students traced their journey from Africa’s West Coast to New England, and also discussed the various customs of their culture.

Student projects did not solely deal with the characters in the story. Numerous presentations dealt with how the media of the time covered the Amistad trials and the various opinions of other ships, such as the USS Washington. Students probed the history of the abolitionist movement, the conditions the slaves weathered on board the Amistad, and the different opinions of the north and south during the trial.

Eighth-graders had a lot of choice in how they wanted to display their research, from life-size cutouts of central characters to baseball trading cards, with the characters’ “statistics” right on the back.

The Amistad museum impressed Gino Loricco, the head of the social studies department at the middle school. “[Students] put themselves in the position of people in history,” he pointed out. “[It’s a] higher level; that’s where we want them to be.”

As the movie’s final scenes played out for smaller audiences in individual classrooms Monday afternoon, the silence of Friday morning continued. For these students, it was one thing to research the lives of the characters of the Amistad, but quite another to see the human drama acted out on screen. “You read about it, but once you really see [the movie], it gives you a sense of what really happened,” said Julie Iwanicka.

“When we watched the movie, it helped put it all together,” added Erica Carino.

And studying a subject like the Amistad for as long as students did yielded an appreciation for how different the world is today. “[The unit] made me think about my freedom and rights,” Tomor Sedaliu explained.

“It made me appreciate my own freedom,” added Erica Carino. “We were lucky to be born into a country that doesn’t have slavery.”

Although the Amistad unit is officially over for eighth graders, Paul Esposito still has a few more activities planned for his students. He is planning a student trip to Bridgeport to meet other students who participated in a similar unit, and a trip to Mystic to see the real life Amistad ship before it goes on an East Coast tour.

For Mr Esposito, history does not come alive unless his students can see it as well as research it. Does he have anything planned for his next unit, on the Civil War?

In fact he does: a trip to Gettysburg.