Gena Oppenheim Helps You Tell Your EduHam Story in Spring History School Course

The Hamilton Education Program Online (EduHam Online) has proven a creative outlet for many students in 2020 and 2021. EduHam Online helps students in grades 6–12 see the relevance of the Founding Era by using primary sources to create a performance piece as Lin-Manuel Miranda did in the musical Hamilton, Have you as a student or teacher ever felt the need for more guidance in how to approach starting such a project? The History School class “Who Will Tell Your Story? Get Creative with EduHam” helps answer the basic question of “How do I do that?”

An Oustanding EduHam Online Performance from 2020, featuring three 11th graders from Xenia High School in Xenia, Ohio, with “Last Call for Peace”

Gena Oppenheim, the Senior Education Fellow for the Hamilton Education Program at the Gilder Lehrman Institute and a veteran drama teacher at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, teaches the course, joined by a guest from Hamilton every week. The focus of each session is to explore primary source documents on the Hamilton Education Program website and find their dramatic potential, with a special focus on the Founding Era’s untold stories.

Gena Oppenheim explains her process of preparing the course: “I preselected twenty documents from our Collection that had the most dramatic potential. A passionate letter is far more dramatic than a land grant, for instance! I then showed the documents to the participating Hamilton actors, asking them what they were most drawn to as performers.”

In the class, actors present the document, giving historical context from their own research into it and talk from their perspectives about the subtext of it—meaning what’s going on between the lines as well as what is in the actual writing itself. They use this as a jumping off point with Oppenheim to use their own words and the words of the students to inspire creative pieces.

Says Oppenheim: “Kids are inately good at this. Every class last fall had at least two students finishing songs in one 45-minute session with the rest at least having the starting material to create their projects.”

“Along the way, students have been very supportive of each other and frequently comment that they find a performing arts outlet through the class that they would not experience otherwise during these times of remote and hybrid learning,” Oppenheim elaborates.

When asked for an example of a document used in the course, Oppenheim immediately singled out a letter from Angelica Schulyer to her brother in which she refers to Alexander Hamilton having just been wounded by “that wretch Burr.” Last fall, Hamilton cast member Morgan Wood joined the class to discuss the history of the letter and how rich with dramatic potential it is, starting with the power of Angelica Schuyler referring to Aaron Burr as a “wretch” after he has just shot Hamilton, an injury that we know turned fatal shortly after though Angelica writes in her letter that “we have every reason to hope that he will recover.”

Course Lead Camren Murray, a Graduate Fellow for the Gilder Lehrman Institute who will start a PhD program in the fall at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, moderates the chat and Q&A with Oppenheim. Says Camren: “The kids are super sweet and supportive of each other, especially when we have one who goes on mic and makes a rap on the spot. These eight weeks always fly by.”  

Registration for “Who Will Tell Your Story? Get Creative with EduHam” is ongoing and the class runs from March 13 to May 15. To learn more and register, click here.