CANADIAN SOCIAL STUDIES
VOLUME 38 NUMBER 1, FALL 2003

Sharing a Cross Cultural Exchange in an Amish World

Ronald V. Morris

Ball State University

Abstract

Elementary students experienced a crosscultural exchange with their peers by spending two days in an old order Amish community. The exchange, how students interacted, and what students did are included in this description of a classroom experience. Students prepared in class for the experience and debriefed from the experience; the teacher's preparation and debriefing strategies are described.

 

The members of a self-contained gifted fourth grade class include the study of the Amish community in their social studies curriculum. This, in itself, is not unusual in areas with a large Amish and Mennonite population, but when an Amish family invited a class of fourth grade students to visit their farm for a weekend field based learning occurred. The Mueller family (all names have been changed) lived on a farm in an area of the state with a large Amish population. The Amish follow the Anabaptist religious tradition as interpreted by Jacob Amman. The students traveled three hours from their school to the Mueller farm. The English¹ elementary students had a cross-cultural experience in which they interacted with Amish students of the same grade and age. The English students left their school early one spring Friday morning prior to the opening of school, immersed themselves in a foreign culture for two complete days, and returned to their own school on Saturday evening.

Mrs. Grace prepared the English students prior to the trip by helping them learn more about the members of the Amish culture they would meet. She did this by providing the students with a variety of background experiences. "Before the trip was just to give them a background. So they kind of understand some of the things that they see or even notice that there was something to pay attention to (Mrs. Grace)." Mrs. Grace helped students examine and compare sources of information. She also helped the students make connections between other topics about which they have learned and the present day.

[The Amish community] show[s] them in real life some of the things we had learned about in . . . [state] history, like the horse drawn plow, as close to real life pioneer living as you can get in 1999. And that was probably the initial reason why this project was done. But other objectives I saw coming out of this was getting to know other people and realizing that they are just people not a lot different than ourselves. (Mrs. Grace)

Mrs. Grace expects the students to interact with people from the Amish community as they live together for a weekend. She expects her students to meet the Amish not as representatives of the whole group but as individuals who can share their life and community with the students. Finally, she expects the students to make comparisons between their life and that of the Amish and between the past and the present.

Literature

Students in elementary school get to learn about their past and the present reality of community life through experiences involving travel. Elementary students need to learn about social studies while at the same time they need to establish connections with it (Brophy & VanSledright 1997). The students know not only the place but also the people involved with the topic that they study; they get direct learning experiences and they draw conclusions from their first hand experiences. The students establish human connections through human interactions to form personal connections to the past and the present. These students made connections based on their experiences with others in addition to classroom study.

For the students to have connections required that they work with in their community to explore another community. Students learning about others in social studies required a commitment to a basic democratic ethic (Boyer 1995, Goncu 1999), and students learn about democracy within their community (Goodman, 1992). Their classroom community made a commitment to this exploration. The students viewed the Amish community as a valuable part of the greater community that needed exploration to find common ground and self interest (Pai &Adler 1997). With the understanding of the broader community the students grew in democratic thought to see self-interest as including the Amish.

While the air waves are filled with misconceptions about the Amish from the romantic Witness to the vulgar Electric Amish or the goofy For Richer or Poorer, social studies plays a roll in correcting misconceptions and illustrates how our divers neighbors fit into our community through religious acceptance. The popular media conveys misconceptions about the Amish community while at the same time the Amish do not conduct a vigorous information campaign for obvious reasons (Luthy 1994). Citizens in a democracy must exhibit some measure of religious toleration (de Tocqueville 1945). Teaching about the Amish requires a historical context so that the students do not view the Amish as an inconvenient people but as a people who draw on the strength of their community to solve problems. Students must transfer this cognitive information into action for democratic participation. Through social studies members of a school community learn important lessons in democratic thought and action.

 

Procedures

Prior to Trip

The students began their study of the Amish seven days prior to the actual trip. Mrs. Cummings, a retired fourth grade teacher, came to visit for a day in character as Mrs. Grabel, one of her Amish neighbors. She used the first person technique to help the students become familiar with daily life and understand how the community works. She encouraged the students to ask her questions. She also brought her quilts and talked about them; the students then tried their hands at quilting by creating their own squares from colored construction paper. Mrs. Grabel placed her character in context by holding a day of Amish school. She transformed the modern classroom to an Amish one by giving each student an Amish name, had them sit in rows on separate sides of the room, stand to recite their lessons, cipher, learn English and German, hold a spelling bee, memorize history, and recite geography. The students discussed the day by debriefing before going home.

To prepare the elementary students for the trip their teacher, Mrs. Grace, served as a curriculum maker. The teacher gathered a variety of publications from the popular press, and she sorted these into topical files; students and their partners got files to read and report to the class. These files provided the students with additional information about the topic such as religious beliefs, past religious intolerance, and present day religious intolerance. As students shared information they find out about other students' topics too; they compared what they have learned with a video about the Amish. Students also had access to a number of books about the Amish as well as some artifacts, and prior to leaving on the trip the students created the K and W parts of a KWL chart.

Mrs. Grace helped students read The Budget, the newspaper of the Amish community. Students used a data retrieval chart to focus on specific elements including: Advertisements, Auctions or Benefits, Baptisms, Church Services, Disaster and Responses, Farm Work, Frolics, Helping Others, Names, References to Horses and Buggies, School News, Size of Families, States Where Amish Live, and Weddings. The students gathered information from looking at concepts that they could compare to customs in their community. The established criteria allowed students to compare their work with one another and to look at comparable information from the newspaper. When students used the Budget, they got to construct their own ideas about concepts by using the evidence they found.

On the Trip

Students started to write a journal with guiding questions, and the students wrote their first entry on the bus, "What do you think will happen today?" Mrs. Grace did not limit the students to the topic, but gave them something to start their initial writing. The students accurately anticipated the occurrences over the weekend due to their preparation for the trip. Some of the students expressed some slight anxiety about the experience along with the elation of getting to go on the trip. "I feel good, yet I feel nervous. I think it will be fun, but it will be scary to visit another culture. What if they don't like me? How will I fit in with them?" (Evan). These students looked forward to a good experience, but they also wondered how things would work out between the two groups. They also worried slightly about being personally ostracized. "I hope the kids like us. I wonder if the kids will think we're weirdoes?" (Ann). Most of the students' writing focused however on what they expected or on the order of events, but the second question led students to reflect upon the activities of the day up to that point. Prior to dinner they wrote, "What did you do with the Amish children at recess?" When students responded they talked about the order of the school day and their experiences with the Amish children. Students continued to respond in their journals throughout the next day. Students made entries into this journal the next day before breakfast and finished their journal on the bus as they returned to school.

When the English students arrived in the Amish community, they went immediately to the school. They entered the dark and absolutely quiet building, sat at the back and listened to the students of a combined third and fourth grade class singing their music lesson and orally reading their lessons. When the students met one another an opportunity for tension existed. "The first thing I recognized was their clothes. I felt sort of embarrassed because of what I was wearing. We lined up against the wall and the teacher introduced us. Then they sang a song for us. They sang a lot different than we do" (Andrew). In an interesting switch of perspective Andrew realized that in this community he was out of place and that realization created some anxiety that the teacher quickly alleviated. In the first and second grade class the students recited their numbers and letter in both English and German. "My group visited the first/second grade class room. We felt very awkward, but the teacher spoke to us and the class sang us a song" (Ann). This initial awkwardness passed quickly as the students started meeting the different classrooms. In the seventh and eighth grade class the Amish students stopped their geography lessons and the students from each group asked the other questions. Students really do feel the disconcertion and disorientation of meeting a foreign culture and visiting an alien situation.

After a silent prayer at noon all the students produced a packed lunch to eat at their desks. When everyone finished eating more silent prayer occurred before they dismissed for playing games at recess. The Amish students invited the English students to join the respective games of basketball, swings, softball, volleyball, andy over, duck duck goose, and catch. The English girls taught the Amish girls how to make dandelion chains.

We got to play basketball. The third [to] fourth [grade students] were the ones that took us on. We won two and lost two. We equals Joel and me. The rest of the boys played against the other three [and] four boys. They lost extremely badly. We played up to 20. They just played. When we heard about the Amish being rough. I had a hard time believing it. But now, I realize that the Amish might be the future Michael O'Neals, a mixture between Michael Jordan and Shaqeal O'Neal! . . . After [school] we played basketball again. This time with two rough eighth graders. (Evan)

Many students talked about the students that they met at recess. "We played a basketball game. The teams were an eighth grader named Dave with Joel and Evan and the other team was an eighth grader named Matt with me and Bob. We won big time" (Hose`). These English students got their first opportunity to interact with the Amish in this experience. When English and Amish students played basketball, they both thought that they were doing something that was a part of their culture, and they started to find similarities and differences between their cultures.

The Amish students regrouped for class after a fast trip to the outhouse and each group challenged the other to a spelling bee. The Amish were much less demonstrative and much more deliberative than their English counterparts, but neither side liked to lose when they got a word wrong. The Amish shared a snack of popcorn, chips, and pop with their English visitors and school dismissed for the weekend with students walking, driving a buggy, or riding a school bus home. The Amish hung around after school to play volleyball, catch, basketball, or to talk about books with the English before the late bus picked them up.

The English students traveled to three community businesses that make shipping pallets. The students watched the logs come into the mill, and they observed as the Amish used machines to saw the logs into pallets right before their eyes. "It was very loud. It is surprising how all of these humongus and noisy machines are run by diesel" (Hose`). The Amish derived all of the energy provided for the mills from the unconventional power sources of diesel as opposed to electricity. Students neither thought of how the Amish interacted within the economy nor how the Amish could provide goods and services outside agricultural pursuits. One student saw all of the machinery and commented on the economic investment that it reflected. "It was a sawdust kingdom!" (Evan). The Amish try to be good stewards of natural resources therefore the sawdust is marketed as mulch so there is little waste.

Then we went to three sawmills. The second and third sawmills were not in operation. The first sawmill was in operation. It was very . . . loud. Some girls were working in there. They [wore] earmuff like thing[s] to protect their ears. I don't understand how they can breath in there. The second saw mill was Mr. Mueller's . . . the third sawmill was not operation because it was brand new. At the sawmill we saw an icehouse. [It] Was filled with ice chunks bigger than shoeboxes, but they weren't hollow. (Nicole)

One student described the physical sensations of how it felt to be in a factory, and she also found the ice storage on the farm interesting, too. The industry of the Amish and the fact that their community interacts with the economy intrigued the students.

Before leaving for the Mueller's farm, the students saw how the Amish packed the icehouse from floor to ceiling last winter with ice cut from a local lake. The whole family worked on the ice harvest project during the winter. "A girl we had met earlier at the school . . . Well her and her brothers took us for buggy rides with her pony Jay. The girl's name was Naomi. She is very nice and in fifth grade" (Nan). At the same time that the English students explored the farm through more formal instruction they continued to build relations with their Amish peers. They met the Mueller's grandchildren and cousins at different farms and traveled with them between farms. At this time the Amish and the English started to lose their inhibitions toward one another.

Since the English students live in a small town, the farm was an adventure in itself. "Then the bus driver took us back to the Grabber's house. It is so beautiful and nice. The lawn was mowed, the house was clean, the whole farm was in great shape" (Nan)." The most imposing feature of the farm is the great bank barn with horse and buggy on the first floor and hay and basketball court on the second floor; chickens and peacocks resided in an adjoining building, as do more horses. The simple large white-sided farmhouse held both Mueller families with another adjacent living area for a dining room, furniture and handy craft store. Three generations of Muellers live in the great frame house; these included the grandparents, our hosts, their youngest son's family, and the grandchildren. One of whom, Naomi, showed the students the trampoline and where to find puppies in the haymow. Ten-year-old Nathan offered pony cart rides before starting a game of basketball in the hayloft with integrated teams of Amish and English members.

All the Mueller's children came by buggy from their farms bringing in food and assisting in preparing the meal of homemade bread and fresh butter, salad, noodles, mashed potatoes, gravy, grilled chicken, corn, jello, and cinnamon buns. They brought all of the grandchildren who got to play with the English. The Mueller family started and ended each meal with prayer in German, and the women served the men, children, and English guests before eating prior to clearing the table. The subtle lesson or religious toleration allowed students with many different beliefs to share a meal, play, and enjoy hospitality with people who might otherwise be viewed through eyes only seeing diversity. The students easily saw the lesson of "out of many one" in this situation.

As dark fell Mrs. Mueller lit the naphthalene light, Amish boys got chairs for Amish adults who held toddlers squirming on their laps, and the Amish families gathered together to share traditional songs and hymns. As the evening closed in on the students they continued to build friendships with those outside their community. "I sat by and made friends with three Amish kids named Vernon, Aaron, and Elmer" (Hose`, journal, 5/8/99). The students shared their patriotic, camp, and folksongs with the Amish, too. As the Amish made preparations to go down the dark roads in their black buggies, the English students continued to ask the Amish how to pronounce words in German. English and Amish students shared this time together and enjoyed being around each other.

The next morning before breakfast the students wrote in their journals and after breakfast Mrs. Mueller took all of the students to her garden to talk about what she grows, how she tends it, and how she cans or "puts up" food to preserve her own food for the winter. She does all this with out electricity. The students stepped carefully over the hot caps for the tomatoes, parsley, peppermint, potatoes, red pepper, rhubarb, and sweet corn. She pointed out the tobacco dust for insects and the birdhouse home to Martins who eat mosquitoes. She talked about what she can make from her garden: the chili sauce, salsa, ketchup, and pizza sauce from tomatoes, pickles, or pickled red beets for her large extended family or church suppers, and that she no longer cans cabbage or peas. The English students dodged the still wet low places and the manure used for garden fertilizer.

The English students piled into buggies for a tour of the community. Ruben, my driver, aged eleven had been holding the reins since he was five and could go to the next farm when he was seven. Our first stop was a horse barn with animals on the farm and pony cart rides. The students got to see the differences between various kinds of horses: Belgians, Ponies, Arabian, American Saddle Bred, and Standard Bred.

The English students learned that they needed to be observant when visiting a farm. They discovered that it is necessary to watch where they step in a barn lot after one student was not observant where he stepped. Enid suffered from having a horse step on his foot thus proving that just because horses are fascinating does not mean that you need not pay attention to what you are doing on a farm.

My new driver, thirteen year old Elmer, stopped for a train and got out to hold the horse to keep it for getting skittish around the powerful locomotive as we rode to the dry goods store. Though seemingly dim on a cloudy day compared to the flood of lights found in a mall, the store interested the students with its modest space and abundance of goods. "The dry goods store had many cool things like little toys, candy bars, Amish hats, and Amish goods. We also bought fabric for a class quilt there . . . We stopped back at the dry goods store and each bough an Amish straw hat" (Hose`). The students selected fabric for a nine-patch class quilt; they told Mrs. Mueller's sister, the proprietor, what they wanted and paid for it. After the dry goods store the Amish took us to a horse-breeding farm where the students got to watch the activity around a blacksmith, horses, horse auction, and saddle/harness shop.

Then he showed us how to put on and take off a horseshoe. He then acted like he was auctioning off the horse. Irene won at $10,000. Then for real he auctioned off a horseshoe that he [the horse] had worn and then sold it to Joel for a $1.50. Joel's dad gave it to him out of his allowance. (Bob)

Students got to see the auction procedure, hear the banter, and bid on horses. All of this occurred with their new friends. "Naomi rode with me every where" (Irene). The students made friends and spent a lot of time running around with them, and the trip showed that the Amish had significant responsibilities in the community. Students enjoyed each other and wanted to spend time around each other.

Over lunch Nate and Enid talked to the Amish children, and Nate spent time lightly teasing his Amish peers. When it was finally time for the students to leave, the students exchanged addresses with the Amish children. "Also before I left I exchanged address' with Naomi!" (Irene). They waved 'bye and said thanks to Mr. Mueller, Evan hugged the little Amish preschoolers, and all waved goodbye to the Mueller family as the bus turned down the lane towards home.

I thought that the Amish wouldn't be quite as modern. They had a lot of the same things as we have. I never figured out why some women tie their prayer caps because little children have theirs tied, and students don't, most teachers do, and so do most mothers. I saw." (Nicole)

When the English students left the Amish community they took with them information about the Amish, an appreciation for them as people, and some continued questions about them. The students successfully experienced a cross-cultural exchange in an Amish world.

Post Trip

When students returned to school they finished the L on the KWL chart. Then the students turned to their journal and started to edit their writing for a memory book about their experience. Each student got a copy of the memory book from the trip that contained a copy of each student's story about the trip. Finally, the students started a nine-patch quilt that, with the assistance of Mrs. Grace, served as a class souvenir from the trip. The students used symbol systems both in writing and in art to interpret their experience.

Conclusions

Students successfully learned about the traditions, culture, and life style of a different group of people. The students' adroit interactions enabled them to socialize and communicate with their peers. Clearly the implications for the students point to the fact that age ten is not too early for cross-cultural experiences. Indeed this trip indicated the potential for greater use of these types of experiences with elementary age students. Students should engage in developmentally appropriate experiences across the curriculum with multiple people and groups.

Teachers who engage in cross-cultural experiences need to exhibit a degree of commitment to the process of learning from field trips to enable them to advocate effectively and gather support for their implementation. They must communicate effectively with administrators, parents, students, and community members to find resources to long term support this endeavor. Teachers need to relate content from classroom work to the field experiences. Highly structured experiences in pre and post field trip activities allow students more freedom in less structured field trip experiences. Teachers can use the pre, field, and post experiences as evidence before the greater community to show how students and the community benefit from the experience.

Several implications exist for the field of elementary social studies. Elementary social studies does not need to reserve cross-cultural experiences for middle or high school international travel experiences. Elementary social studies field trips do not need to be afraid of discussing religious diversity. The field of elementary social studies does not need to limit field trips to sites of historic, geographic, or economic importance, but can encounter people and their communities (Gutman 1987). Elementary social studies should use the structured field trip more as an educational tool to help students learn more about themselves and how they relate to their neighbors.