Empowering Global Citizens

study Boston Common, which has been used as a common grazing ground,
as a public park, for public executions, and as housing for British troops
during the Revolutionary War.

The students will write research reports on the important role that the space
assigned to them played in the history of its region or city.

Activity 6.4.4

Contemporary Commons

This activity instructs students to be amateur anthropologists in their own
community. The students are each assigned one common area in their
neighborhood. They might be assigned, for example, a sidewalk, a street, a
local park, the school cafeteria, or a hallway in school. They are instructed to
write an investigative report that answers the following questions:

— What sorts of activities take place there?

_ Who is the common area used by?

— What exchanges of culture or ideas takes place there?

— What are some of the threats to the common area? (For examples,
threats could include littering, fighting, or noise.)

— Who regulates the common area, and how is that person or group

effective?

They must then create some sort of expose in the style of a nature documen—
tary that shares with the class their assigned common area.

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