Notes from the Authors

The Underground Railroad Site was made by Hazel Carrasco and Owen Solberg, while in teacher training at UC Davis. It was initially made to supplement the curriculum at Yuba Feather School through UCD's Rural Learning Network (see below), but its audience is now much larger. Below are a few notes from the authors.

Hazel Carrasco

When this project was initially introduced in our Education 180 class at UCD, I immediately expressed my desire to work with the Civil War period. This volatile and critical period of American history produced such a rich and diverse body of literature from the autobiography of the slave Linda Brent to the fictional work of white sympathizer Harriet Beecher Stowe.

We had originally thought of using a Hyperstudio stack that students at Yuba Feather School can examine and use a resource for their own studies. However, Owen suggested creating a World Wide Web site instead to replace our original plan in order to make the information accessible to many more students who might be interested in learning more about the Underground Railroad and the writers of the American Civil War. After all an increasing number of students all over the nation have access to the Internet now.

Even though I may be a Language Arts teacher, I have used technology in my classroom to facilitate language skills development. In the semester-long ESL Geography I taught at Valley High School, second language learners were able to create a database of weather terms and concepts and use the Internet as research tool for the course's final project. Both were successful ventures and increased student's ability to generate language.

I will be moving on to summer school at New Haven High School to teach a 10th grade English course. I do plan to continue incorporating technology in my Language Arts curriculum to enhance and motivate learning in my classroom.

Owen Solberg

Hello! Hazel and I put together this web site on the Underground Railroad as part of a class project for our student teaching. The story of the Underground Railroad, like all examples of incredible human suffering and courage, is one that must never be forgotten. This page is one small step towards recording the hard lessons learned by our ancestors.

Furthermore, this page has allowed us to take part in the Rural Learning Network, and it has been exciting to see how the use of technology for long distance learning has developed this year. I hope this page is just the beginning of much more work to come in the future. If you are interested in the details of the project, read our statement of purpose.

Feedback

Please understand that I am neither a historian nor an expert on the Underground Railroad.  I am sorry that I cannot respond to emails that ask questions about  the Underground Railroad.  If you do not find the information you need on this site, you can try  visiting the other sites in my links section or perhaps better yet, visiting your local library.

If you have other comments related to this website, my email address is

(Sorry I have to do it this way, but spam email is a real pain these days.)

Thank you.