I knew I’d stumbled upon a powerful teaching tool when I woke up one October morning with a nagging impulse to read the Federalist Papers. While I freely admit to being a history nerd, my current preoccupation with post-colonial American history is born entirely out of my love for the Broadway musical Hamilton.

For those who have missed the buzz, Hamilton: An American Musical, written by and starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, chronicles the rise and fall of the “10-dollar founding father,” Alexander Hamilton. The story is inextricably linked to that of the birth of our nation. Hamilton, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for drama, and nominated for a record-breaking 16 Tony Awards, has been blowing away audiences since it opened in February 2015 Off-Broadway and made it to Broadway last August. It’s a pretty great show, and as a teaching tool it’s darn near perfect. The story is gripping, more so because it is (mostly) true, the content is obsessively well researched and based largely on primary sources, and the language is complex and fun. Then there’s the music—an intoxicating cocktail of pop, R&B, rap, and Broadway show tunes—and the mostly non-white casting, all of which effectively erases the distance between the audience and the story. I had to share Hamilton with my fifth graders, who were about to begin their unit on the American Revolution.

I teach in a Title I school, and I knew many students would connect to Hamilton’s difficult childhood. My library also has a budding maker space. While I doubt Miranda sees Hamilton as a product of the maker movement, to me it is an excellent example of something created out of curiosity and passion—which is what being a maker is all about.

Before starting, I needed to grapple with a parental advisory-size roadblock: the language. Hamilton’s lyrics are complicated, and most songs have a word or two that I can’t play in a fifth-grade classroom.

In the end, I created two close-reading lessons—“Hamilessons”—focused on the songs “Farmer Refuted,” “You’ll Be Back,” and a clip from “Right Hand Man,” which collectively illustrate four perspectives from the early days of the Revolution. The lessons were framed by the question: How can art help us understand the world?

Hamilesson 1

We discussed how art can take many forms: a painting, song, book, movie, TV show—or musical. I asked students to share a time when art inspired them to learn more about something.

Then I told them about Hamilton—and the poor, orphaned, brilliant, immigrant kid and war hero who helped create our nation; and the duel that took his life. How Miranda picked up a book—Ron Chernow’s biography, Alexander Hamilton (Penguin, 2004)—while on vacation and heard hip hop in the story. How I listened to the soundtrack and went a little bit crazy (enough to go to New York just to see it). What’s striking about Hamilton is that between the story and the music, it has multiple entry points. Every student was engaged in a way that was meaningful to them.

Described by Miranda as a “battle rap in waltz time,” the song “Farmer Refuted” depicts the real-life pamphlet war between loyalist Samuel Seabury and Hamilton. “You’ll Be Back” is King George III’s British Invasion–style break-up song with the colonies as the Revolution builds.

I explained the purpose and process of close reading (or listening): it means reading a text several times while asking questions to gain a deeper, more meaningful understanding. For each song, I instructed them to skim through the lyrics, highlight words to look up later, and star anything that sparked a connection to history they knew. We listened to each song two or three times and discussed the historical perspectives these characters represent. Specifically:

Farmer Refuted

• What does each character want? How do you know? • What does Hamilton think of Samuel Seabury? • How does this song connect to what you already know about loyalists and revolutionaries?

You’ll Be Back

• Who is King George singing to? • What is he singing about?

Students made connections to historical references such as the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. We dug deeper into the language—like the play on the word subject in this line from “You’ll Be Back”: “And no, don’t change the subject/ ‘Cause you’re my favorite subject.” Lastly, we discussed how each song’s tone matches the perspectives of the characters singing it.

Fifth graders practice their rap battle skills with the lyrics from
“Right Hand Man.”

Hamilesson 2

In “Right Hand Man,” singer George Washington is about to lose the Battle of Brooklyn and the island of Manhattan to the British. We only used the first two minutes, in which Washington voices his frustrations.

We began by thinking about the choices authors and artists make. I posed the question: Why hip hop? We watched Miranda’s video for the 2015 MacArthur Fellowship. He talks about his choices and the parallels between Hamilton’s story and the hip hop narrative. In our close read of “Right Hand Man,” students were charged with comparing the George Washington in the song with the legend they know. We considered how rap added to the emotion of the song.

Finally, I challenged them to give Washington’s rap a try. The rhythm and rhyme speak directly to the future president’s state of mind, creating an empathy that we rarely feel for this legendary figure. I wanted my students to feel that—and respect the skill required to perform it.

Throughout, students had a Google Doc with all of the lyrics and links to the songs and videos we watched. To wrap up, I challenged them to annotate the lyrics with definitions, reactions, and questions.

White River Elementary School fifth graders sing their favorite Hamilton numbers.

I’ve been floored by the growing impact of this show on my students. Many have listened to the whole cast recording. They refer to it in their history lessons, and they rap in the halls. They’re hardly alone. With the current #EduHam initiative, allowing 20,000 high schoolers, most from low-income families, to see the show for $10 and perform their own raps onstage, Hamilton’s educational potential seems limitless (see: SLJ/Hamilton). My own favorite response is from the fifth grader who came in one Monday holding Chernow’s biography. He’s reading it—a few pages at a time.

My principal, who witnessed my transformation into a superfan, calls these lessons my Genius Hour project. I think of them as my form of Hamilton fan art. I didn’t create an animated storyboard or an a cappella video. As a school librarian, I connect students to the stories they will fall in love with.

Addie Matteson (@queenaddie) is a library media specialist at White River Elementary in Noblesville, IN.