50 SHS History Students See Hamilton on Broadway

Though many of their parents can't figure out how to get tickets, 50 lucky SHS juniors who take AT US History got to see the show "Hamilton" on Broadway and meet the set designer last Wednesday. Teacher Adam Weisler saw the show in September and was "simply astonished, by its energy, by how completely engrossing it was, and (as a history teacher) by the innovative genius it took to transform what many might consider to be less-than-scintillating historical events (for example, the negotiations over the federal government's assumption of state debts after the American Revolution) into extraordinary entertainment."

In 2014 Weisler took his AT U.S. History students to see Bryan Cranston in "All the Way", about a key period in the life of Lyndon Johnson. As Cranston had just completed "Breaking Bad", many of the students were quite familiar with him. The show was wonderful, the kids enjoyed it, and it set the stage for a terrific conversation in class the next day about the historical events it portrayed.

So after he saw Hamilton, he reached out to the group sales manager at the Nederlander Theatre who agreed to hold a block of 50 tickets for a March matinee. Weisler "got terrific cooperation from Assistant Principals Sue Peppers and Chris Renino at the high school who, by email in early July, approved the trip, and checked that the date I had in mind posed no conflict with the school calendar for the coming year."

This is Weisler's third year teaching AT US History where the class spends a considerable amount of time on Alexander Hamilton, so he didn't need to make any adjustments to the curriculum in anticipation of the trip in March.

According to Weisler, "We discuss Hamilton in the classroom as an individual (his compelling personal biography, which I became familiar with in detail in 2004, when the now-famous biography of Hamilton by Ron Chernow, upon which the show is based, was published), as a party leader, and as a financial visionary. And students read rather comprehensively about Alexander Hamilton in chapters from two Pulitzer-Prize winning books."

Weisler explained:

"We read several chapters from Chernow's "Washington, a Life" which, in profiling Washington as President, discusses Hamilton, his work as Treasury Secretary and his rivalry with Thomas Jefferson. Students also read a chapter on Hamilton's duel with Aaron Burr in the book "Founding Brothers" by the historian Joseph Ellis. To say that I did not know when I bought the tickets in July and outlined the trip for my students in September exactly what kind of cultural phenomenon "Hamilton" would become in the months leading up to our March 16th matinee would be a colossal understatement. I had absolutely no idea! We were simply very, very lucky to have secured the tickets when we did.

Consequently, between the accolades the show has received and the buzz that has surrounded it around it, by the time March 16th arrived we had a bus filled with extraordinarily excited kids, and two very happy parent chaperones who joined us as well.

Janet Korins, the mother of one of the students in our group (Caroline Kaufman) has a cousin, David Korins, who was the set designer for "Hamilton." I corresponded with Janet during the weeks leading up to March 16th and she said that David was aware that our group was coming (I told her where our seats were) and that, although he was busy at work on another show, he would do his best to meet our group.

When the show ended, David came up to our seats, said a quick hello to Caroline, and introduced himself to me, so that I could introduce him to the students. He was incredibly kind and gracious, spending twenty minutes in "Q and A" (which I understand the people on Broadway call a "talk-back") explaining to the students how he came to work on the show, the process (including meticulous historical research) by which the sets were created, some of the key features of the set and the reason for them, and answering more general questions about the overall production.

We spent the next day in class discussing and reflecting on what we had seen the day before. I showed students the "60 Minutes" profile of Lin-Manuel Miranda (which, concerned that we might see his understudy, I hadn't shown them prior to our trip) and the cast's recent appearance at the White House, and opened the floor to questions and subsequent discussion about the history we had seen portrayed in "Hamilton," as we recalled the ways in which the show dramatized individuals and events we had covered in the course earlier in the year.

As I told the students, I had already seen the show, so the real joy and privilege for me as a teacher on March 16th was not so much the show itself, but seeing in their faces - before, during, and after "Hamilton" - how genuinely excited they were to have the experience. That was wonderful!"