The AP US History class students have just completed their “One Family, Many Stories” Immigration in the Gilded Age projects, and in several cases, the final products turned out to be genuinely impressive — thoughtful, creative, and historically grounded. We saw podcasts with strong narrative arcs, documentaries that wove primary sources into compelling storytelling, and slide presentations with clear, evidence-based claims.

At its core, this was not just a research assignment. It was a project about learning how to tell the story of a family’s journey to the United States, and what life actually looked like once they arrived. Students had to trace push factors, migration decisions, neighborhood life, labor conditions, public attitudes, immigration laws, and ultimately make a defensible claim about opportunity versus hardship. The driving question pushed them beyond “what happened” toward “what did this experience mean?”

One takeaway worth highlighting: the checkpoints mattered. Requiring research collection, claim development, evidence integration, and rehearsal drafts made a noticeable difference in the quality of the final products. Students revised and sharpened their claims. They selected more sources as needed, and they tightened organization to fit the time-limit. They learned through process.

I also want to note how we approached AI in this project. AI use was introduced only in limited, structured ways — primarily as a creative planning tool (for example, helping students think through narrative flow or scene transitions in the documentary format). It was not used during the research phase. All research had to come from approved primary and secondary sources, and evidence had to be directly cited and explained. They had to grapple with the sources, think through what they wanted to say about their relevance. That said, as with many of us, I’m still working to find the right balance as an educator: how to acknowledge and guide emerging tools without allowing them to replace historical thinking. It’s an evolving conversation, and one that I'd love to explore with interested colleagues.

Attached is a student group’s final cut documentary on the Levine family. What stands out is the clarity of their central historical claims, that economic stability came through prolonged labor and adaptation rather than immediate opportunity, and the way they intentionally structured scenes to reinforce that argument while grounding it in primary source evidence. Special Shoutout to Sean Condon for the use of his trove of costume material, too. I think it really added something to Sofi, Alex, and Jana's final production.