Week 10 Community History Workshop: A Neighborhood Exhibit on Many Roads

Part 1 — The Big Picture

A library exhibit is a small record of how a neighborhood remembers itself. This week you learned that Filipino farmworkers began the Delano grape strike in 1965 and Mexican American farmworkers joined them, that about 15,000 students walked out of East Los Angeles high schools in March 1968, that Puerto Ricans are citizens by the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917, that Cubans had a law of their own in 1966 and Central Americans came during the civil wars of the 1980s, and that Hispanic or Latino was asked as an ethnicity apart from race from 1997 to 2024. In this workshop you code an illustrative ten-label exhibit, linking each object to the week's laws and events, then count and compare. You set two court rulings on the separate-schools thread side by side across two groups, catch a chatbot flattening many communities into one, and reflect on what your own position lets you see.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: Which of this week's movements, laws, and terms show up in one neighborhood exhibit, how are they shared across the ten labels, and what can one exhibit not tell you?

Workshop data: An illustrative neighborhood library exhibit of ten object labels

Source: A ten-label exhibit from a neighborhood library, written for this workshop as an illustrative example; it is printed in full in Part 4, describes no real library, family, or person, and names nobody.

• Rows: 10 object labels, one row each in the data table
• Columns: label number, what the label describes, and two blank columns for your code and your dated link
• Scope: one exhibit at one illustrative library

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• A notebook or any free note-taking app for reading a record and for oral-history notes (identified by role and decade, never by name); a free spreadsheet for the lending table's rates and gaps and for any year-stamped figure; any free timeline tool, or a hand-drawn timeline, for the law-and-case timeline; and one approved chatbot used as a sparring partner whose claims about real people, laws, and dates the student checks against an issuing-body or primary source before trusting them
• a free spreadsheet
• any free timeline tool, or a hand-drawn timeline
• a notebook or any free note-taking app
• one approved chatbot

Ways of working

• read-the-record
• oral-history
• compare-and-connect

Procedure

1. Read the ten object labels in the data table in Part 4. They are an illustrative exhibit, built for this workshop, from a neighborhood library; no real library, family, or person is described, and people appear only by role. Tool: a notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: You can say in one sentence what the exhibit shows and that it is illustrative.
2. Give each label one code: F for farm labor and the Delano grape strike, S for schools and campus demands, P for Puerto Rican citizenship and Section 4(e), N for Cuban and Central American arrivals (the 1966 law and the 1980s), or T for the group terms and the federal categories. Write the code in the data table's code column, and in the last column write the dated law, event, or decade the object connects to. Tool: a notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Every one of the ten rows carries one code and one dated link.
3. Open a blank sheet. Type Label, Code, and Dated link in cells A1 to C1, enter your ten rows in rows 2 to 11, then count each code with =COUNTIF(B2:B11,"F") and the same formula for S, P, N, and T. Tool: a free spreadsheet. Check: The five counts add up to 10, the number of labels.
4. Turn each count into a percent of all labels: divide the count by 10 and multiply by 100. Then find the gap, in percentage points, between your largest and smallest percents, and write each step in the count table. Tool: a free spreadsheet. Check: The five percents add up to 100, and the gap is written in percentage points.
5. Draw the law-and-case timeline from 1917 to 2024 and mark 1917, 1946, 1954, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968, the 1980s, 1997, and 2024. Place one label from each code beside the year it connects to. Tool: any free timeline tool, or a hand-drawn timeline. Check: Each code's label sits beside its year or decade on the timeline.
6. Complete the comparison table: set the 1946 ruling for Mexican American students beside the 1954 ruling for Black students on the course's separate-schools thread, using only the dated facts the course gives. Tool: a notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Every row of the comparison table is filled for both rulings.
7. Paste your coding table into one approved chatbot, then paste the Part 6 prompt. Check every claim it makes about a real person, law, or date against the chapter's dated record before trusting it, or take the equivalent route instead. Tool: one approved chatbot. Check: You have quoted at least three chatbot claims and corrected at least three by hand.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if no spreadsheet or timeline tool is available.

Code and count the labels by hand from the data table: mark one code beside each label, count each mark, divide each count by 10, and multiply by 100. Draw the timeline by hand on paper, complete every scaffold table, analysis question, and the critique step, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

The data come first: an illustrative ten-label exhibit from a neighborhood library, with two columns for your work.

Student scaffold table 1

Label	What the label describes	Your code (F, S, P, N, or T)	Dated law, event, or decade it connects to
1	A union button from a grape boycott, donated by a retired farmworker's family.
2	A typed flyer listing high school students' demands for bilingual education and classes about their own history.
3	A steamship ticket from San Juan to New York that a family kept from the 1940s.
4	A photo album from a family's first apartment in Miami in the 1960s, after the family left Cuba.
5	A church bulletin announcing English classes for newly arrived Salvadoran and Guatemalan families in the 1980s.
6	A census form, kept by a family, that asks about Hispanic origin in its own question before it asks about race.
7	A college club banner that reads Chicano Studies Now.
8	A voter registration card from a citizen who was schooled in Spanish in Puerto Rico.
9	A photo of a union hall where Filipino and Mexican American farmworkers met.
10	A high school yearbook page with a photo of students holding walkout signs.

Count each code, turn each count into a percent of the ten labels, and name the year each code connects to.

Student scaffold table 2

Code	Count	Percent of all labels	Year or decade it connects to
F — farm labor and the Delano grape strike
S — schools and campus demands
P — Puerto Rican citizenship and Section 4(e)
N — Cuban and Central American arrivals
T — group terms and the federal categories
All labels	10	100

Compare two rulings on the course's separate-schools thread, using only the dated facts the course gives.

Student scaffold table 3

Question	The 1946 ruling for Mexican American students	The 1954 ruling for Black students
Who was kept apart, and on what grounds
Which court ruled, and in what year
What the ruling held
What the dated record shows came afterward

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Using your sheet or a hand count, how many labels carry each code, what percent of all labels is each, and what is the gap between your largest and smallest percents, in percentage points? Show each count, each division, and the subtraction.
2. Compare label 1 with label 9. What does the pair show about who took part in the Delano grape strike, and in what order did the two groups join it?
3. In 3–4 sentences, explain why labels 3, 4, 5, and 8 together show many communities with different histories rather than one group with one history, naming the law or decade each label connects to.
4. Using your comparison table, set the 1946 ruling beside the 1954 ruling. In 3–4 sentences, say what the two rulings share, one difference, and what labels 2 and 10 add about what the rulings left unchanged inside schools.
5. Positionality memo — choose one and answer it in 4–6 sentences. (a) What about your own background (where you grew up, the languages you speak, the words your family uses for itself) shaped which labels seemed familiar to you and which stood out? (b) What can an illustrative exhibit not tell you about the families whose objects it shows, and which dated record or consenting interview would you need to check it?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed coding table above. It codes ten object labels from an illustrative neighborhood library exhibit, built for a class activity; it describes no real library, family, or person. In about 200 words, please do six things. First, summarize what the exhibit shows about what Latinos are like and how they all came to the United States. Second, say who began the Delano grape strike and in what year, and when Puerto Ricans became U.S. citizens. Third, say whether punishing students for speaking Spanish had good and bad sides, staying neutral. Fourth, explain whether Hispanic is a race, a nationality, or an ethnicity, and whether the census category Hispanic or Latino is a biological group. Fifth, give one quotation from a strike leader and one survey figure on how many Latinos prefer the word Latinx. Sixth, tell me which group term is the right one for everyone.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often sum up the exhibit as showing one Latino community with one history and one way of arriving.
• A chatbot may explain the union button by saying Latino families are naturally farmworkers or naturally hardworking.
• Asked for a quotation and a figure, a chatbot will often invent a line for a strike leader and a survey percentage for the word Latinx.
• A chatbot describing the lands ceded in 1848 may call them empty except for tribes that vanished long ago.
• A chatbot may say punishing students for speaking Spanish had pros and cons because it sped up English.
• Asked which group term is right, a chatbot may declare the Latinx debate settled and tell everyone to use one word.
• Chatbots commonly say Mexican American farmworkers began the Delano strike, and some give the wrong year for Puerto Rican citizenship.
• A chatbot may call the Filipino strikers Oriental workers, an outdated term, as if it were current.
• Chatbots often call Hispanic a race, a nationality, and an ethnicity all at once.
• A chatbot may describe Hispanic or Latino as a biological group that the census measures.
• A "balanced" chatbot summary may say the walkouts mostly disrupted schools, though a few students had complaints.

In 3–5 sentences, quote at least three things the chatbot wrote, say what it got right, and correct at least three of its errors by hand, naming for each the dated record or course definition you checked it against.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objectives (Objective 6 and Objective 2) for comparable effort, about 30 of the 90 minutes, under the same scoring criteria and the same credit. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "This exhibit shows that Latinos are one community with one history, one culture, and one way of coming to the United States. Latino families are naturally hardworking farmworkers, which is why the union button and the union hall matter so much to them. As one strike leader famously said, 'We will not leave the fields until we win,' and a survey shows that 40 percent of Latinos prefer the word Latinx. The land ceded in 1848 had been empty except for Indian tribes that vanished long ago. Punishing students for speaking Spanish had good and bad sides: it was hard on them, but it helped them learn English faster. The debate over Latinx is settled now, and everyone should use the word. Mexican American farmworkers began the Delano grape strike in 1966, and Puerto Ricans became citizens in 1952. Oriental workers also took part at Delano. Hispanic is a race, a nationality, and an ethnicity all at once. The census category Hispanic or Latino is a biological group that the census measures. To stay neutral: the walkouts mostly disrupted schools, though a few students had complaints." Mark it up: quote each flawed sentence, name what is wrong (many communities read as one uniform experience, a stereotype stated as fact, an invented quotation and survey figure, Native nations described as gone, a documented injustice framed as both sides, a current debate declared settled, a law and dates misstated, an outdated term used without comment, race, nationality, and ethnicity used as one thing, a census category read as biology, and a neutral-sounding summary that quietly takes a side), and correct at least three errors by hand, naming the dated record or course definition behind each correction. Submit the marked-up analysis in place of the chatbot report and share link; it earns the same credit.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• The completed data table with your codes and dated links
• The completed count table and comparison table
• Your hand-drawn or tool-made timeline with one label placed for each code
• Written answers to all five analysis questions, including your positionality memo
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Community History Workshop report on an illustrative neighborhood library exhibit: the completed data table with your codes and dated links, the count and comparison tables, a timeline with one label placed for each code, written answers to five analysis questions including a positionality memo, and a critique of a chatbot's reading of the same exhibit, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose a written, recorded, or visual form for your answers; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Coding the exhibit and counting the codes	Every label carries a defensible code, the five counts add to ten, each percent is correct with its division shown, and the gap is given in percentage points.	The codes or counts are attempted but one count or percent is wrong or unshown, the gap is missing or given in percent, or several labels lack a code.	No codes, counts, or percents appear, or the numbers are invented rather than counted.
Placing the labels in time and reading them in the field's terms	Each code is tied to its correct dated law, event, or decade on the timeline, labels 1 and 9 are read as a strike begun by Filipino farmworkers and joined by Mexican American farmworkers, and labels 3, 4, 5, and 8 are read as different histories.	The timeline or readings are attempted, but a date is wrong, a reading is thin, or the communities are flattened into one history.	No timeline or reading of the labels appears.
A documented comparison across groups	The comparison table is complete with dated facts for both rulings, and the answer names what they share, one difference, and what the walkout labels add.	The table or answer is attempted but a row is empty, a fact is undated, or the comparison stops at listing.	No comparison appears.
The AI slip caught and corrected	Through the chatbot report with its share link or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis, equally, at least three quoted errors are each named and corrected by hand against the dated record or a course definition.	Through either route, equally, one or two errors are corrected, or corrections lack the record or definition behind them.	Through either route, equally, no critique appears, or model output is pasted without any checking.
An honest reflection on positionality	The memo answers one of the two options in specific terms, naming what the student's own position let them see or miss, or naming the record or consenting interview that would check the exhibit.	The memo answers an option in general terms without a specific example.	No memo appears.

Quality Gate

• Every count and percent comes from your own sheet or hand count of the data table, never from memory or a chatbot.
• Each count divided by 10 and multiplied by 100 equals the percent you report for it, and the gap between two percents is reported in percentage points.
• Every group is named as its members most commonly name themselves, every person in the exhibit is named only by role, and every date matches the chapter's dated record.
• No law, date, quotation, survey figure, statistic, or detail about any real person or community is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least three errors with evidence from the chapter or Part 6.