Developing Fredric Neubauer

Guest post by Ryan Janowski

            I enjoyed my experience conducting primary source research for the re-enactment of the UWM Planetarium. I conducted all my research at the Golda Meir Library on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. The sources I used either were found there or online. I used search terms like “Milwaukee public schools,” “Milwaukee teachers,” “Milwaukee state teachers’ college” and others to conduct my initial research for sources. These terms brought many sources to my attention that I could use. I found old school directories, old yearbooks, surveys, and reports from the Milwaukee Public School system. I initially gathered around 15 sources to look through while formulating my re-enactment posts. I really enjoyed the researching portion of the re-enactment. All the sources I gathered came to life while analyzing them and I gained the perspective of each source as I read it. This helped when creating the language used for my re-enactment posts. The main source I used for the re-enactment posts was surveys of teachers’ attitudes and opinions in the central city of the Milwaukee Public School district.[1] These sources provided insight into the way my character, Fredric Neubauer, might have carried himself. The more challenging aspects of the re-enactment for me were creating posts that connected to real life events. Connecting my characters’ perspective to events provided a fun challenge to my creativity and historical imagination. A few things that were missing or that I could not find were first-hand accounts from teachers in the Milwaukee Public Schools and images to accompany my posts.

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[1] Attitudes and Opinions of Milwaukee Public School Teachers in Central City Schools (Milwaukee, Wis: Milwaukee Board of School Directors, Special Committee on Equality of Educational Opportunity, 1965).