Teaching Hamilton for ElA

​I fell for Hamilton in the winter of my senior year of college. It was approaching finals week and as an English major, I was spending all my time writing- like I was running out of time. There was no better soundtrack than Hamilton to get me through finals week. My friends were equally obsessed. We had a Hamilton party where we sang the whole musical together and did coloring sheets based on it. Hamilton became the soundtrack to my senior year at Notre Dame and I can’t listen to the musical without thinking about that time in my life and the excitement of discovering such a deep, beautiful, and inspiring musical.

Since my discovery, I’ve been quietly biding my time waiting for a perfect moment to teach this musical to my students. This autumn provided the perfect opportunity. The Hamilton tour came to our city and I got to see others around me falling in love with one of my favorite musicals. I also ended up teaching American Lit this year. I was looking for a way to teach the literature of the American Revolution, while still making it relevant to my very diverse class of students.

Here are a few things different ideas for teaching Hamilton:

• Close Reading: Hamilton is perfect for close reading. There is so much nuance in each musical and the lines can really be picked apart to be analyzed in different ways. I highly recommend modeling to students what a close reading looks like and giving them guided close readings for Hamilton. You can purchase my guided close readings for ELA here.
• Compare and Contrast: The relationship between Hamilton and Burr creates a great opportunity to really compare and contrast two characters. We talked about “foils,” character mindsets, and what decisions the characters made to define them. This sets up for a great paragraph writing assignment or graph organizer to compare and contrast Hamilton and Burr. I really loved asking students which of the two characters they related to most.
• Integrate Videos: There are some really awesome resources out there for Hamilton and a lot of them can be found through PBS. I paired videos with songs from Hamilton to help students understand the historical context that Miranda pulled from in creating Hamilton and to understand the true genius behind how he created it.
• Teach Motif: Hamilton integrate motif so well into the whole play. I asked students to track several motifs through the musical and note how they changed throughout. I recommend pre-teaching motif before you dive in and then following it up with a paper based on motif in Hamilton. You can purchase my motif tracker, outline, and Hamilton paper prompt here.
• Indulge Student Excitement: At one point while teaching, I noticed some sounds in the classroom while we were listening to a song. I was worried that students were talking, so I started moving around the room to investigate. Turns out, several students were singing along. A lot of students can’t stop listening to Hamilton on their own, so this really became a high engagement unit that pulled in students that don’t always love my class.

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There are still a lot of fun ideas I have for teaching Hamilton that I’m looking forward to trying next year. I would love to do more with the Schuyler Sisters. I think that they also have a lot of powerful motifs and character development, which could set up some really interesting papers. The unit was definitely a hit and I’m excited to teach it again in the future.