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September 1, 1998
Family Trees
by Cindy Kuhrasch
High school students often make choices that can negatively affect their
health. Especially common are behaviors with health consequences that don’t appear
for many years, such as smoking, excessive tanning, and drinking. It is difficult to
convince students of the risks involved in their behavioral choices. If there were only a
way to help students visualize the long-term effects...
One summer I took on the task of researching my family’s heritage.
I purchased Family Tree Maker, a popular software program that is basically an
interactive database. It has set fields for information about family members. After
entering the data, the user selects the fields to include on a preset print layout.
I began collecting and entering data. After entering many dates,
locations, and names, I began to create a printout to give as a Christmas gift. To my
surprise, the program offered me many choices about the type of information I could
include in the printout. One of the choices was a field entitled "Cause of
Death." Because I had access to death records, I was able to find the cause of death
for many of my relatives, so I added it to the printout. As I read through the final
product, I was amazed at the patterns of disease that ran through my family. I finished my
family tree about the same time that I had been wrestling with the idea of how to make
students aware of the results of their behaviors. Suddenly, I had an idea: Why
couldn’t I have students research the causes of death for their own relatives and
look for patterns within their own families?
We began the unit by having a free-flow discussion about diseases and
their risk factors. I encouraged students to make mind maps as we talked. Based on those
maps, we categorized diseases into two groups: those that included hereditary factors and
those that did not.
Meanwhile, at home, students worked with their parents and relatives to
research their family trees, including the causes of death for any direct ancestors. They
created family trees with the information they had, then looked for any missing links
(especially direct ancestors). With our lists of missing relatives in hand, we visited our
regional historic society for some authentic research. Every student was able to identify
at least one more relative, as well as search through death records for causes of death.
There were some surprises along the way. One of my students—a
fairly quiet and reserved person—had a few missing links in her family tree and was
working hard during our field trip to find them. We were in the archive section of the
regional historical society when she found a new relative. There was suddenly a shout from
the microfiche reader where she sat. It turned out that she was related to the famous
Hummel family (of Hummel figurines) of Germany! Needless to say, she was thrilled, as was
her family.
Once again, students entered information into the family tree program,
then began to look for patterns. Besides the final family tree (complete with causes of
death) students evaluated their family histories for hereditary and behavioral disease
risk factors. Students and parents alike were amazed by the resulting patterns. With
additional parent permission, we were able to research behavioral patterns such as smoking
and alcoholism, which could also have had long-term health effects. Students completed the
unit with a journal about the effects of their current behaviors and possible future
diseases.
Email: Cindy Kuhrasch
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