Every Thursday, I tutor a new student at Forging Opportunities for Refugees in America (FORA) on their math and reading.
FORA is a nonprofit organization in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood that helps refugee children catch up academically while supporting their cultural and language acclimation after disrupted schooling.
Truthfully, I mainly attempt to help them with their math, ask Google to tutor the both of us over the foundations of geometry and — wait for the good part — the 30-minute storytime.
To build literary skills, tutors can read with students or listen to them read from a variety of materials including picture books, chapter books and encyclopedias.
Usually, I read stories about courage or black holes — easily my least favorite subjects.
However, this time, I was able to read my student a spinoff of my favorite stories growing up, the “You Choose: Can You Survive Interactive History Adventures” series.
I was halfway through the first paragraph of “The Oregon Trail: The Race to Chimney Rock,” describing the fictional child’s ascent out of Independence, Mo. — because who’d choose to stay in Missouri — when I noticed my student’s eyes flickering around the room, scanning for possible escape routes.
“I really have to go to the bathroom,” the student blurted out.
I let him go, of course. You can’t tell a kid they can’t use the bathroom.
But as I sat there holding the book, I remembered how stories like this one first taught me to care — about the past, people and the truth.
Growing up, I cycled through three types of books — the “You Choose,” “I Survived” and “Dear America” series.
These books humanized history. They made it about people, impacts and emotions, not just dates and wars like my elementary curriculum did.
Often, stories build empathy before we even have the language for it.
Across two experiments, researchers found becoming immersed in fictional stories affects empathy over time with deeper immersion being linked to greater empathy.
When children have the opportunity to deeply immerse themselves into these stories and learn stories can be true, they learn truth, history and empathy are worth protecting.
In an era of misinformation, polarization and rising individualism, children reading historical fiction teaches them a deeper truth. Caring about facts means caring about people.
Many children see history as nothing more than a collection of names, dates and wars to memorize — dull, irrelevant information detached from their own lives.
But the past isn’t distant or abstract. It’s a continuously expanding and reforming story of real people — what they ate, wore, said, believed, loved and experienced in their own worlds.
Looking back, I know these books didn’t always get everything right. They simplified complex histories into dramatic but neat storylines and often centered fictional characters who looked like the authors.
Real history, of course, is never that tidy.
Maybe the “You Choose” series didn’t teach me about systematic oppression, displacement or the brutal logistics of westward expansion and the Oregon Trail, but they made me curious enough to seek those stories out.
They taught me history was something I had to question, research and feel for to come to the truth.
So, for what they lacked in accuracy, they made up for in accessibility. They opened doors leading to empathy, curiosity and a deeper understanding of what the word “truth” meant.
If you don’t believe me, I was twice crowned Social Studies Student of the Year in high school. Beat that.
As I sat there waiting for my student to come back from playing with the hand dryer in the restroom, I realized maybe he didn’t need to love this story the same way I did. Maybe what mattered was giving him the same chance I had to see that history isn’t about memorization, but imagining what it means to be someone else.
And by the end of the night, when we were both exhausted, my student was so invested in the autonomy the story gave him that he grabbed the book and marked down the page for next time.
When I saw him shift from trying to run away from history lessons to grabbing the book out of my hands to skip to the next choice, I saw myself as a kid reflected in his newly eager eyes.
Historical fiction might not always get the details right — but it gets at something more important. It teaches us to look back with empathy, forward with curiosity and to view the present with knowledge.
When people study history, they see how the past shapes today.
Understanding history helps in the recognition of patterns, questioning of assumptions and the ability to make informed choices about the world and the people in it.