Highsmith, Carol M. Old Mission San Juan Bautista in San Juan Bautista, a city in San Benito County, California. 2013. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2013634732/.
Students begin with a silent visual analysis of the mission—its hillside perch, garden courtyard, and bell wall. In pairs, they discuss how these features suggest both religious presence and colonial visibility. Next, students listen to or read Kim Shuck’s “This River,” annotating imagery and tone that evoke interconnectedness with place and loss. In reflective writing, they link the poem’s river as metaphor for memory with the mission’s physical legacy to explore themes of erasure and reclamation.
Mission San Juan Bautista, founded on June 24, 1797 by Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, was one of the final missions built in Alta California. Nestled in the Pajaro Valley, it became a hub for regional agriculture and Chalon Ohlone community life. Its gardens and bell tower served both religious and civic functions before secularization.
Source: https://californiamissionsfoundation.org/mission-san-juan-bautista/
Teacher’s Overarching Question
What does the photograph of Mission San Juan Bautista reveal about the mission’s historical role and presence within the surrounding community?
Supporting Questions
- How do the mission’s architectural elements—such as the bell wall, courtyard, and adobe structure—convey its intended purpose?
- What does the mission’s placement within the landscape suggest about its visibility and influence?
- Which visual details hint at the cultural, social, or economic interactions that may have occurred here?
Extension Question
How might you pair a local place—perhaps a river, path, or building—with a literary or artistic response that reclaims its memory?
ELA Standard
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11–12.7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.
Social Studies Standard
HSS Standard 11.1.2: Examine the expanding role of religion and religious institutions in shaping cultural identity in the United States.
NCTE Standard 5
Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
- What characteristics of the mission image suggest spiritual control or displacement?
- How does Shuck’s river—its flow, passage, persistence—serve as cultural memory?
- In what ways do poems and photographs together help reclaim or reinterpret a land’s story?
- Begin with visual analysis: students note Mission San Juan Bautista's hillside location, courtyard layout, and bell wall, considering religious presence or visibility. Provide historical context: founded in 1797, served the Chalon Ohlone, and functioned as an agricultural hub before secularization.
- Introduce Kim Shuck’s “This River” via the recording from the Library of Congress. Students annotate for imagery and tone: the flow of water as resilience, memory, and identity. In small groups, students connect how the poem’s river metaphor recuperates what the mission’s static architecture may obscure.
- Host a class discussion: Compare how spatial permanence (mission) and fluid metaphor (river) represent contrasting forms of cultural memory. Ask: Does Shuck’s poem flow through erasure as refreshment? How can poetry renew or critique historical structures?
- For writing, students draft a short analysis connecting a mission element (bell wall, orchard layout) with poem imagery. They must cite at least one feature from the photo and one line or metaphor from “This River.”
- As an extension, students photograph a local river, creek, or landscape that holds meaning, then write a poem or micro‑essay that re-maps its memory or cultural resonance in conversation with the poem-image pairing.
Highsmith, Carol M. La Purísima Mission, Lompoc, California. 2012. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2013632530/.
Highsmith, Carol M. Mission Santa Cruz was a Spanish mission founded by the Franciscan order in present-day Santa Cruz, California. 2012. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2013632074/.