See It: The Community being helped

When people think of history, it usually conjures up memories of dry facts, such as names and dates that hold no meaning anymore – if they ever did. History is seen as a boring topic to many, but I know that this is not so: history is all about people, just like us, with fascinating stories to tell. Students, particularly younger ones, are especially vunerable to this: history comes out of a book for them, and it should not be like that.
The project was an interpretive history program entitled “History – Alive and in Person!” to take into the district Elementary Schools and perform for the students since I love working with children. In order for this program to take place, I arranged meetings with the district superintendent to receive permission, sent letters to the principals to schedule dates, picked characters from various time periods, created identities for them, researched their time periods and developed their stories, chose students to play the characters, found appropriate costumes, composed both student and teacher evaluation forms, and finally, presented the program.
The program was set up so that there was a character in each room, and the elementary students rotated through every seven minutes. During the seven minutes, each of the characters spoke about what life was like for them, how they felt, what they thought – the side of history that’s often forgotten. There was a man from the Revolutionary War, who argued that America did not need to be her own country, a pioneer woman who talked about the hardships of traveling the Oregon Trail, a soldier from the Civil War who told students about the conditions he was forced to survive in, a Victorian woman who spoke of the expectations for women and fashions such as corsets, a child laborer who talked about the horrendous conditions and hours spent in factories, a flapper from the roaring twenties who spoke of the culture and taught students how to do the Charleston, and a World War II soldier who told students whatever they wanted to know about the war.
The program was a great success, and they've asked us to present a new one next year!