Journal Entry - Experience is paramount

One big thing that I have taken from our intensive five week class was the fact that inquiry and other forms of experience-based education are an effective method for teaching social studies.

As I already believed it, this fact has been confirmed during our various class experiences. I have been an advocate for and practitioner of experiential education ever since I went on a seven day pre-orientation backpacking trip at Colgate University, where I got my first degree in Peace and Conflict Studies. I lead trips for the Outdoor Education program at Colgate for four years and now work for the Boise State Outdoor Program. I strongly believe that experience is the most effective way to learn with the highest knowledge retention rate.

Thus, the trick with teaching history will be to create experience based lessons to learn about something that has already happened. History is, by definition, something that happened in the past, and, therefore, impossible to experience first hand (the most powerful way to learn). It seems to me that the next best thing is to simulate first hand experience. This brings up the question of what exactly happened. Answering this question can be part of the lesson.

I feel that one effective experiential lesson about a historical event will be as follows:

Students research the event to find out what happened. As a teacher I will encourage them to research different perspectives and find out if there are conflicting reports of what happened. Once the research is complete, we will, as a class, write a play or skit based upon the event. This can be as formal or informal as is warranted and we have time for (e.g. we may or may not build consumes and a set). If appropriate we will perform two or more skits to present multiple points of view. These multiple perspective can act as a powerful lesson to my students to show that a historical source always has a perspective and usually the perspective is that of the dominate group (i.e. 'the winners').