Series: Creative Teaching with Historic Places: Selections from CRM Vol 23 no 8 (2000)

These articles are a selection from a special issue of CRM Journal, "Creative Teaching with Historic Places" published in 2000. They provide examples of teaching using historic places both in and out of the classroom, helping students connect with history using the power of place, as well as how to prepare lessons making those connections. Teaching with Historic Places is a program of the National Park Service.

• Article 1: History in the Hands of Tomorrow's Citizens

  

  A decade ago, amidst widespread interest in the quality of education in America, the National Register of Historic Places began seeking ways to make teachers and others more aware of the educational value of historic places and documentation about them. Formally organized in 1991, Teaching with Historic Places set out to demonstrate how historic places – as both tangible links to the past and also sources of evidence – can help teach academic subjects, raise awareness ... Read more

• Article 2: On-Site Learning: The Power of Historic Places

  

  A mix of unskilled, illiterate day workers and well-tutored professionals gathered at the African Meeting House on Boston’s Beacon Hill in 1863. From the pulpit in the sanctuary, abolitionist, editor, and former slave Frederick Douglass urged Black men to answer the nation’s call for recruits for the new 54th Massachusetts Infantry. Read more

• Article 3: Visualizing History: Inquiring Minds Want to Know

  

  Read any good buildings lately? How about landscapes? Or downtown streets, or your neighborhood, or the site of your last vacation? I’ll bet you have, although you may not be aware of it. Our minds constantly are processing visual as well as other data. From this information we make assumptions and draw conclusions about the world around us. It is amazing how much we do not really see on a conscious level. Read more

• Article 4: Sources, Sites, and Standards

  

  Forget Disney World – growing up, the vacations my family took were to places such as Valley Forge. I never really appreciated this, however, until years later when I was teaching US history at a high school in Houston, Texas, and we were studying the American Revolution. I wanted to convey to my students the commitment of those who fought for independence. Read more

• Article 5: It's History "Just for Kids"

  

  “You’re getting so much information for us that in the past we’ve had to search for over a number of years. Thanks to your efforts, the students will have an excellent perspective of their ancestors and community.” – City of Sidney elementary school teacher Read more

• Article 6: Writing a Teaching with Historic Places Lesson Plan: A View from the Gaylord Building

  

  We have all heard this kind of talk from someone just won over to something new. “You know this bee pollen really gives me more energy. You should put some on your cereal every morning.” We roll our eyes, and say, “You know, I really should,” but with no intention of doing so. Well, at the risk of sounding like that someone, I’m saying, “every site should do a Teaching with Historic Places lesson plan.” Read more

• Article 7: Teaching with Historic Places in the Classroom

  

  From the Boott Mills of the Industrial Revolution in Lowell, Massachusetts, to the horrors of Andersonville during the Civil War; from the waters of the Mediterranean with Stephen Decatur to the boyhood home of William H. Taft, the Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lessons have provided helpful support tools for me in my classroom. The topics mentioned are but a few ready for use by the busy teacher. Read more

• Andersonville National Historic Site

  Article 8: Arizona Students Learn from a Georgia Civil War Prison

  

  When teaching my seventh-grade students about the Civil War, nothing leaves more of an impression than the story of Andersonville Prison, a Confederate prison in Andersonville, Georgia, which is now preserved as a national historic site. The Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan, “Andersonville: Prison of War Camp,” is an excellent tool for bringing this story to life in my classroom. Read more

• Article 9: The Community as Classroom

  

  Many students in our fine institution have been all over the country and all over the world, but know little about the history of the looming city to the south of them. It was for this reason that I went on my own personal crusade to educate students about the wonderfully rich architectural heritage in their own backyard. Read more

• Article 10: Seeing is Believing: Teaching with Historic Places Field Studies

  

  Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) has demonstrated that historic places help students learn even when visits are impossible. Nevertheless, visiting historic places in person gives a special sense of being “in history.” Workshops have used walking tours that investigate local historic places to demonstrate how field studies can enrich learning of both content and thinking skills. Read more

• Article 11: Teaching with Historic Places and Local History: A Positive Partnership

  

  Although historians concern themselves with events, and preservationists with buildings, the two are often related. In addition, educators have convinced us that studying buildings in a vacuum is ineffective. It takes the history associated with those buildings, combined with the buildings themselves, to excite students. This is why TwHP and local heritage education initiatives such as our own Louisiana Studies Historic Preservation Supplement make such good partners. Read more

• Article 12: Preparing Teachers to Teach with Historic Places

  

  Students in the elementary social studies methods course at Boston University need to be convinced that history ought to be an important part of their teaching. Most confess that history was a deadly bore when they were in school; their experience with university history courses wasn’t much better, so they say. Read more

• Article 13: Collaboration in Teaching with Historic Places

  

  The proposal embraced the Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) model and aimed at fifth-grade teachers along Jacob’s Ladder Trail. The Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Frameworks requires educators at this level to teach United States history and geography, and encourages them to link the study to American art and architecture and to take advantage of historic sites. The fit seemed perfect. Read more

• Article 14: Solving Local History's Mysteries: Researching Buildings for Fifth-Grade Teaching

  

  When I was “volunteered” to participate in the Jacob’s Ladder Heritage Education Project, I had no idea what would be involved until the contract arrived. But at the first meeting I realized that this was going to be no ordinary curriculum-writing assignment. What had my school system gotten me into? Read more

• Article 15: The Real Thing in the Right Place

  

  Unlike traditional museums, which often contain real artifacts and icons isolated from their origin; and unlike classrooms where knowledge is conveyed through various media that may describe real artifacts and icons; national parks have the real thing in the right place. Read more

• Andersonville National Historic Site

  Article 16: Teaching with Historic Places in the Parks: On Site/Off Site, Students Learn about Andersonville

  

  I realized that the educational materials that I and fellow workshop participants were developing had the potential to touch many people. I hoped that they would encourage students to learn more about this country’s historic treasures, events, and people. For many students in many grade levels, the study of history means sitting in class, listening to a lecture, and memorizing dates. These ways of studying history do have their place, but history is so much more than that. Read more

• Article 17: Teaching with Historic Places in the Parks: Teaching the Klondike Gold Rush

  

  I was apprehensive – how could I write a lesson plan in just five days? I was never trained as a teacher; I had no idea what to do. Fortunately, the TwHP template is easy to use and can be applied to any historical site, public or private, prehistoric or modern. Read more

• Fort Frederica National Monument

  Article 18: Teaching with Historic Places in the Parks: Digging History at Fort Frederica

  

  On the serene, isolated west shore of St. Simons Island, Georgia, the ruins of a once flourishing 18th-century settlement stand. A powder magazine overlooks Frederica River, a reminder of the fort that protected the British colonies against the Spanish during the early-18th-century struggle for control of the southern frontier of English occupation in the New World. Read more

• Article 19: Curriculum Connections: Making the Most of National Park Experiences

  

  Developing curriculum-based programs is the cornerstone for a solid foundation for park education programs. Providing relevant resource-based experiences for people of all ages will ensure a continuum of opportunities for citizens to support their own learning objectives through the national parks and to find meaning in their national treasures. Offering curriculum-based programs, especially for school age children will help foster stewardship. Read more

• Article 20: Developing the Next Generation of Preservation Professionals

  

  The Teaching with Historic Places program allows the national historic preservation programs to reach out to new audiences, providing guidance on ways to integrate historic places into the teaching of history, social studies, art, and other subjects. In the process, the program also can implant in the minds of young people that historic preservation might also be a career to pursue. Read more