Getting Interactive with Students

"I see and I forget,
I hear and I remember,
I do and I understand"

We have all seen this sentiment expressed somewhere. It is a good sentiment with a lot of truth to it. Doing something as a learning experience is probably better than a lecture, or a whiteboard full or information, or a documentary or movie could provide. It certainly is one of the main positive aspects of Living History: people doing things in the old way as if they were really there. While I like to harp on about the joys of Living History, for some safety reasons, the general public cannot do everything that Living Historians can do, like fire a musket or drive beasts of burden. But is that to say that they should only be spectators? The above proverb clearly states that getting the public involved in some way is much better than hearing or seeing it. The challenge is "how?" How do we make meaningful connections to the past by getting the public safely involved with their learning experience? This was one of the challenges that I had before me when I worked at Fort Scott National Historic Site in 2013.

Fort Scott, Kansas

Fort Scott, Kansas, is in the south east portion of the state about an hour south of Kansas City. The National Park is one of the major sites to see around town, aside from US National Cemetery #1. It is hard to believe that such a small town has national importance. As a military fort, not much happened there. A lack or resources made it difficult to build. It was built be serve as the border of the US with the Native tribes placed there and prevent problems. With the West open after the Mexican American War, the border was dissolved and the forts with it. The fort buildings were sold off at auction and became the nexus of the town of Fort Scott. Since it was only 4 miles from the Missouri border it was generally a slave holding and supporting town and the Free Stating settlers had problems getting land in the area and getting along peaceably with the locals. Even though tensions were high as a result of the conflicts further north in Kansas, no bloodshed had come down that far south. By 1858, troubles finally came to Fort Scott, which is the only National Park site to interpret the "Bleeding Kansas" conflicts today. Allegedly, the Marais de Cygnes massacre was plotted in the pro-slavery supporting hotel, which was once one of the infantry barracks. A Free State supporting man was held imprisoned for allegedly stealing a pro-slavery man's horse in the top closet of one of the former Officer's residences when he was liberated by James Montgomery and his Jayhawk (Free State) men, some of whom were men borrowed from John Brown. As a result, one pro-slavery man was shot and killed. When the Civil War came, the Union Army took control of some of the buildings in town, including some of the old fort buildings and used them as a gathering place for men and material. It was also where the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry formed, the first black troops of the Union to form as a regiment and to fight in combat (Island Mound in Missouri, October 1862). Fort Scott became a hub in the supply line to the Union Army of the west and was targeted by CSA General Sterling Price in the last stages of his retreat in 1864 but the attack upon his rearguard at Mine Creek prevented him from attacking.

The Quartermaster building is the center building in this photograph

My first task at Fort Scott was to create an interpretive station for visiting school groups. Since Fort Scott was mostly a Quartermaster depot, the focus was to be on material, supplies, and distribution and how that affected the war effort.

I decided to start with appearances. I asked to be outfitted like a quartermaster from their Living History wardrobe. The best that could be come up with was a cavalry first sergeant's uniform. Of course, I later found out that a quartermaster would be a captain with quartermaster sergeants beneath him but I don't think in the end the students cared. This stationed interpretation took place at the fort's quartermaster building, to fully maximize the power of place in interpreting. Outside, to the students, I briefed them on what a quartermaster does, that they were responsible to store, maintain, and distribute equipment. I would then add, that it did not handle weapons and powder or food, since those were maintained by separate departments at the fort area. So with a whiteboard we drew comparisons between what the quartermasters of the 19th century did and what a Wal-Mart does. I picked a student volunteer with nice handwriting to draw a Venn diagram to put down the differences and similarities the student's called out. We walked around the back and asked them to use their imaginations as I told them about the other buildings that are no longer present, like the ice-house, blacksmith shop, and carpentry shops.

Inside a side room of the quartermaster building we talked about how the the quartermaster helped the community of Fort Scott. I asked for volunteers that were willing and had loud speaking voices. Getting volunteers to do most of my teaching for me engages the student, and makes it easier on my voice if I have to do 3-4 presentations in a row. The cards that the students read from informed the students of how the quartermaster and his help created a marketplace that would purchase from the locals, sell captured goods, and provide civilian jobs in the form of teamsters and drivers. This helped the town of Fort Scott to grow as people came to sell, buy, and stay in the area.

My persona in the 'Commissary room'

As we went further inside we examined the prop barrels of food. I called it the "Commissary Room" since the quartermasters did not handle food, but the Commissary needed places to store the food before it was distributed. We switched gears to food. I asked them to get into groups and count how many barrels of bacon, coffee, and etc. were in the room. This allowed them to move about and not be so wiggly. I gave out some more reading cards about the food items and asked the students to read aloud the contents of the card to inform their fellow students.  Some things like hominy or molasses were foreign to them and had to explained. We discussed a soldier's diet and what it consisted of and whether they would have liked it or not. Since time was running out at this point (it was supposed to be only 25 minutes from start to finish) I quickly told them about the room, which was one of the first built on the fort grounds and showed them the rough cuts from the axes, saws, and adzes used to shape the wood beams on our way out of the building to debrief.

My years of a teamwork building facilitator  was some great training for handing groups, because I learned how to ask questions to students to get responses in debrief. Debriefs are very important because they help cement information and knowledge in their heads, like a pop quiz. I ask very simple open ended questions that gather facts first, since they are the easiest things to remember. It is important to ask open-ended questions because asking yes/no questions does not reveal much knowledge since it requires no knowledge to answer. If a question is answered with a one word answer, a follow-up question is immediately asked to probe deeper. One example of fact finding question is  "What does a Quartermaster do?" or "What were the differences between a quartermaster depot and a Wal-Mart?" This is fact recollection, and depending on where I had the white board, they could glance over the  board quickly and see our answers. If you are an educator, you may be familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy, which is a hierarchy of questioning difficulty and can be used with great effectiveness in questioning; the limit is time.

The Quartermaster Office

The next toughest questions to ask are analytical questions, because they ask the student to process what they were told or did. These questions usually begin with "Why?", for example, "Why do you think the soldier's diets were that way?" or "Why were the carpentry shops, quartermaster building, and the blacksmith buildings so close to each other?" I could go on to harder questions but I am pressed for time at this point and rotating in a timely fashion keeps everyone on task so that the next session is not short. Because of this, I usually wrap up my station with a concluding type question, such as "What was the one thing you learned about this station?" or "What surprised you about this station?" By the time I am done wiping down the whiteboard, the next group has arrived to fill it back up again.

The point of all this is to get the students to engage. In this example, we have students interacting with a costumed interpreter and asking questions and giving answers. They have a primitive visual stimulus of a white board (though anachronistic) with their answers on it. We move from place to place every so often to keep them from getting wiggly. They have the opportunity to contribute to the discussion and were encouraged to participate. Some students are outgoing and want to volunteer, where some students do not want to and can stay more anonymous. Students teach other students with the reading cards and learn at play with the foods in the form of games and mild competitions. Finally, they also review some of the information that they learned as a way of cementing the time in in the station.