When did I fall in love with history?

The last couple weeks at the Chicago Metro History Education Center (CMHEC) I have been helping prepare for this weekend's suburban high school history fair. Last Thursday's task involved rolling about three hundred history fair posters. A monotonous task, indeed, but not without it's benefits. One is able to do some marvelous thinking/reminiscing while rolling posters.

Somehow or another I got to thinking about History Fair and the fact that I never participated as a kid. Wisconsin is big on history--with one of the best historical societies, located right there in downtown Madison--but for whatever reason, the local schools decided not to join in the National History Day festivities. A very unfortunate thing, in my opinion. I feel rather cheated. But all that's in the past (pun intended), so I got to thinking, what did I do instead, that got me so interested in history? What happened in those ten years of social studies classes (3rd-12th grade) that made me love history?

Well 3rd and 4th grade are a little fuzzy when it comes to social studies. I feel like we focused more on Language Arts, Science and Math. I can remember playing with meal worms, reading The Island of the Blue Dolphins, learning how to do fractions. It was not until 5th grade that I was really introduced to the Social Studies. Up until that point, my favorite subject was Art--hands down. But then we started learning about the Explorers, the colonial United States, Westward expansion, and a whole world opened up for me. That year we also did RFI (Reading for Information) projects. This was a brilliant idea on my teacher's part: throughout the school year, each student would research and present four projects on a subject of their choosing.  I did Flowers, Colorado, Louisa May Alcott and Beavers. I'm sure the paper was pretty minimalistic and the report way too wordy; I probably was so nervous that I didn't look up from my note cards, but it was my first experience with research and presentation.

In 6th grade we traveled through World History, concluding the school year with a pompous Medieval Week, full of simulation games, potluck feasts, team competitions and colorful flags. Seventh grade was the year we finally learned about the Holocaust. As early as 4th grade I had seen/heard glimpses of this event, and the idea of World War, but no one had ever taught it to me. I remember feeling (again) rather cheated. 7th and 8th grade were the years we got to write stories for our joint Language Arts and Social Studies assignments. I loved those projects. I would write way past the page limit, always stating at the bottom of the last page "to be continued . . ." I still have some of those stories. Maybe I should pick them up again and see what happens.

The closest thing to History Fair occurred at the end of 8th grade: Colonial Fair. Each student had to create a project within the theme of colonial times and write a little paper about how it was relevant. I made a homemade paper journal, feather pen, walnut black ink and a beeswax candle. Pretty fun.

In 9th grade we still wrote stories. I remember really enjoying one about a family who bought the new Ford Model-T "Tin Lizzie." After that, history classes had more to do with tests and quizzes than projects and paper writing-- that was for the English class. Oh how I wish History Fair had been apart of the curriculum. While memorizing the names and dates is important, I am positive that kids learn more from hands-on projects than constant test-taking.


So here's to you, History Fair!