History Students Create Museum of American Transformation

Mrs. Farmer and Mrs. Herford’s United States History classes presented the “Museum of American Transformation: America in the 1960s and 1970s” this week.

This mock-exhibition opening was the culmination of a weeks-long Project-Based Learning assignment. Project-Based Learning is a learner-centered technique that poses challenging questions, gives students choice in their topic, encourages sustained inquiry and reflection, and requires presentation of a public product.

Rather than just writing a traditional research paper, students were asked to pick a topic that they could argue transformed American society in the 1960s and 1970s, research that topic to create a “Curator’s Briefing” paper, pick an item that communicated the epitome or essence of their topic’s impact, then work with classmates to design an exhibit to present to the school community, including fellow students, faculty, and parents.

Ben Easton ’20 remarked that he “really liked that I had to communicate the importance of my topic, not just write a paper about it,” and Lily Gleaton ’20 added that “teaching someone else about a topic is the best way to really learn it.”