Students who live history

musvofrontier032: Students who live historyValley Oaks Charter School in Bakersfield has figured out a way to take a trip back in history without using a time machine and is more than willing to share the experience with other students three times a year. Collaborating with its neighbor, the Kern County Museum, the two present Living History Day at the museum, where students of today become teachers of yesterday.

It all begins a year before the current year. That is when Valley Oaks students attend a four-day training where their teachers instruct them in the folk crafts. While reading, writing and arithmetic were as important back in the 1800s as they are today, survival was also pretty high on the “to-do” list. That is the curriculum that Valley Oaks students are taught— getting crash courses in washing clothes by hand, cooking biscuits in a Dutch oven, making wax candles, weaving rope and performing carpentry without electricity, as examples.

Students do more than learn the crafts. Once they finish, they are expected to become student teachers, passing on what they have learned to other school children who will come visiting on one of three Living History Days throughout the year.

“Those who become the docents are very special students,” said Valley Oaks Principal Shirley Oesch. “At the beginning of the year, they sign up to learn a craft. They are expected to do research about what goes into mastering that craft. Valley Oaks instructors show them the proper way to make a presentation. Students then create and memorize their own scripts that they will follow at their craft station on Living History Day. Before that day arrives, students must demonstrate their ability to teach by delivering the speech before Valley Oaks instructors.”

Come Living History Day about 700 students from public and private schools all over Kern County converge on the museum. Most are in the third-through-fifth grade range and the presentations are geared to appeal to kindergarten-through-eighth grade students. However, all students are welcome and many times high school pupils will be a part of the wandering audience that drifts through 15-20 stations learning valuable information about frontier history.

Seventh-grader Pattie Thompson was given the assignment on October 28 of cooking biscuits and passing on the recipe to students who came by her station. She looked every bit the part, having spent seven hours sewing her own authentic gingham, pioneer costume. On top and below a pot filled with dough, Thompson had trays of white hot coals that did the cooking in what is referred to as a Dutch Oven. Students would leave her station with much more than a sample taste of biscuit.

“Pioneers going cross country couldn’t transport an oven with them so this is how they did their cooking while camped in the wilderness,” Thompson explained. “If you start out with a 12 inch diameter tray on top that has 12 coals you still need three more coals. So how many do you need on top,” Thompson asked her students. “Fifteen,” came a chorus of answers. “But in the bottom tray you need three less coals. So how many is that,” Thompson asked. This time the students’ reply was “Nine.” “Why do you need more coals on the bottom than on the top,” Thompson wondered out loud and then answered her own question, “Because heat rises so you don’t need as many on the bottom. If you had too many you would burn the biscuits.”

In a matter of minutes, the students who had dropped by Thompson’s station received a history lesson and demonstration, were asked to solve two math problems and learned a scientific application.

“What our student docents do we consider part of their oral language development and through their research they are developing knowledge about history and science, too,” Oesch said.

Schools interested in taking the next Living History Day tour on February 26, from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. can contact the museum at (661) 852-5000.
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