LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa. – Pieces of American battlefields are traveling in a trunk across the country and into classrooms. The exhibit is helping Lehigh Valley students learn about the Revolutionary War.
When taking a look inside this classroom, you’ll quickly learn how pieces of the past are shaping students in the present.
“We get to do a lot of hands-on activities like we’re doing today with the Revolutionary War,” said Kylan Patel.
Patel is an 8th-grade student at Orefield Middle School. He says getting hands-on with these historical war-era artifacts is helping him understand hardships faced during the Revolutionary War.
“They have to understand where we started as a nation and then how those things, the troubles and trials that our Founding Fathers went through to get us to this point, take that knowledge and use it towards citizenship today,” said Andy McGinniss.
McGinniss is a social studies teacher at Orefield Middle School and has been with Parkland School District for fourteen years. This is the first year he’s introduced students to the American Battlefield Trust Travelling Trunk.
“This kind of stuff that we’re doing here today with the traveling trunk is something they can pick up, observe, see something that was used 250 years ago,” McGinnis said.
The program provides free resources to teachers across the country, bringing over 30 items such as Continental Army uniform jackets to drop spindles with wool yarn used by women in camp.
Three classes with over 80 students each touched things like tin cups with tea and tricorn hats, but each student had their own favorite items.
“The musket balls,” Patel said.
The student then went on to explain what they were used for.
“They are put inside muskets; they were shot out almost like bullets,” he said.
However, other 8th graders had different opinions on their favorite items.
“The arrowheads. I think it’s super cool that they crafted them from rocks, and how they used them to hunt,” Jameson Schimmer said.
McGinniss says he’s trying to shift students’ perspectives and avoid a learning curve he says has become way too prevalent in the present day.
“Technology is critical; technology for me is something that can be a love-hate relationship for me. It’s something that’s easy to get lost in the technology piece of it, and then lose what you want them to gain from that lesson,” explains McGinniss.
From trials to tribulations, it all comes full circle when you see the many impacts this lesson had on students like Patel.
“So that mistakes from the past aren’t repeated again,” says Patel
As this travelling trunk leaves Orefield Middle School, it will be heading to West Virginia for its next classroom visit.