Excavating the secrets, scandals, and untold stories hiding below the surface of life, and giving voice to the characters who make or made those hiStories happen.
In last week’s blog post, I summarized the results of our recent conversations with teachers and parents regarding the challenges they face turning teens and tweens on to history. Their comments fell into one of three categories:
Challenge #1: It isn’t easy for young people to comprehend time in the distant past.
Challenge #2: The way history is presented can be dry and dull, which makes it difficult to learn.
Challenge #3: Young people don’t appreciate how history influences their lives today.
Over at Time Traveler Tours & Tales, we’re building a publishing imprint with the express goal of overcoming these challenges. Our primary mission is to provide a fun way into history. Our operating mantra is:
Make History Relevant. Make History Personal. Make History Real.
This is perhaps best expressed in the latest release from the product suite of our award-winning debut title and case study:the Beware Madame La Guillotine Curriculum Handbook, by Marcie Colleen.
Here’s Marcie on the making of this dramatically-new teacher guide:
“My challenge with BMLG began with the question, “how can we get kids who have never traveled to Paris into the environment of the French Revolution?” It reminded me of my experiences as a grad student at NYU where I studied educational theater and used techniques from Process Drama.
Process Drama uses dramatic play to create an imagined world in the classroom…to help kids explore issues and solve problems without ever leaving the classroom. It can be used in the history classroom quite effectively to bring humanity to historical moments.”
Marcie’s Curriculum Handbook is a veritable time travel machine. Used in collaboration with my eponymous story, it takes students and teachers by the hand and transports them to the tumultuous streets of the Reign of Terror, making history real. It allows them to view this pivotal historical moment through the eyes of someone who lived it, making history personal. It introduces young people to the roots of democratic society, and compels them to ponder such big-picture questions as, Is violence ever justified?, making history relevant.
Get your FREE copies of both Beware Madame la Guillotine AND Marcie’s complementary Curriculum Handbook in exchange for your honest feedback. Click here.
Let’s make history together!
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Want to know more about the making of the BMLG Curriculum Handbook? Don’t miss this 14 minute video chat between me and Marcie Colleen.
