What was the experience of a fugitive slave secretly working their way north to freedom in the 1800s along the Underground Railroad? What did it mean to be an artisan apprentice, or an indentured servant who was contracted to labor for a family in colonial America? What was life like in the home of a genteel Quaker family?
For the thousands of elementary and middle school students who annually participate in Historic Odessa’s Living History education programs, these questions and many more are explored and answered through immersive, hands-on workshops that give young people the experience of “walking in the shoes” of their 18th- and 19th-century counterparts.
By employing all of their senses, we like to say that we are breathing life into the past.
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When the Historic Odessa Foundation was established in 2005 to save the enclave of historic museum properties, until recently known as the Historic Houses of Odessa, one of the first things we set out to do was to create an education program that would give children and their families a chance to experience life in colonial Delaware from different perspectives and backgrounds.
From the onset, we saw ourselves as a community resource, an education center intrinsically tied to our mission of preserving and encouraging the use of our historic buildings by the general public, students and scholars in order to learn and appreciate the region’s history.
As a former educator who taught middle and high school for 30 years in the Christiana School District, and as a lover of history, I jumped at the opportunity to develop educational programming that brought history to life. With Odessa being on the list of the National Register of Historic Places, and home to a National Historic Landmark, and two National Park Service Network to Freedom sites, not to mention our collection of more than 7000 objects and furnishings, I’ve had a lot of source material to work with in developing and expanding our programs over the years.
Staying relevant in changing times
In 2006, we launched the Living History program with four workshops. That first year saw 236 students come through our doors. Today, we have nine workshops – School Days, 18th-Century Hearth Cooking, The Wilson Store, The Corbits: A Genteel Quaker Family, Children: Chores and Leisure, Artisan Apprentice, Freedom Seekers: the Odessa Story, Indentured Servants, and the seasonal Kitchen Garden – and we host more than 4500 school children mainly from Delaware, but also from Maryland and New Jersey.
Our program is constantly evolving. What we began with in 2006 is much different today. As schools’ curricula and state standards change, we need to ensure that what we’re doing here reflects and is relevant to those changes.
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Because demands on teachers are so high, and they’re accountable for so many things, they are reluctant to take advantage of our workshops unless we can help them achieve some of the state standard goals required. Since our program is tied to standards and is written like a lesson plan, we’re able to accommodate their needs and goals.
Every single workshop we offer has objectives, it has primary sources, and it has a relationship to standards. In addition, every teacher who leaves a field trip fills out an evaluation. Their input has been valuable in helping us to shape and tweak our programs.
Our Living History program is self-sustaining through admissions. In 2012, we established a scholarship fund that is supported by appeals, as well as by foundation members and volunteers. It was created to subsidize admissions for students in need of financial assistance, or to subsidize transportation costs which for many teachers can be their biggest expense.
Developing a program that is highly interactive and hands-on is a way small museums, like Historic Odessa, can affectively educate the public.
Learning about history is a way to see who we are in reality because history unlocks so much of what came before and gives us keys to what’s going to come.
For kids, the stories of children who lived 200 hundred years ago gives them insight into how life was different, but also how really common childhood experiences are. Whether you’re a kid growing up in the colony of Delaware or whether you’re a kid growing up in Wilmington today.
Johnnye Baker is education curator of Historic Odessa Foundation.
Open Call is a weekly column that offers Delaware’s arts and culture organizations an opportunity to share their vision, challenges and upcoming programming with our readers. Groups interested in participating can email Features Editor Tammy Paolino at tpaolino@gannett.com
