History, STEAM combine at BRHS
Boothbay Region High School students will be leaving exhibits on the history of the Boothbay region up in the school library for the summer. The exhibits are one of the final pieces to the science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) historical inquiry and field research class.
Social Sciences teacher Nick Scott and STEM teacher Chip Schwehm lead the biyearly course together. They said the student-centered, inquiry-based course combines history and industrial arts and culminates in group and individual projects. The exhibits are students’ efforts to create a display as close to museum quality as possible, said Scott. That includes information and presentation, he said.
“It's really all about looking at the local history and geography. You know, an inch deep, but a mile wide.”
The course has four phases, starting with academic and field historical examination of four regional themes: ice harvesting, tourism, boat-building and lobstering. The second phase has students choose a topic of interest to research and then use primary and secondary resources. Phases three and four had students creating an artifact and a physical and virtual (online) exhibit for it. Artifacts were created using methods and materials from the time period.
The students took trips to Boothbay Region Historical Society and Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library and rounded out the rest of their research under BRHS librarian Kerrin Erhard’s guidance and by finding an expert in their topic. Students also spoke with a panel of local knowledge – Chip Griffin, Mark Gimbel, and Kathy Goldner – for their individual projects, took a tour of the area with former Red Cloak Tours’ Sally Lobkowicz and explored the historical Damariscove Island with the help of Boothbay Region Land Trust’s Tracey Hall. Students also took trips to Maine Maritime Museum in Bath and Windjammer Emporium to observe effective displays.
Group activities were fun to watch, but most students shone when tackling their individual projects, said Scott.
“One of the cool things about this class is that it's a really eclectic group of kids. You have some who are AP (advance placement) history students who love history and dive into this pretty deep and then you've got kids who are the creators and the builders. Because of the very nature of this course, it enables students to play towards their strengths while working on things that are kind of maybe outside their comfort zone.”
Students Grace Campbell and Rodi Mayne exhibited their research and work ethic in their own ways. Campbell’s topic was Boothbay men’s roles at the Battle of Gettysburg and her exhibit had facts, stories, poetry, journal entries, hand-drawings and artifacts including a lead bullet from Gettysburg, reproductions of pins and playing cards, and her handmade artifact, a haversack.
Mayne’s project was “Trapping in Maine” and his artifact, sitting upon a handmade rustic table and accompanied by furs, was a to-scale, functioning foothold trap. He said he went to a blacksmith's house and learned how to do the work because he felt it was important to create an artifact that could capture the viewer’s attention rather than rely on accompanying written displays.
“Something I found made a good exhibit: If it's hands on and you can touch it, (people) will find it interesting … Making the spring and stuff – I didn't know how to do any of it, so learning was a good experience.”
Campbell said the Civil War is an ongoing interest sparked by a historical fiction book she was given when she was little. An eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C., Gettysburg, Fredericksburg and Manassas deepened her interest, she said. “I was enamored about how people used to live, how it was. I have a collection of books now, I have maps. Whenever anyone sees something Civil War related, they go, 'Oh, we're going to get that for Grace.'”
Campbell's exhibit shows some family history, a thrice-great-grandfather and uncle who joined Maine's 19th Regiment in 1862. Her grandfather, Leonard Webster, was discharged in 1863 for poor health, but her uncle Lorenzo fought and survived, albeit wounded, in the Battle of Gettysburg.
Campbell said much of the information came from books she already had and her project turned out so well thanks to her expert John Anderson’s guidance. Anderson, a teacher from Rockland, provided immense background information and sent out a bullet he bought on a visit to Gettysburg. He also inspired Campbell to hand stitch a haversack reproduction for her exhibit's artifact. She used natural canvas, black oil paint, linseed oil for waterproofing and a removable cotton lining.
“That took me a while,” Campbell said. “It was a lot of back-stitching and I'm not the best at sewing. This was my first real project.”
The display took two weeks to put together. The hardest parts were making sure everything was the right size, setting up the virtual museum exhibit, conducting research and finishing the final paper, Campbell said. Her paper was 15 pages, single spaced.
“I tried to focus on individuals from Boothbay … and incorporate each man's voice. You always hear Joshua Chamberlain, George Meade, Longstreet …The men from Boothbay who were in the 20th were the left flank of the regiment. That means they were the left flank of the entire Union army … Charles S. McCobb was a really important man from Boothbay: He was in the 4th Maine, he helped doctors and he was killed July 2. At the Historical Society, we have flowers from Abraham Lincoln's garden ... Charles S. McCobb sent those to his lady-friend in Boothbay.”
Campbell said if the class was not biyearly, she would take it again and explore a new topic because it was so much fun and a great chance to explore interesting topics.
"I would be sitting at a table sewing and Rodi would be in the corner in the helmet and he'd have like this huge flame. It was very hot in the shop when he was working on his trap … I didn't find any aspect of this class boring. Everything was so intriguing and I think being able to do it independently, but as a team played to our strengths. It was nice to be able to attack everything at my own speed and to express something I'm interested in in a public way that other students can learn from.”
