Last weekend I experienced history up close. On Saturday I visited the USS Alabama. This is a ship that was used in World War II. There were three tours that were mapped out for visitors to explore the ship. Before we started the tours, my friend and I started our own exploration of the top deck. The deck included many large guns. From there my friend and I started the tours. One took us through the soldiers' quarters, one through the medical area, and one through the eating areas. We saw where clothes were washed, where food was made and served, where officers stayed, and where the recreation area was. Each area had signs and plaques that explained what it was and gave its history. After we explored the ship we went into the submarine that was next to it. It was very fun to see the ship and submarine close up. It was a lot more interesting than reading about it in a book.
On Sunday my friend, her fiance, and I had another history experience. We canoed 9 miles on the William Bartram trail to the Bottle Creek Indian Mounds. Bartram was a naturalist who could be called the Lewis and Clark of the South. He explored many areas in nature and recorded about his findings. He explored the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, where the indian mounds are and is highly known among historians of this subject.
The mounds were hard to find, but we finally got to them. They were a little disappointing, but it was cool to think that so long ago American Indians had built mounds where we were standing. We explored for a little while. The coolest part was climbing to the top of the 45 foot mound.
After hanging out for a little while, we began our canoe trip back. We underestimated the time it would take us to complete the trip and the sun went down. The three of us were left in the dark, in swampy water, with one head lamp, and two paddles. My friend sat in the front directing us, with the headlamp. I was in the middle paddling and my friend's fiance was steering in the back. At one point we took a wrong turn and realized it after a few minutes. We turned around and found the right path. When we were less than a mile from the truck I saw something glowing in the water. I thought that my eyes were playing tricks on me, but a second later my friend said that she thought she saw an alligator. She did and that is what I had seen. There was an alligator about 5 feet from our canoe. This was one of the scariest moments of my life. We all stayed fairly calm and paddled past him, but tensions were high for the last stretch of the trip. Needless to say we were very glad to be back on land!
I write about these experiences to say that students should be given more chances to experience history hands on. I think that I will always remember the things I saw and learned about last weekend. I think that students would be more likely to remember things about history if they learned about them in a way that did not involve reading a book. (This is not to say that students should take a field trip to canoe with alligators, but just that schools should consider more options to give students hands on learning experiences.)
