Elspeth Inglis: I call it teaching in three dimensions. I did have a short stint teaching high school history, right out of college—and I didn't feel that I knew what to do teaching from a book—teaching history from a book. I had some fun with literature, but teaching history from a book did not come easily to me. I think there are some teachers who know how to do that and some of us don't. I had to have props. I had to have things.

And so my whole museum career related to education—working with children and working with teachers—has always, always, been focused on how do we use objects of everyday life? Works of art, architecture, monuments, any thing that has been made or used by a human being is fair game in my book.

So I usually begin any class on 'what is history?' with an object. And I try to find a mystery object—something that my students, no matter what their age, might not have ever seen. And I do this on purpose, because I want to demonstrate first and foremost how difficult it is to understand history when you take a nugget of information out of context. It is very hard to understand something that you have had no experience with.

So, you know, if a teacher would to walk into a classroom one day, say, she is going to teach pioneer life, and she immediately says to her students "Imagine being a pioneer," the students have nothing with which to spark their imagination. But if that same teacher walked into her classroom and she had a straw hat and she had a cow horn cup and she had a wooden bowl, a candlestick, etcetera, etcetera. And then she tried to get her students to imagine being a pioneer because these are the things that a pioneer would wear, use, or make, etcetera. Then we are getting somewhere, I think, because we are building on experience.

Elspeth Inglis: I find that children really do connect with objects and that they really can have a deep, deep understanding of those objects. It might not be the same understanding you or I have as educators but we have to acknowledge what that student's experience is first and then try to broaden their experience using that artifact.

So I do mystery artifact investigation, that is, that begins with simple observation—descriptives—what is this thing made of? How big is it? What does it weigh? You could do all kinds of observation skills like that. I don't allow them to make guesses about what it does until after they've thoroughly, thoroughly examined the physical properties of the object and test it. Does it have any moving parts? Does it look like something is missing? Does it belong to something else?

Then after they've really exhausted all of those basic observations, I start asking for their ideas about what the thing might do. And if a student responds with—it really doesn't matter what the answer is, I never tell them whether they are right or wrong about what the object is. That is not the point of the exercise. The point of the exercise is to get them thinking and to get them questioning.

And so if, and here is an example I used yesterday, if you know what a candle mold looks like, it's got, you know, cylinders—usually, six, four, it can be many different numbers of cylinders—and it's tin, and it's got a handle, and a place for you to pour the wax. So when I present this to children, and I have been doing this particular artifact for many years, and many times I get the answer from children that they think it's a hot dog cooker. OK, if it's a hot dog cooker, why don't you tell me, or do a pantomime and show me, how this hot dog cooker would work. And the children begin to, you know, pantomime putting the hot dogs in, putting it in the fire, and then you can see—you can see what's happening on their faces as they think this through.

And I say to them, how do you get this out of the fire—because we're talking about before microwaves and stoves, they all know this at this point. And they say, well, you have to have something long because, because they know the metal gets hot and you can't just reach in and hold the handle. Then I ask them what happens to a hot dog when it cooks. Every 4th grader knows that hot dogs expand when they cook, and so then they begin to realize it would be difficult to get the hot dog out of those cylinders. They come to their own conclusion that their hypothesis is not the right one. I don't have to tell them that.

Or I may ask them is there a better way, an easier way, to cook hot dogs over a fire. And they always have the right answer for that. So this is just an example of the kind of process, questioning process, we go through with an artifact. If I wanted to take it a step further, after the students have decided that their original hypothesis of hot dog cooker isn't correct, maybe they have no more guesses left. Then I might bring out a candle or even a lump of beeswax, and usually that's all it takes, is that one extra clue that helps them understand, maybe, what this thing is if they've ever had an experience with making candles. They'll often go, if they see a candle, they'll think it's a candleholder because of the shape—it fits. But, I think you get the idea, that after I have taken something out of context, just to force them to go through that questioning process—it's much harder to do when you are looking at something that is familiar than it is to do with something that is unfamiliar. Then I begin to add some layers to it. Those are the clues or that is the context and that helps to build the story of the object or give the object some life of its own.

Kim Laing: In terms of lessons learned, what we found was that, because we started with high school, we had teachers that had very strong history backgrounds. Their college degrees were in history programs—maybe social studies, but still, they had a lot of history classes. As we have gone down to our elementary, we have teachers with elementary ed degrees, and many universities don't require any history course as part of an elementary ed degree. So while they're super interested and excited and ready to work, they just don't have that university background in history.

So, we back up a little and give them some practice in historical thinking, which really works with the mystery objects, because all those questions are the historical thinking process. And so we have learned to kind of take the teachers from where they're at and customize our interactions with them to the level they're at. So I think that really has helped us in terms of being very grade specific. A lot of grants are multi-grade, but because we focus down on a single grade at a time, we've been able to really customize the information we are giving to the level they might have already had instruction in.

Elspeth Inglis: Elementary and middle school teachers like to have stuff. They always use things. Every teacher I know has used their own money to buy things to bring into their classroom. High school teachers too, but with the high school teachers we have more of an opportunity to use documents. And sometimes it's easier to use documents. It's certainly less expensive to make facsimiles of documents than it is to go out and find objects, but we also assume that the high school teachers will be able to make a different use of objects than elementary and middle school teachers do—including sending their students out into the field on their own. Students, if they are not doing a field trip per se, sometimes they can do internships, they do special projects—classroom projects. I've worked with high school students doing history projects before, and I know that they are capable of some very high-level thinking involving primary sources.

So, we have been experimenting with this over the years, everybody loves objects, everybody. We take—the high school teachers get to go behind the scenes at the museum and see what we do with collections and begin to understand how important material culture is to understanding history. So again it's one of those things that they might not be able to have in their classroom, but it gives the teachers a greater depth of knowledge of the history that they're teaching, when they get to see it in three dimensions.

Kim Laing: Each of our grants has gone to a different site, but we go on a field study—usually two days, sometimes one depending on just how far away it is and how much we can get done in that day. And they get to go behind the scenes at those places, as well. We try to take them places that, funding permitting, they could take their students. Obviously everyone's budgetary situation has limited the number of field studies they can do lately, but we stay in the vicinity of Michigan, or maybe Chicago because we're close enough—it's only two hours away for us—but they work with the curators there and the directors of education at those sites and they go behind the scenes and they participate in the activities and they work with the reenactors and again, it increases their basis of knowledge, their depth of experience, gives them stories to tell in the classroom to make history more alive—and just makes, you know—kind of renews their passion for it. If you have teachers that have been teaching for a really long time, sometimes just that reinvigoration can be really important for them, to get a new feel for it. Or maybe when they studied history, it was political history or military history, and getting a chance to work in kind of a daily-life material culture is something they might not have had an experience with in their college work, so we like to broaden their experience as much as possible.

Elspeth Inglis: Material culture is not something that is covered very well in textbooks, nor is it covered very well in colleges of education. And so, just to underscore what Kim had said, when we give teachers things to play with, in their hands, or put them behind a horse pulling a plow at Greenfield Village we are enriching their experience, which we know, we know, will get back to the classroom in one form or another. The teachers' own experiences, I can't state strongly enough how important it is for teachers to have strong, broad experiences in whatever subject that they're teaching. So I have no qualms about giving teachers tools or time to do things that they may not be able to do with their own students. Still they are going to be able to teach the subject at a greater level of understanding, and with more passion. That's my little soapbox. History has to be taught with passion or it's—it's flat.

Sarah Jencks: Talia and I got to know each other through the DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative, and I went and observed her doing professional development and realized that we were both approaching the Civil War in very different ways, in terms of working with teachers, and that they were really complementary.

Talia Mosconi: We met during one of our professional development workshops, met with Sarah, and we realized that we could do a lot more for teachers if we partnered together, because previously we had just been doing kind of a one-shot come visit us for two hours and learn about the Civil War and that was it. But we realized if we did it together we could create a much richer program where teachers can actually look at the Civil War from different viewpoints, so, for example, you get the Lincoln viewpoint from Ford's. We kind of represent, since we're connected to Robert E. Lee and our inhabitant at Tudor Place was a Southern sympathizer and we also had both enslaved and free African Americans living at the site, so we present that viewpoint. And then we brought in Frederick Douglass to bring in the viewpoint of Frederick Douglass and Lincoln Cottage to further enhance the Lincoln viewpoint.

Sarah Jencks: We started off thinking that it was going to be primarily of interest to DC teachers, but we realized when we opened it up to teachers from around the country that really DC because, Washington, because of its role as the nation's capital, and also because it really is a crucible, in the story, telling the story of the Civil War, had a broader appeal. And, so, we've gotten very excited about the work that we do as a collaborative and really because now, we work so closely together, we're able to offer custom programs to Teaching American History grant groups that come to DC. We're able to work with them to create a program that fits them and their needs, and it's not a one-shot. It's multiple, it's layered, it offers multiple perspectives on the Civil War, it offers multiple perspectives on great men and not so many women, but some women, during the Civil War.

Ford's Theatre is clearly the big fish in many ways, because people tend to go there, but they don't tend to get deep in their experience there, and that's what we're hoping to get out of this. For Ford's Theatre, what is useful about this partnership is helping to deepen the experience at the theatre so it's not walk in, click your camera at the box, and walk out.

Talia Mosconi: And I think too, we've tried to structure the program so it's not just—the program we currently offer is a one-week program where you come and you go to each site, one site a day. But we've tried to structure in a way, too, to build a learning community where we can interact with teachers throughout the year, help them as they're planning their lessons. We've established an online site where teachers can actually post what they're doing in the classroom so others teachers in our network can see what's going on, what works well, and have a discussion board on how they're implementing these sources that we gave them throughout the summer in their classrooms.

Talia Mosconi: It's a weeklong program that we've done, Monday through Friday. This year we will be adding an evening portion on Sunday, just to give an overview of the Civil War so everyone is on the same page and comes with the same background knowledge.

Each site has their own day. They start at Tudor Place on Monday, and we bring—Tudor Place, the person that lived in the house was named Britannia, so we try to bring women's history as well as the history of the enslaved Africans and then free Africans that they hired after the Civil War into that perspective. On Tuesday they visit Frederick Douglass's house, and we have a Frederick Douglass interpreter who talks about oratory and how people can use oratory to further movements. Lincoln Cottage would be on Wednesday to give the early years of Lincoln's presidency and his trips out to the cottage. And then we end, chronologically, with Ford's Theatre with the assassination of Lincoln. We leave Friday open to give teachers time to process, reflect, and then actually start to create a lesson or some sort of activity that they can then bring back into their classroom.

In each of the days we stress both content—trying to provide teachers with enough information on the Civil War for them to feel comfortable teaching it—but our main goal is to teach techniques. So ways you can—we model the techniques for teachers on how to bring primary sources into their classroom.

Sarah Jencks: And we really encourage teachers. We introduce teachers to the "backwards planning" template early in the week and we ask them to use that template in concert with their local standards as the way to develop their program, whether it's a unit or a field trip or whatever else. Because we want to be modeling what we consider best practices. Its very interesting, many teachers are not comfortable with the backwards planning template. Asking them to think first about goals and standards, then about objectives and assessment, and then moving into activities. But they become more comfortable with it over time and for us it's okay for them to be struggling with that during the week because it's a big part of learning how to engage productively with content.

Sarah Jencks: One of the most surprising things we do—that is something people do everyday, but perhaps don't think about from a critical perspective—is that we engage in walking tours. At Ford's Theatre we have a program called "History on Foot." We commission playwrights to write pieces for historical figures that are going to be portrayed by actors. So it's a play—it really is a play—but it's a play walking through the city of Washington that tells a particular story that is connected to Abraham Lincoln's time in Washington, especially to the end of his life and of his presidency. When we do those walks what we encourage the teachers to do is think about how that walk is a primary source, how the city itself is a primary source that they're analyzing, and that they can use perspectives, like the perspectives of the people who are leading the tour (the historical characters) to enhance the learning opportunities for their students. Therefore, every part of a field study experience or a trip is a learning opportunity. And that's something that we've really come to through working in this program. We knew it to a certain extent, but I think that our understanding of that learning has grown.

Actor: The Secretary of State, William Seward, had indeed been attacked in his home in Lafayette Park. Stabbed nearly to death.

Talia Mosconi: We similarly do a walking tour of Georgetown. Looking at different places in Georgetown to get different vantage points—there were Union officers living next door to Confederate sympathizers—so looking at the same community and who was living in that community and how their different perspectives really created an interesting mix during the Civil War. So [it's] giving teachers the option [to come] and look at place as a primary source and [use] that to teach students what daily life would have been like during a specific time period.

I think the walking tour lends itself well to teachers in any community because you can take your students out just in your local neighborhood and really discover your own local history through looking at places.

Sarah Jencks: I do think in general it is one of the things that teachers find both most exciting and most daunting about their experience—because unless you experience it, it can be very hard to understand how it's going to serve the students. So a lot of our—of the teachers worry, they get very very excited for the walking and being outside of their buildings, but they also worry a lot that their administrators or others are not going to understand what they are trying to do. That's something, and even in just saying this right now I'm realizing that we need to think about how to support them and what kinds of documentation we can provide them with and perhaps what we do with them on Friday to help them to feel more confident.

Talia Mosconi: But I think the nice thing about this collaborative is the majority of us are the only educators on site. Particularly for me as the only person on site, it gives me a sounding board, so it's great as we evaluate programs [because] I can talk to other educators who are experiencing the same program and we can evaluate and improve upon the program. I think from that vantage point I think the collaboration has been very beneficial for us.

Sarah Jencks: We sort of ignored the issue of trying to develop a programmatic budget for the first two years. And that is—I don't think any of us are concerned with it all being perfectly even, we're just concerned with everyone being able to do what they can honestly, and that's a big deal. If you go into it saying, "Every penny has to be equal" it's never going to work, you're going to end up with people frustrated. And instead what we've done is we've gone into it saying, "Here's our programmatic budget from the last two years, what can you afford to do?"

Talia Mosconi: I think even extending beyond budget but just staffing the different programs, how we logistically take registrations. We've worked together to really see who can afford—who has time to take these registrations and then someone else can step in and do another job. It's balancing all that together that's made it very effective.

Sarah Jencks: I was talking to a teacher, or to a grant person, and he said, "Well, we're just running the whole time." And I said, "Well, we would love for you to have a deeper experience." And he said, "Oh, well, we're being organized by a tour group and we can't—we just want the teachers to see everything so that they can make the decision about coming back later with their students." But what they're modeling is the way that then students are going to experience it as well.