Beyond the Textbook

Through partnerships with premier museums and historic sites across the country, Minnesota State Mankato students are gaining firsthand experience that brings history to life and uniquely prepares them for teaching.

By Joe Tougas '86

Plenty of tourists visit New York’s Fort Ticonderoga, the Revolutionary War museum located on the grounds of one of the first victories for the Americans against the British in 1775. 

MSU senior Joseph Jensen was there last summer—but not as a tourist. He was part of a program to help educators understand how to teach the topic in their classrooms. 

Thanks to MSU associate professor Dr. Kyle Ward, Director of Social Studies Education, students planning to become teachers have had access to visit more than a hundred such historical museums and sites, allowing them to dive deeper into areas they want to emphasize in their future roles as teachers. 

As Ward sees it, it makes a dramatic difference in their research. 

“Don’t just Google ‘I need a lesson plan on Colonial Williamsburg.’ Go to Colonial Williamsburg,” Ward said. “All these sites have their own professional education teams. They’ve prepared their own lessons. They’ve got resources on professional development.” 

The research materials housed at these museums are primarily intended for teachers, but Ward has made arrangements so that MSU students can also take part. It began in 2017 when a connection Ward had at Colonial Williamsburg reached out for help in promoting a summer institute to teachers around the country. 

Ward had a student who was particularly interested in that area of history, and arranged to have him attend. “I sent him, he had a fantastic time. And they loved him out there.” Ward continued to send students while successfully contacting other museums to open doors to them. 

Today, through Ward, MSU has sent about 30 students to Colonial Williamsburg, the U.S. Holocaust Museum, the Houston Holocaust Museum, the LBJ Library, the White House Historical Association and Fort Ticonderoga.

Most of the museums and centers cover the costs as educating teachers is vital to their mission, Ward said. While there is no formal certification or degree involved, he added, the rewards are obvious, practical and ongoing. 

“In general, they’re coming back with a lot of enthusiasm for the field,” Ward said. “They do get to put on their resume that ‘I was the only college student in the U.S. that got to go to Fort Ticonderoga, or the LBJ Museum, or Colonial Williamsburg…” 

“I think physically being there makes things feel a lot more real,” said Jensen, who enjoyed his second summer of on-location research at the Ticonderoga Teacher Institute in Ticonderoga, New York and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. 

The Philadelphia center is the only U.S. museum dedicated to the U.S. Constitution (in the city where it was written), and the Institute in Ticonderoga is at the Revolutionary War site that American forces seized from the British in 1775, one of the first victories for the revolutionaries. 

There, Jensen read from official documents of the time, stood in a recreation of the original fort and even held a wartime musket. “They gave us access to a lot of resources, to their database, their archives,” he said. 

Studying alongside working teachers was also a plus.

“I was able to absorb and gain countless amounts of information from the teachers around me, and get support and future resources I can contact,” he said. 

On a tactile level, he recalled the light weight of a musket along with the heavy implication of holding one.

“I think it's really cool being able to physically handle a weapon used in the American Revolution,” he said. “This was a historical artifact used in the everyday life of what founded our country, and to be able to hold that in your hand, I feel, is extremely powerful.” 

MSU senior Nye Reh spent the first five years of his life in a Thai refugee camp and grew up curious about how the Vietnam War was part of his family’s history. This past summer, he immersed himself in the topic and others at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. 

Reh was particularly interested in President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s enaction of the Immigration Act, “which allowed someone like me to be able to immigrate because it was expanded to East Asian nations and brought in a lot more diversity to the U.S.” 

He plans to be student teaching during spring semester and hopes to become a fulltime teacher after graduation. The experience of studying with other teachers was a tremendous help, he said. 

“They told me what to expect in the classroom, gave me tips and tricks and gave me their first-year experiences,” he said. “They were in their fifth to 10th year of teaching. So many people with experience, and I’m here without having fully stepped into the classroom as a student teacher yet. But they were very welcoming.” 

Jensen echoed the sentiment: “I was the only student, but thankfully, Dr. Ward is very in-depth and very good about getting us pre-service teachers out in the field. He has plenty of connections.”