Focus EMU Online, Weekly Issue

EMU history professor has students "Reacting to the Past"

The classroom in the Pray-Harrold building is desultory, a bland, windowless collection of desks, chairs and chalkboard.

But on this morning, the scene in Professor Mark Higbee's history class crackles with energy. Contentious statements fill the air amid the tense atmosphere.

STUDENT REACTION: Olivia Mbala-Nkanga and Eric
Franka, students in Professor Mark Higbee's History
115 class, participate in a Reacting to the Past
exercise. The teaching method consists of elaborate
games, set in the past, in which students are
assigned roles with "victory objectives" informed by
classic texts in the history of ideas.

The scene is a meeting hall in 1835, as members of the Cherokee National Council debate their response to the U.S. Government's order to leave their native land, evacuate Georgia and head to lands west of the Mississippi, in what is now Oklahoma.

Playing the part of John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokee people, EMU sophomore Olivia Mbala-Nkanga calls the class to order. The group quickly replicates the kind of mingling and sense of urgency that would precede this early 19th-century gathering.

Ross underlined the Cherokee desire to stay and fight.

"I refuse to believe that my people are weak and unable to face what is to come," Mbala-Nkanga said convincingly. "It will not be easy. The one thing I will not give up is hope ... I will stand my ground on your behalf."

The class offered a vivid example of a new method of teaching that Higbee and other professors around the country have embraced. The Reacting to the Past method consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles with "victory objectives" informed by classic texts in the history of ideas.

Class sessions are run entirely by students. Instructors advise and guide students, and grade their oral and written contributions to the game. The game seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with major ideas and improve speaking, writing and leadership skills.

During the fall semester, Higbee used the method in his History 115 class, entitled "Making American Society: Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Historical Perspective."