When he's not teaching history to college students, Stephen
Mucher spends his free time helping high school students
learn to appreciate the past.
Mucher, assistant professor in the department of history
and philosophy, has been involved in many community service
activities that help underprivileged students study and
enjoy history.
 |
A MARCH BACK IN TIME: Stephen Mucher,
an EMU assistant professor of history
and
philosophy, poses in front of the Elijah
McCoy monument,
located in front of
Bombadil's in Ypsilanti. McCoy was
an
African American inventor. Mucher is
involved in a
number of activities that
make history
come alive for high school
students in various communities. Photo
by Randy Mascharka
|
"It's part of a bigger pedagogical interest to me, finding
ways to get young people to consider the past in ways that
are relevant," said Mucher, who started at EMU as a lecturer
in 2004. "There are great lessons to learn from the past.
They take you out of familiar surroundings to contemplate
human action."
This past January, Mucher spent five days on a bus with
low-income students from Grand Rapids. On their way to
Birmingham, Alabama, to attend Faith in Action, a national
student conference and civil rights history tour, the group
stopped in southern cities — such as Birmingham,
Selma and Montgomery — that were hot
spots of the civil rights movement.
Landmarks visited include the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church,
where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was pastor; the Rosa
Parks Museum; the bridge at Selma, where law enforcement
officers attacked protesters; and the 16th Avenue Baptist
Church, where four young girls were killed in a bombing.
"Schools teach civil rights history that celebrates
specific heroes. [The trip] expanded on the ideas that
regular people were the foot soldiers of the movement," said
Mucher. "The face of segregation becomes real to them (students).
They come to realize that it's not just about a few heroes
— generations of peoples' lives were ruined."
The multi-racial group consisted of high school students,
as well as students from Calvin College. Their long bus
ride gave them the opportunity to watch videos and discuss
what life was like in the days of Jim Crow segregation.
"We thought about the freedom riders, arrested for sitting
together regardless of race, just as we all were doing," said
Mucher. "It's humbling to think about how many people
weren't taking action. Either they didn't see it as an
issue or felt it was too risky to get involved."
More recently, Mucher was involved with Upward Bound,
a national program that helps students prepare for college.
It is targeted at students who come from low-income families
and families where neither parent has gone to college.
Students from Ypsilanti and Willow Run high schools participated.
"As a resident of this community, I am encouraged by
this program," said Mucher. "The students were smart, curious
and interesting. It gives me hope for what Ypsilanti can
be."
The Mucher File
Name: Stephen Mucher
Title: Assistant professor of history,
EMU
EMU classes he teaches: "Social Studies
for Teachers," "20th
Century American History."
Education: Ph.D., educational foundations
and policy, University of Michigan; master's
degree, educational studies, University of Michigan;
bachelor's degree, history/international studies,
Taylor University (Ind.) |
Mucher taught an afternoon workshop called "Finding your
Roots." He asked students to find someone in their family
who made a migration to this area. The students researched
and presented oral family histories to their parents.
"Family history is celebrating part of something bigger," said
Mucher. "I've had students come back and say 'I never knew
this about my family.' If you don't ask, you'll never know."
Mucher hopes that these kinds of programs will encourage
more students to attend college.
"Kids are most willing to consider college when they have
role models, people who believe in them and can help explain
the processes," said Mucher.
Another way that Mucher helps high school students is
by making their least-favorite class more enjoyable. Surveys
have shown that most students choose social studies as
their least favorite class in high school, said Mucher.
Mucher has been working with the Plymouth-Canton schools
for the past three years on a Teaching American
History grant, through the U.S. Department of Education.
Their goal is to find resources and new ways of teaching
that make the past meaningful and help students to think
reflectively.
"Knowledge is critical to bring out the mysteries of the
past," said Mucher. "We can't understand what people were
thinking back then, but we should try. It can help us
think about the issues that we are blind to today."
"You don't have to connect the past to current events," he
said. "We learn from seeing how strange the past was."
