Shelby Anderson’s classroom at Laguna Beach High School is like walking into a living museum of sorts.
Across the back wall of Room 27, Anderson displays military uniforms from World War I through the Korean War and artifacts such as World War II ration books, a field communication kit with a typewriter, meal boxes and carefully preserved newspapers with headlines announcing important 20th Century world events.
The items are conversation starters, but more importantly, they are critical to her teaching of U.S. history to 11th graders by taking stories found in textbooks and turning them into real life. It is one of the way she helps her students recognize the difficulties of military service and how that service and, in so many cases, a person’s ultimate sacrifice, are still relevant today.
Anderson, 27, also personalizes the stories of service and makes them more relatable, for her students and many others as a member of the Historical Unit of Southern California, or HUSC, a living history group – think reenactments – that focuses on preserving the memory of those who served and died in 20th Century conflicts. She routinely dresses up in a World War II Women’s Army Corps, or WAC, uniform.
Historical interpreters such as the HUSC group – a craft that dates back to antiquity and in the U.S. became popular after the American Revolution and Civil War – are a hands-on tool to educate the public, experts say. Not only do they breathe life into history, but they do it in an engaging and entertaining way, and make a complex topic more relatable to a mainstream audience and stoke interest in remembering the past.
“When I wear the uniform, it makes it more real,” Anderson said. “There’s not a cellphone in sight. It helps people connect, and when we personalize it, we understand the depth of sacrifice more. When I bring a person in uniform, that’s real and not just a story.”
When Anderson is not teaching her students, she’s out with…
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