Category: Teaching EAS

Roundtables, Teaching EAS, Teaching with Games

Building Student Engagement with Reacting to the Past – Christopher E. Hendricks

A widow who runs a tavern in Manhattan stands before a gathering of representatives, some loyal to the Crown, others interested in severing their ties with Great Britain and establishing a new government. A group of women, enslaved people, craftsmen, and others listen as she petitions the august body to recognize property and voting rights for women in New York, when suddenly a mob forms and storms the assembly. The…

EAS
Roundtables, Teaching EAS, Teaching with Games

Controlled Chaos: Roleplaying Revolution in Southeast Texas – Brendan Gillis

“We were acting more like the Paris Commune than the American Revolution,” a particularly perceptive student noted after a chaotic class session in Fall 2021.  Our upper-division history course on the revolutionary era was nearing the midpoint of a four-week unit given over to Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution in New York City, 1775-1776, a roleplaying game in the Reacting to the Past series.1 By this point, the students to whom…

EAS
Roundtables, Teaching EAS, Teaching with Games

Harnessing Competitiveness for Good in RTTP Games – Brett Palfreyman 

As a historian at a small college, I have the privilege of branching out beyond my area of specialization to teach courses in different regions, time periods, and themes. I have overseen Reacting to the Past (RTTP) games that recreate debates over the merits of democracy in Ancient Athens or discussions about the validity of the scientific method outlined in Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. But, as an Early Americanist,…

EAS
Roundtables, Teaching EAS, Teaching with Games

Challenging Myths through Gameplay: Reacting to the Past and Popular Ideology in the Classroom – Joshua J. Jeffers

A few years ago, I was teaching the second half of the U.S. history survey course and using the Reacting to the Past game Greenwich Village, 1913.1 My class included a student who had completed the first half of the survey with me where I had used Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution in New York, and this student had excelled at it, ultimately planning and leading a successful slave revolt, a…

EAS
Roundtables, Teaching EAS, Teaching with Games

Teaching with Games Roundtable Q&A — Michael LaCombe with the Authors

What can games in general (Reacting To The Past – RTTP – and others) do that other teaching activities and strategies cannot? Many of your comments talk about student engagement, or collaboration, but to what teaching or learning end?  How do you channel or focus engagement into written and oral communication, content knowledge or other course goals? The pedagogical payoffs of a roleplaying game, as with other forms of experiential…

EAS
A photograph from the walls of Fort San Marcos looking at one of the corner towers
Special Features, Teaching EAS

Teaching EAS: Teaching the American Revolution as a Global Conflict – Abby Chandler

Covering the American Revolution is a core expectation for teachers of early American history. I work at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, a stone’s throw from Lexington and Concord. My career began in the public history field and drawing on local historic sites is my natural inclination in the classroom. And yet my course, “The American Revolution in the World,” strays further from Massachusetts with every passing year. Now that…

EAS