Students learn history by living it
By Megan Mowrey, News Writing Student
Bill Smiley, OCCC Upward Bound instructor, is teaching students about the Holocaust while taking teaching to a higher level.
Teaching students ninth through 11th grade within the Upward Bound program, Smiley is having them live history rather than memorize facts about a certain event.
In Smiley’s Holocaust history class, Smiley said students are learning the religion and political background of 1,600 years of history and are doing this with a hands-on approach.
Smiley, for example, is referring to his students by numbers rather than names, much like how prisoners were treated while in concentration camps.
Upward Bound is a U.S. Department of Education-funded program to assist students within high school to acquire skills and motivation in education.
Students must be between the ages of 13 19 and be in grades ninth through 11th, Carmela Pyle, Upward Bound director, said.
“Sometimes lecture has a tendency to look down upon students,” Smiley said. “A total lecture scenario lends little to develop critical thinking among the students.
“To be active with students in hands-on education provides an environment in which stimulus enhances learning.”
He also said students need to develop critical thinking skills and should be provided an atmosphere in which they can express opinions, share, communicate and relate to one another and with the subject.
Daniel Rendon, Upward Bound student in Smiley’s class, finds the teaching methods to be effective and fun at the same time.
“It is better to know about it rather than forget what happened,” Rendon said.
Smiley said students are receptive of this teaching method.
Through discussion of the Holocaust, he said students have been able to discuss other historical genocides both past and present.
