Historical figures come to life at BES "museum"

Question: What do Queen Victoria, Steve Erwin, Amelia Earhart, Johnny Cash and "Macho Man" Randy Savage have in common with the students of Blytheville Elementary School? Answer: They are all part of a living wax museum performed by the school's pre-AP fourth-graders, and they are some of the subjects that the students have learned about.

The "museum" is the idea of Amber Dumond, who teaches literacy and social studies for the fourth-graders. She researched the idea back in the fall, and after bringing it to her students she said they were very excited about the idea of portraying some of their favorite historical figures in educational ways.

The "living wax museum" is really very simple. The event was in the BES Gym, and the students remained very still until people started coming to their individual stations. Each student then gave a short biography about his or her subject, and remained motionless while the visitors examined the posters and artifacts related to the subject. Each student remained in his or her character, dressed in the appropriate clothing for that historical figure, for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon.

"The students spent an entire semester getting ready for this one day," said Dumond. "Each one researched and then wrote an entire paper about his or her subject, created and memorized a one-minute speech about that person and constructed a display board about the person's life. Our characters included such historical figures as Muhammed Ali, Betsy Ross, Andy Griffith and Rosa Parks." Dumond also said that all her students' characters were individuals because she did not want them being dependent on anyone else for their success or failure.

After working on their characters throughout the spring semester, Dumond and the students spent the day on May 6 preparing the gym for their living museum. She did say that preparation for the event became a little stressful simply because "every family's budget is not the same", but she also received much help from her fellow teachers and Candy Groves, president of Act 2 Community Theater of Blytheville, for assistance with the costumes.

"The pros of this event far outweigh any cons because of what the students received," Dumond went on to say. "We covered a lot of standards with this activity - writing, reading, social studies and speaking standards. The students received a more well-rounded education out of this, and both the student and their parents were engaged from start to finish."

The remainder of the BES student body visited the living museum in 30-minute increments, and they were interested to see how their fellow students would fare as impersonators of famous Americans. Dumond also said that the benefits of this event go much further than the students simply knowing more about their subjects.

"The students received much better use of time management and organizational skills, and they also much better at public speaking because of this," said Dumond. "They are all fairly technologically advanced, so they had a handle on the project from the start. However, now that they have written and memorized their biographies, they are also quite a bit better at citing their sources."