Where History Happened
2020
Working as a historian keeps Dr. Sean Adams in climate-controlled atmospheres — air-conditioned classrooms, comfortable offices, academic panels in staid hotel conference rooms and carefully maintained archives. In the summer of 2018, however, Dr. Adams purposely ventured out into the blast furnace that is western Florida and southern Alabama to see history firsthand, taking 36 teachers of elementary, middle and high school with him, plus a colleague.
The reason for this venture was a joint workshop by the Florida Humanities Council and the Alabama Humanities Foundation titled “The Civil War in the American South.” For the past five years, Dr. Adams has led teacher workshops that combine lectures and field trips to the site of the 1864 Battle of Olustee at Fort Clinch and the haunting slave cabins at Kingsley Plantation in Fernandina Beach.
The idea is to put teachers in the places where history happened so they can bring that experience back to their classrooms, where students might gain a new perspective on the past.