Practicum Project

Tedious, maddening, and discouraging, these are only a few descriptive words that can be used to describe my practicum at the Frederick Historical Society. My project at the Frederick Historical Society was to develop a program about World War II from the perspective of the Homefront. To design this program, I needed to complete extensive research on the topic. This practicum allowed me to assist the Frederick Historical Society, showed me how to observe objects, and taught me how to design a program based on research.

My project helped assist the Frederick Historical Society to develop a new program for high schoolers about World War II. My fifteen hours at the historical society primarily involved me researching materials that can be used in the program. Jennifer Winter, the education coordinator, wanted to provide the students a variety of sources, so they may complete their own research. Therefore, I had to decide if the entire class would research one singular topic or if I would create categories and divide the students into groups; I decided to place the class in groups. After, researching materials and having a lot of failed ideas, I decided that two categories would be best: persons of war and community.
Multiple times throughout the program I had these amazing ideas for this project, but Winter kept saying I should really gather all my sources first. Therefore, I would gather a few sources and create a new plan surrounding those few sources. As a result, I ended up creating a lot of plans that ending up getting nixed. Nevertheless, as soon as I obtained most my sources, my final plan was developed: the students would be provided at least five sources regarding either people of war or the communities from the Homefront. I learned that while some programs can be designed with a little research, other programs must reflect one’s