Where it happened
Oak Forest teacher offers remote learning lessons from historic US sites
Oak Forest High School history teacher Mike Brown took a 10-day trip out east starting in late August.
He had his car broken into in Boston. He drove through a torrential rainstorm as a byproduct of Hurricane Laura. He was in front of a tornado in Albany by 15 minutes and another in Baltimore by five minutes.
Despite all of that, he cranked out video footage and spent quality time in front of a camera teaching five classes remotely from American historic sites. Some of the places he virtually took his students included Fort Duquesne, Fort Necessity, the Saratoga Battlefield, the Granary Burying Ground, the Boston Massacre site, the Lexington Battlefield, the Concord Battlefield, the Princeton Battlefield, Independence Hall, Valley Forge, Yorktown, Fort McHenry, Washington, D.C., and Gettysburg.
That was only a portion of the planned trip.
“I love going out and seeing these places, and it brings a unique element to the classroom.”
— Mike Brown, Oak Forest teacher
Brown had a couple of weeks more of good stuff ready for his students, including teaching about slavery froma plantation in South Carolina. But Brown also is an assistant athletic director and assistant boys cross country coach at the school, and when District 228 reinstated some fall sports, that cut the trip short.
“To be honest, I don’t knowif I couldhave done it for three weeks,” Brown said. “It was taxing. A lot went into it with all of the filming and editing.”
Brown said he had been to some sites in the past and other were new for him. He said one of his biggest “Oh, wow” moments was seeing Fort Necessity in southwest Pennsylvania for the first time.
“George Washington built it and itwas the size of a doghouse,” Brown joked. “That’s an exaggeration, but it was very small. On the other hand, visiting (Revolutionary War sites) Saratoga and Yorktown and standing in battlefields and seeing the vastness and the layout were other personal ‘oh, wow’ moments for me.”
Brown grew up inManteno and went to Simpson College in Iowa to play basketball. He said he didn’t have an appreciation for history until he struggled in JosephWalt’sworld history class.
“Something struck a chord,” Brown said. “I was not doing well in the class but when I was reading, I said‘Wow, Ihave a lotmore learn.’ ”
Walt, whohas a research library named after him at Simpson, struck a chord with Brown and Brown is trying to strike a chord with his students. His road trip was one way he hopes to do that.
“He really likes to get us thinking,” Oak Forest junior Devin Steffan said. “He wants us to be interested in history and politics and all of that stuff you need to knowwhen you get older. I like learning about history — especially World War II.”
Brown literally went the extra mile on his trip, But Steffan pointed out that Brown was going the extra mile even before he fired up his Hyundai Tucson and headed out east.
“When we had an introduction with him, his internet went out,” Steffan said. So, he rode his bike all the way to the school to finish it and I thought that was pretty cool.”
Brown said that in the spring, when the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools, he taught classes while he was in Florida and that formed the idea of this journey.
“I love going out and seeing these places, and it brings a unique element to the classroom,” he said. “None of us really enjoy e-learning. We would all rather be learning in the classroom. Ihadthe opportunity todothisandI thank the school district for letting me do something like this. This district gives us the freedom to think outside the box and take a chance like this.”
Brown said despite the adventures with the weather, he would consider doing it again if an opportunity presents itself. As for having his car broken into, he turned that into a positive.
He admits that in Boston that he may have inadvertently left his door unlocked because his windows were not broken. He had all of his electronic equipment either at a hotel or with him. When Brown spent a long day at the Granary Burying Ground, he came back to find some change, cashews, beef jerky and peanuts missing.
“Iwas starving and looking forward to eating the snacks,” he said. “Itwas not a big deal. Itwas a crime of opportunity and it made someone else a little less hungry.”