History in Action - Civil War Living History Program - Applying STEM to Living History
What Is STEM?
STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. STEM education is more than teaching these four subjects independently. At its best, STEM asks students to combine knowledge from several disciplines to investigate questions, solve problems, evaluate evidence, design solutions, and understand how the world works.
Science helps students investigate the natural and physical world. Technology examines the tools and systems people create to solve problems. Engineering focuses on designing, building, testing, and improving solutions. Mathematics provides the means to measure, calculate, compare, predict, and evaluate those solutions.
STEM education is therefore fundamentally about problem-solving.
That makes it a natural partner for living history.
Why Apply STEM to Living History?
People in the past faced problems just as people do today. They needed to build shelters, preserve food, obtain clean water, manufacture clothing, transport goods, communicate across long distances, treat injuries and disease, navigate unfamiliar terrain, and move people and supplies.
They solved those problems using the scientific knowledge, technologies, materials, mathematics, and engineering available to them.
A Civil War soldier's world was filled with STEM.
A tent was an engineering solution to the need for portable shelter.
A railroad was a technological and engineering solution for moving people and supplies.
A telegraph used technology and principles of electricity to move information faster than a person could physically carry it.
Uniforms involved material science, textile production, manufacturing, and economics.
Military maps required mathematics, measurement, geography, surveying, and cartography.
Supplying thousands of soldiers required enormous amounts of mathematics, transportation technology, logistics, and resource management.
Even something as ordinary as preparing a soldier's meal involved questions of chemistry, heat transfer, nutrition, measurement, food preservation, and available resources.
STEM is therefore not being added to history. STEM is one of the ways we can understand history.
Living History Makes STEM Tangible
One challenge of both history and STEM education is that concepts can become abstract when students encounter them only through textbooks, worksheets, or screens.
Living history provides a physical context for those concepts.
A student can read that a Civil War soldier carried a heavy load while marching, but examining the equipment makes the problem tangible. Students can determine its weight, calculate what percentage of a soldier's body weight it represented, estimate the energy required to carry it over a particular distance, and consider how heat, terrain, water availability, and nutrition affected that soldier.
Suddenly, a historical question becomes a STEM investigation. Instead of asking only: "What did a Civil War soldier carry?" students can ask: "How could a person physically carry these materials for 15 or 20 miles, and what problems would that create?" That question requires history, mathematics, science, geography, and problem-solving.
The same transformation can occur throughout a living-history program.
Students do not simply look at a tent. They consider why it was designed that way.
They do not simply look at a haversack. They determine what it could carry and how long those supplies might last.
They do not simply learn that railroads were important. They investigate how transportation capacity and distance affected the ability to supply an army.
They do not simply identify an artifact. They examine its materials, construction, purpose, and physical evidence to determine what problem the object was designed to solve.
A Social Studies + STEM Living History Experience Proposal
Program Proposal
Jason A. Sumner, Ph.D.
Presented by the 31st Alabama Infantry, Company E - Civil War Living History and Historical Interpretation
Program Overview
The 31st Alabama Infantry, Company E is a company of Civil War living historians dedicated to historical research, public education, and the accurate interpretation of the experiences of individuals who lived during the American Civil War era.
Members of the company use carefully researched historical impressions, reproduction uniforms and equipment, material culture, demonstrations, and historical interpretation to help audiences better understand the lives and experiences of people in the nineteenth century. While the company participates in traditional living-history and reenactment events, education and historical interpretation are central components of its programming.
The company is capable of portraying and interpreting multiple perspectives of the Civil War era. Depending upon the educational objectives of a particular program, members may present Federal and Confederate military impressions while also examining the experiences of civilians and the broader social, political, economic, and technological environment of the period. This allows programming to focus on historical inquiry rather than simply the recreation of a battle or military event.
The proposed History in Action: Social Studies + STEM Living History Experience would adapt the company's existing living-history programming specifically for students.
Rather than presenting students with a traditional reenactment, the program would transform a living-history encampment into an interdisciplinary learning laboratory. Students would rotate through interactive stations where living historians use historical equipment, reproductions, artifacts, demonstrations, maps, and problem-solving activities to connect nineteenth-century history with concepts from social studies, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The central concept of the program is:
History provides the problem. STEM helps students understand how people solved it.
From Living History to Experiential Learning
A Civil War encampment offers students something that cannot easily be replicated in a traditional classroom: the opportunity to encounter the physical dimensions of history.
Students can see and handle appropriate reproduction materials, examine how historical objects were constructed, investigate the weight and limitations of equipment, observe historical technologies, evaluate methods of transportation and communication, and consider the practical problems faced by people living in the nineteenth century.
The living historian becomes more than a presenter.
Instead, the living historian serves as a historical interpreter and facilitator of inquiry, asking students to use evidence to solve problems.
A student examining a military haversack, for example, might initially see an old-fashioned bag. Through guided inquiry, that object can generate questions involving multiple academic disciplines:
How much food could it carry?
How many calories would that food provide?
How long would those supplies last?
What materials were used to construct the haversack?
Why were those materials selected?
How did weather affect those materials?
How much additional weight did it place upon the individual carrying it?
How would thousands of these items be manufactured and supplied?
How would those supplies reach an army hundreds of miles from its original supply point?
One historical object can therefore become a lesson involving history, economics, geography, mathematics, engineering, material science, and logistics.
Proposed Learning Stations
The program could be organized around five or six rotating learning stations, allowing relatively small groups of students to interact directly with members of the 31st Alabama Infantry, Company E.
Station 1 - The Science of the Soldier
Students investigate the physical demands placed upon nineteenth-century soldiers by examining clothing, equipment, food, water, and other necessities.
Students can estimate equipment weight, calculate marching distances, consider caloric and hydration requirements, and investigate the effects of weather and terrain upon the human body.
Driving Question: How did the limitations of the human body influence historical decisions?
Station 2 - Engineering a Civil War Camp
Students examine tents, shelters, camp equipment, and historical camp organization as examples of practical engineering.
Students consider terrain, drainage, weather, available materials, sanitation, fire placement, water sources, and efficient use of limited space.
Students can then evaluate potential locations for a hypothetical camp or design their own solution within established historical constraints.
Driving Question: How would you create a safe and functional community using only the resources available to people in the 1860s?
Station 3 - Technology of the 1860's
Students explore the technological transformation occurring during the Civil War era.
Interpretation can incorporate railroads, telegraphs, manufacturing, textiles, photography, transportation, medical technology, and military equipment.
Rather than viewing technology as synonymous with electronics, students discover that technology represents the tools and systems humans develop to solve problems.
Driving Question: How did new technologies change the way Americans communicated, traveled, worked, and fought?
Station 4 - Material Science: What Is It Made From?
Students examine materials commonly encountered through living-history equipment, including wool, cotton, leather, wood, iron, steel, brass, and canvas.
Students investigate the properties of these materials and determine why particular materials were selected for particular purposes.
This station can additionally explore natural resources, manufacturing, durability, scarcity, trade, and economics.
Driving Question: How do the properties and availability of materials determine what humans make from them?
Station 5 - Logistics: Can You Supply an Army?
Students confront one of the largest STEM challenges of nineteenth-century warfare: moving enormous quantities of people, food, water, animals, equipment, and supplies.
Using age-appropriate mathematical problems, students calculate the resources necessary to support a hypothetical group of soldiers.
As the scenario develops, additional complications can be introduced involving distance, transportation capacity, geography, weather, or resource shortages.
Students quickly discover that battles represent only a small portion of military history. Behind every army existed an enormous logistical system.
Driving Question: How do you keep thousands of people supplied when they are hundreds of miles from home?
Station 6 - Historical Evidence Laboratory
Students become historical investigators.
Instead of immediately being told what an artifact or reproduction represents, students first examine the object and develop a hypothesis.
They progress through:
Observation → Evidence → Hypothesis → Conclusion
Students consider materials, construction, wear, shape, size, and other physical evidence before determining an object's possible purpose.
The living historian subsequently explains the object's identity and historical context.
This exercise emphasizes the similarities between historical and scientific inquiry. Both require researchers to gather evidence, develop explanations, test assumptions, and revise conclusions.
Driving Question: How can physical evidence help us reconstruct the lives of people who can no longer tell us their stories?
Culminating STEM Challenge
Survive the Campaign
Following the station rotations, students could participate in a culminating interdisciplinary challenge.
Teams receive a hypothetical historical scenario involving a Civil War military unit preparing for a multi-day campaign.
Each team receives limitations involving available food, water, equipment, transportation, shelter materials, weight, distance, and time.
Students must decide what resources are necessary and develop a plan for completing the assigned mission.
Their solution must consider:
geography and terrain;
available transportation;
food and water requirements;
equipment weight;
weather;
shelter;
supply routes;
available technology;
time and distance; and
historical limitations.
Students then present and defend their decisions.
There is intentionally no single perfect solution. Students must instead demonstrate that their choices are reasonable, historically possible, and supported by evidence.
This activity places students in the role of historical problem-solvers while requiring them to apply Social Studies + Science + Technology + Engineering + Mathematics simultaneously.
Educational Objectives:
Through participation in the program, middle-school students will be encouraged to:
Apply historical evidence to explain how people responded to problems and limitations in the nineteenth century.
Use mathematical reasoning to investigate distance, weight, quantity, time, supply, and resource allocation.
Identify engineering solutions used to address shelter, transportation, communication, manufacturing, and logistical challenges.
Investigate scientific concepts involving materials, weather, terrain, nutrition, energy, and the human body.
Analyze historical technologies and explain how innovation changed American society.
Evaluate the influence of geography upon transportation, settlement, military operations, and human decision-making.
Analyze material culture as evidence about people and societies.
Develop evidence-based conclusions through observation and inquiry.
Recognize relationships among academic disciplines that are often taught separately.
Engage with history as an investigative process rather than simply a collection of names, dates, and events.
Social Studies and STEM Integration
The interdisciplinary nature of the program allows a single historical problem to address multiple areas of learning. For example, students investigating how an army crossed a particular region might begin with geography by examining terrain and distance. They then encounter a mathematics problem when calculating travel time and the amount of food required. That becomes an engineering problem when students consider how roads, bridges, railroads, or wagons allowed supplies to move.
It becomes a science problem when weather, water, nutrition, disease, or material durability are considered. Additionally, it becomes a technology problem when students examine telegraphs, railroads, manufacturing, or other nineteenth-century innovations. Finally, students return to social studies to determine how all of these factors influenced an actual historical event. The disciplines therefore reinforce one another rather than existing as isolated subjects.
Experiential Learning:
Living history is particularly suited to this interdisciplinary model because students encounter physical representations of the historical environment.
Instead of reading that soldiers carried equipment, students can see its size and investigate its weight.
Instead of reading about military camps, students can walk through a recreated camp and examine how it functions.
Instead of simply learning that railroads affected the Civil War, students can calculate how transportation capacity affected the movement of people and supplies.
Instead of memorizing the names of nineteenth-century technologies, students can investigate the problems those technologies were designed to solve.
Instead of being told what an artifact represents, students can observe the evidence and develop their own conclusion.
This transforms students from passive recipients of historical information into active participants in historical inquiry.
Historical Interpretation and Responsibility
The 31st Alabama Infantry, Company E recognizes that effective Civil War education requires more than uniforms, equipment, and military demonstrations.
The Civil War occurred within a complicated social and political environment involving slavery, emancipation, citizenship, race, political conflict, military service, civilian hardship, economic change, and the preservation of the United States. Programming should therefore place military material culture within its broader historical context.
The purpose of portraying individuals from the Civil War era is not to celebrate warfare or promote a particular historical faction. Multiple historical impressions allow students to investigate how individuals experienced the same conflict from different positions.
Historical interpretation will emphasize evidence, context, and the difference between understanding the decisions of historical people and endorsing those decisions. This approach allows students to encounter difficult history while developing the skills necessary to analyze historical evidence critically and responsibly.
Safety
Student safety would remain a central consideration throughout the program. Living historians would maintain direct control over all specialized historical equipment.
Any demonstrations involving historical weapons or potentially hazardous equipment would be conducted exclusively by qualified adult living historians and in accordance with school policies, applicable law, established living-history safety procedures, and the requirements of the host institution.
Students would not be permitted to handle or operate historical weapons.
When military technology is incorporated into STEM instruction, the educational emphasis would remain on historical development, material science, manufacturing, logistics, engineering, technological change, and historical consequences.
Hands-on student activities would utilize materials and reproductions appropriate for student interaction.
Flexible Program Design:
The History in Action program could be scaled according to the needs of an individual school.
A smaller program might involve several classrooms rotating through three or four stations during a half-day visit.
A larger program could create a full living-history encampment through which an entire grade level rotates during the school day.
Stations could generally operate in approximately 15–25 minute rotations, depending upon scheduling requirements.
Schools could select stations that best correspond with current curriculum, grade-level standards, STEM initiatives, available instructional time, and student needs.
This flexibility would allow the 31st Alabama Infantry, Company E to collaborate with classroom teachers before the event rather than offering a one-size-fits-all presentation.
What the 31st Alabama Infantry, Company E Provides
Depending upon the scope of the program, the company can provide living historians and interpretive resources including:
historically researched military and civilian impressions;
reproduction uniforms and equipment;
appropriate original and reproduction artifacts;
period tents and camp equipment;
historical cooking and daily-life interpretation;
material-culture displays;
maps and historical documents;
demonstrations of nineteenth-century technology;
military drill and camp-life interpretation;
structured educational stations;
guided historical inquiry;
historical research and interpretation; and
opportunities for students to interact directly with living historians.
Specific programming would be developed in consultation with the host school.
Potential School Partnership Model
The strongest version of History in Action would be developed collaboratively rather than treated as a traditional guest presentation.
Prior to the event, representatives of the 31st Alabama Infantry, Company E could work with participating Social Studies and STEM teachers to identify the standards and concepts students are currently studying.
The living-history stations could then be adjusted to reinforce those objectives.
Teachers could also prepare students with introductory activities before the event and use follow-up activities afterward.
The program therefore becomes part of a larger instructional sequence:
Prepare → Experience → Investigate → Reflect → Apply
This structure transforms the living-history visit from an isolated special event into an authentic interdisciplinary learning experience.
Why This Program Matters:
Students frequently ask a simple question:
"When am I ever going to use this?"
Living history provides an opportunity to demonstrate that knowledge rarely exists within only one academic discipline.
People in the past faced real problems.
They needed shelter.
They needed food.
They needed transportation.
They needed communication.
They had to manufacture objects.
They had to navigate unfamiliar geography.
They had to move resources.
They had to adapt to weather.
They had to make decisions with incomplete information.
Those problems required the same fundamental processes emphasized in modern STEM education: observation, measurement, experimentation, design, calculation, adaptation, and problem-solving.
History provides the human context that makes those problems meaningful.
Conclusion:
The 31st Alabama Infantry, Company E proposes History in Action: A Social Studies + STEM Living History Experience as a collaborative educational program designed specifically for students.
The program builds upon the company's experience in living history, historical research, material culture, and public interpretation while expanding those practices into an intentionally interdisciplinary educational model.
The objective is not simply to bring Civil War reenactors to a school.
The objective is to bring students into a living laboratory of the nineteenth century where they can encounter historical problems and use modern academic skills to investigate how people attempted to solve them.
A wool uniform becomes material science.
A tent becomes engineering.
A ration becomes mathematics.
A railroad becomes technology and logistics.
A campaign map becomes geography.
An artifact becomes evidence.
And history becomes an opportunity for inquiry.
History provides the problem. STEM helps students understand how people solved it.
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