Take the Journey ─ Teaching American History Through Place-based Learning

In Take the Journey, author, historian, and educator James Percoco invites you and your students to the places where many events in American history happened. The Journey Through Hallowed Ground is a 180-mile National Heritage area encompassing such historic sites as the Gettysburg battlefield and Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. Though it might prove difficult to visit these particular sites with your students, Percoco argues that every community has a story that can be connected to larger themes in American history and that placed-based history education can be made a part of every classroom, from Nevada to Washington to Pennsylvania.
Filled with students’ voices and an enthusiasm for American history, Take the Journey offers the following:

• Practical and easy-to-implement lessons
• Classroom-tested materials
• Specific directions for employing place-based best practices in the classroom
• Ways to meet state standards without sacrificing teacher creativity or hands-on learning
• Lists of resources and primary source materials

So bring your students along and let them discover the twists and turns offered by history and the Journey Through Hallowed Ground.

James Percoco is a nationally recognized history educator with more than thirty-three years of classroom experience. He is a member of the Education Committee of the National Park Service Advisory Board and the National Park Service Centennial Advisory Board. In 2011, he was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame.