Fort Huachuca, Arizona -- In the tradition of the world renown Madame Tussauds' Wax Museums in London and in the United States, seventh grade students at Colonel Smith Middle School brought history to life during a living wax museum presentation on Dec. 10.
All four seventh grade classes -- more than 115 students - participated in the event held in the school's seventh-grade pod. Family, friends, the sixth grade classes and local community members "met" influential people during the interactive wax museum visit.
Each student was required to research an influential person who is living or deceased, write an essay, create an iMovie, and memorize a speech in the first person point-of-view. They dressed as their person and came to life with the press of a button to tell the audience who they were and shared their impacts on society.
This is the first year the middle school has put on the living wax museum. The idea was proposed by seventh-grade teacher Amy Sullins, who had coordinated these events at previous schools where she'd taught. In the spring, while teaching second grade at Colonel Johnson Elementary School, she conducted the activity for the first time on post.
The students have been working on their projects for the past six weeks, researching, writing biographies, creating costumes, rehearsing their speeches and developing props. Sullins coordinated the activity with other teachers from various disciplines taught at school. Students were then able to pick from a list of historically significant people, either deceased or still living, to bring to life.
Prior to the actual event, students each wrote a five-paragraph essay about their character and created an iMovie about the person selected. They were given a lot of latitude, Sullins explained, saying that some students created short movie trailers, about a minute long, or actual movies that ran for several minutes. Some youth even created movie puppet shows. While that aspect was fun, they were not allowed to set up iPads and show these products during the living wax museum.
Sullins wanted students to be the stars of the activity in order to showcase their own hard work.
In their essays, the students had to include where and when their character was born, why they are famous and include three important facts. All costumes were assembled at home and not at school. Sullins said she encouraged students to think outside the box and not buy any costumes.
"Based on past presentations, some of the best costumes come from the inside of their parents' closets," she explained. Some costumes were entirely handmade. "One girl's grandmother taught her to sew, and she and her grandmother made her costume over Thanksgiving vacation."
Dennis Yusufoff, 12, chose to represent William Shakespeare. He said that in addition to doing the research, he had fun making his costume and props.
"I liked making my costume and used a cat toy to make my pen," he explained.
Citing his love of math, Ty Trotter, 12, stated why he chose to represent Pythagoras and talked about his character's theorums. He especially enjoyed making the iMovie.
"I liked doing the research. I learned what [Pythagoras] did and how he did it," Trotter said
Ivy Hutchinson, 13, chose to represent Sally Ride.
"She was the first great female astronaut," she said. "I picked her because I knew a little about space. People mostly pay attention to the men who are astronauts."
Sitting Bull came to life through Augustus Wirth, 12.
"I chose him because he was interesting and had a lot of inspirational quotes," Wirth stated. "I got to research him and find out what he was all about."
Holly Jamme, 12, portrayed Emily Dickenson.
"I really like poetry," Jamme said. "I've liked it since I've been little. I want to be a singer when I get older. You have to write poetry in order to write songs."
She especially liked putting together her costume and gathering props. Her table was covered with a black lace cloth on which she displayed several artifacts including a book containing Dickenson's works and her great grandfather's teacup and several family heirlooms.
People filled the pod to see the living "wax" statues. School office personnel recounted that more than 125 adults signed in.
"I was actually really surprised, you can tell a lot of these kids really studied their person that they chose, and they took the time to memorize their scripts," said one of the parents in attendance.
Jamme's mother, Brandi Collins, a former middle school teacher, loved the assignment.
"I am amazed by this project," she said, adding that she was impressed by the adult turnout. "The kids are excited and interested. I also learned a lot. My daughter would bring home and share tidbits of information about the other characters, and I learned things I never knew." She added that she and her daughter worked together on costume creation and prop assembly.
"It is good to see the kids so excited and interested," Collins said. "This was a very hands-on activity and much more effective than having them just sit at a desk."
Soccoro Lopez, an instructional assistant at the middle school, described the living wax museum as
fantastic.
"It's a great experience for the kids and is helping prepare them for high school," Lopez said. "They've had to do a lot of research to learn about their person. They are learning about history, language arts and other subjects [during the process of completing the assignment]. It's also teaching them responsibility because they've had to meet deadlines. They'll never forget this."
"We're hitting a whole bunch of [teaching] standards all in one project," Sullins said.
"I'm just so proud of them, they have worked so incredibly hard and to see it come to fruition and see the parents as proud parents, it's a goosebump-teaching moment.
"I have done [the living wax museum] six times and this is the best year of the program so far, maybe because the kids are older," Sullins said. "Next year, the program can only get better."
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