By Heather Baxter, Education Intern
Over the last six months I have had the incredible opportunity of working with the Massachusetts Historical Society education department as a Northeastern University co-op student intern. In my time here I have been able to help out with National History Day, Professional Development teacher workshops, class visits, and creating digital education materials. I’ve learned so much and gained so much new experience in my time here, and will be forever grateful to the incredible people I’ve had the pleasure of working with.
The Education team puts so much hard work into organizing National History Day and making it a truly special experience for the students that participate. It was so amazing interacting with students and watching them light up as they spoke about their project topics that they had so thoroughly researched. Although I helped out with a bit of everything, during the State contest my personal responsibility was creating and running a Kahoot contest for students. Kahoot is a game-based learning platform popular in schools. I sent out a form to students in advance where they could submit Kahoot questions related to their project topics, and by the time of the contest we had received over 90 responses. I was so impressed with the thoughtful questions students had submitted and really enjoyed putting together the final Kahoot games.
On contest day, I ran two Kahoot contests and was amazed as students rushed into the previously empty cafeteria in order to participate. Our second game completely filled up to capacity. It was such a special experience and the students had so much fun battling for Dunkin gift cards and Hershey kisses.
My largest long-term project that I worked on throughout my co-op was writing an encyclopedia of abolitionists to be featured on our website. I wrote eight biographies of prominent Black abolitionists Ellen Craft, Charles Lenox Remond, John Van Surley DeGrasse, Joshua Bowen Smith, Philis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Eliza Gardner, George T. Downing, and William Wells Brown. It was so incredible getting to do in-depth research on each of these important figures and include relevant items in our collections into my biographies. It made it all the more special when I was given the opportunity to actually see and handle objects such as a first edition of Phillis Wheatley’s book of poetry or a letter written by Frederick Douglass that I had referenced in his biography. I also really enjoyed learning more about and bringing to light abolitionist figures who might be lesser known in our time but were incredibly influential in their own. I often really struggled to single out quotes to include since there were so many powerful and profound options. I really feel like I learned so much throughout this process and gained a lot of new skills as a writer that will continue to be useful as I return to taking classes at Northeastern.
I really couldn’t have asked for a better co-op experience with a better team of people and I will miss the MHS so much. The projects I got to work on in my time here have been an absolute dream for a History and English undergraduate student and I will absolutely be using what I’ve learned here going forward both in my academic and professional careers. Thank you for everything!