Avatars in the classroom: teaching masters

O to be in Edith Sheffer's German history class...or one like it. Digest these snippets of how she weaves history, research, untapped student potential, and a carefully crafted environment of discovery so that" students integrated all of the information into a coherent whole and uncovered their own historical lessons along the way."

At the beginning of my course on German history at Stanford University last fall, each student drew an identity at random that he or she would keep throughout the quarter—creating a unique historical character who was born in 1900 and lived through Germany's tumultuous 20th century.

Each student had one sentence to go on with his or her character's birthplace, gender, religion, and parents' occupations. Characters were born into all walks of life: the son of a prostitute in Berlin, the daughter of Jewish banker in Munich, the son of East Prussian nobility. The rest was up to students to decide.

Over the quarter, the avatars lived through two world wars and the cold war, experiencing monarchy, democracy, fascism, and communism. They each saw Hitler at the Beer Hall Putsch and had to decide whether to vote for him a decade later. They were at the Berlin Wall when it went up in 1961 and came down in 1989.

Students said they gained a greater appreciation for everyday complexities—how ordinary people adjusted to extraordinary times, and how adaptations propelled new social and political realities.

Students said they gained a greater appreciation for everyday complexities—how ordinary people adjusted to extraordinary times, and how adaptations propelled new social and political realities. Their simple vignettes expressed complicated ideas. One farm woman from Dachau supported but had visceral misgivings about the local concentration camp: "I dislike the communists as much as anyone else, but smelling [their ashes] on the wind turned my stomach." Students felt that they came to understand how history makes individuals and individuals make history

Creating lives can be an effective way to develop individual interests within the bounds of a survey course, as a complement to traditional lectures, exams, and papers...In turn, the personal investment fosters enthusiasm and lasting learning.