Luminaries set out by University of Mississippi education students and faculty line the walkways near a monument at Shiloh National Military Park for the park's recent Grand Illumination event.
OXFORD, Miss. – For both students and teachers of history, an effective learning environment can mean stepping out of the classroom to walk grounds where the past still resonates.
That’s what a University of Mississippi education professor and 10 students from the university’s Oxford and Tupelo campuses did recently. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh, the group volunteered to lay more than 2,000 luminaries at Shiloh National Military Park in Shiloh, Tenn., for its April 7 Grand Illumination event.
“Each luminary represented a lost soul,” said Ellen J. Foster, the UM assistant professor of curriculum and instruction who coordinated the volunteers. “We had the largest group of volunteers that day and possibly some of the most historic parts of the battlefield.”
To illustrate the consequences of the battle, park officials and scores of volunteers laid a luminary, a paper bag filled with sand and a candle, for each of the more than 23,700 casualties. That evening, all the luminaries were lit.
“When you see all those bags lit up at once, you realize the magnitude of the battle,” Foster said. “To see more than 23,000 bags … that’s a lot.”
The UM students, all secondary social studies education majors, were assigned to historic parts of the military park, including Sarah Bell’s Peach Orchard, where blossoms cut down by bullets reminded survivors of falling snow, and the Bloody Pond, where soldiers from both armies gathered to drink and bathe wounds during the two-day battle.
Senior teacher candidate Corey Young, who is completing his student teaching at Pontotoc High School, was among the students who volunteered. As a lover of history, the park piqued a special interest for the Houston, Miss., native.
“I’ve taken a few Civil War classes so I really wanted to go see the park,” Young said. “I was able to take pictures of specific monuments that I might want to use in lessons. There was history behind everything.”
Darren White, another senior teacher candidate who is completing his student teaching at West Union Attendance Center in Myrtle, also attended out of an appreciation for history.
“Being on the battlefield, you start to gain an idea of the size and scope of the battle,” the Brookhaven native said. “I was interested as soon as one of my professors mentioned the event. Our history is a subject that many students don’t know about or don’t care about; I’d like to change that.”
View more photos from the Grand Illumination at Shiloh National Military Park.
For more information on the UM School of Education, go to http://education.olemiss.edu/.