American Experience Brings Local History to Life Visiting the Rebecca Nurse Homestead

For students in Austin Prep’s American Experience course, studying the Salem Witch Trials this fall has meant more than reading about history in a classroom.

Students recently traveled to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers for their first field trip of the academic year, beginning a year of hands-on and project-based learning designed to explore American history through multiple perspectives.

American Experience takes an interdisciplinary approach to the humanities, bringing together English and history in a course that encourages students to make connections across traditional subject areas. Through historical study, literature, research, discussion and project-based learning, students examine important moments in the American experience while developing the skills to interpret, connect and communicate what they learn.

The visit to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead brought students directly into the history they have been studying in class. Rebecca Nurse was among those accused during the Salem Witch Trials, and students had the opportunity to explore the property where she and her family lived while learning more about life in colonial Massachusetts.

For sophomore Luke DiNapoli ’29, visiting the homestead offered a perspective that was difficult to replicate inside the classroom.

“I thought it was really interesting because I had never been to a house like that before and had the opportunity to see how people lived their day-to-day lives,” DiNapoli said. “It was cool to actually see that in person.”

During the visit, students toured Nurse’s home, explored a reproduction of the Salem Village Meetinghouse connected to the events of 1692, and visited a burial site on the property. With an early fall day as the backdrop, students walked through the historic setting while connecting what they saw to their study of the Salem Witch Trials.

Inside the kitchen at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, American Experience students explored what daily life was like during the time of the Salem Witch Trials.

Connecting English and History Through Hands-On Learning

The field trip reflects the larger approach of American Experience, a course built around interdisciplinary study, hands-on experiences and opportunities for students to examine history and literature through different lenses.

The class began the year with a focus on the Salem Witch Trials and the historical circumstances surrounding them. Students are not only learning what happened, but also considering the people, perspectives, and stories that shaped the period.

For DiNapoli, that approach has already distinguished American Experience from humanities courses he has taken in the past.

“I really enjoy the class because it’s very different from things we’ve learned in the past,” DiNapoli said. “It gives us a different look at the witch trials, and I’ve already learned a lot more than I would have normally known.”

That approach will extend beyond Salem as students explore other moments in local American history and consider connections across different time periods, texts, and historical events.

From Historical Research to Student-Produced Documentaries

American Experience students listen as a guide at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead explains daily life in colonial New England, from cooking methods and tools to the spices used in the kitchen.

Rather than simply learning about those events, students will be challenged throughout the course to investigate them and communicate what they discover.

One of the course’s major projects will ask students to work collaboratively to produce documentaries, combining the research and historical analysis of a history course with the storytelling, writing, and communication skills developed through English.

Student groups will select topics from American history and turn their research into 15- to 20-minute documentaries. DiNapoli’s group expects to explore September 11th, while other groups will investigate their own topics and ultimately share their work with their classmates.

“I think the challenging part will be making sure my group includes everything we need in our documentary,” DiNapoli said. “But I’m excited to learn about everyone else’s topics through their documentaries, too.”

The trip to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead offered students an early look at what that kind of interdisciplinary learning can mean: moving beyond the textbook, encountering history where it happened, and using research, storytelling and discussion to make connections across subjects and time periods.

It was the first field experience of a course designed to make the humanities something students do not simply study, but experience.