Introduction
A history lesson—my own history, not History with a capital "H": twenty seven years later I remember being a cow. Our Spanish teacher had given us a short story to turn into a skit—in this case, a Spanish folk tale about a man who sells his soul to the devil and then tricks the devil to get out of the bargain. When we divided up roles, Mike took the role of the devil but said he didn't have time to make horns, so I made them. I thought they were pretty good horns, but Mike wouldn't wear them, so we had to switch roles so that I would be the devil, and Mike couldn't remember his lines. When we were done, the senior girl who sat one seat ahead the row next to me and who didn't own a single dress that had a back to it—my other chief memory of Spanish class—told the teacher, when called upon to summarize the skit, that it was about a really mean cow. A boy cow, of course, she added. I was ecstatic; Backless Dress Girl noticed me, and all it took was a skit and some horns. Somewhere I picked up the future and conditional tenses, but that's most of what I remember about Spanish that year.
From elementary school, I remember being a Minuteman to commemorate the American Revolution. I had a three cornered hat made out of construction paper and my tube socks pulled up and my corduroys rolled up to just below my knees to make knee breeches. It was the Bicentennial. We boys spent a lot of time with our corduroys rolled up and out socks pulled up all the way that year. Betsy Ross wanted to touch my hair, but I didn't want to get in trouble for being out of uniform.
What all these history lessons had in common was performance. The lessons we performed in were frequently corny and formulaic, with uncertain links to content objectives, and they were simply magnificent. I will never forget them. If we have content we do want students to remember, we would do well to integrate it into these unforgettable experiences.
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