When Grapevine High School teacher Hunter Corb was in the midst of a lesson about the Cold War with his AP World History class, he remembered something that would make a memorable impression on his students and serve as a real-life connection to history—a piece of the Berlin Wall.
Corb, who had a previous career working with rare books and manuscripts and has had the opportunity to meet with private collectors all over the world, values making history meaningful.
“I try to pull from that world as much as possible. There is definitely a tangible connection when students are able to engage in hands-on history, like workshops or simulations,” he stated.
In the past, he has brought in rare books when the class was learning about the printing press.
“I give them a day to ask questions about things that are typically behind museum glass.”
But the piece of the Berlin Wall is actually something that belongs to his father-in-law, who lived in Germany at the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and who drove from Munich to Berlin because he realized the historical significance.
The day prior to bringing in the historical artifact, Corb’s class had wrapped up a lesson about the development of the Cold War and ended the day with a discussion of the Berlin Wall and what it symbolized. The class even listened to Winston Churchill’s 1946 speech about the Iron Curtain.
Seeing a piece of the Berlin Wall in their classroom the next day was exciting.
“They wanted the story: where did it come from, was it really real or was it a fake?” Corb recalls. “They had a lot of questions and, of course, they wanted to take ‘selfies.’”
Corb said that at first, they were hesitant to touch it.
“They thought it might crumble.”
Corb was happy to see how history became real for the students, all because of a person who 35 years before them saw the significance of that historical moment.
“It was interesting that of all of the things that we did this year, that it was the Berlin Wall that captured their imagination,” Corb shared, but something he was happy to see.
“The idea that they are allowed to interact with history in a real and tangible way is very new to them and it’s something that I really like to encourage in my students. It just makes history that much more real.”