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There is something different about learning history in the place where it happened. A photograph, document, or textbook can introduce us to the past, but standing inside a historic building, walking through an archaeological site, exploring a museum, or seeing a landscape firsthand can make history feel immediate and memorable. That idea is one of the reasons I have always valued travel and place-based learning as part of studying California history.
The Power of Learning Beyond the Classroom
In the Education Week opinion article The Power of Travel for Student Success, educator Ashley Lamb-Sinclair reflects on the ways experiences outside traditional classroom walls can influence learning. She describes how travel and real-world experiences can expose students to new people, places, ideas, and possibilities that are difficult to reproduce through classroom instruction alone. The article also points to research connecting student travel experiences with increased willingness to learn and explore, greater independence, curiosity, self-esteem, confidence, and social interaction.
Recommended Reading
Read Ashley Lamb-Sinclair’s Education Week article, The Power of Travel for Student Success, for additional thoughts about how experiences beyond the classroom can deepen learning.
Why Place-Based Experiences Matter
Travel does not replace books, primary sources, discussion, or classroom instruction. Instead, it can add another layer to learning by giving people an opportunity to connect ideas with actual places and experiences.
Connect History to Place
Historic sites help learners connect people, events, geography, architecture, and landscapes to the history they are studying.
Encounter Multiple Perspectives
Museums, historic sites, cultural centers, monuments, and landscapes can introduce perspectives and stories that may receive limited attention in traditional instructional materials.
Create Memorable Experiences
Seeing an object, building, landscape, or historic location firsthand can create a powerful memory that gives additional meaning to later reading and discussion.
Bring New Ideas Back to the Classroom
For teachers, travel can become professional learning. Photographs, observations, museum resources, primary sources, maps, and personal experiences can all inspire lessons and classroom conversations.
When Teachers Experience History Themselves
The Education Week article focuses primarily on students, but the same idea can inspire professional learning for educators. Teachers who experience historic places firsthand often return to their classrooms with stories, photographs, resources, questions, and a stronger personal connection to the content they teach. A visit to a California mission, Gold Rush community, historic Los Angeles neighborhood, Sacramento landmark, Monterey historic site, or Manzanar can turn professional development into an experience that continues to influence instruction long after the trip is over.
Learn Online — or Take Your Learning on the Road
My California history courses are designed so educators can complete their work entirely online. Travel is not required. For teachers who enjoy learning through experience, several course activities can also provide opportunities to connect coursework with historic places. A teacher may choose to visit a site connected to the course, explore its exhibits and resources, document the experience, and connect that learning back to classroom instruction.
California Becomes the Classroom
Depending on the course, place-based learning might include exploring locations such as:
Gold Rush Country
Coloma, the Mother Lode, historic mining communities, museums, and preserved Gold Rush sites.
California Missions
Historic missions and museums that help educators examine Spanish colonization and Indigenous California.
Historic Los Angeles
El Pueblo, historic neighborhoods, museums, cultural institutions, and sites connected to the city’s diverse history.
Monterey & Sacramento
Historic buildings, museums, government sites, and locations connected to California’s political development.
Manzanar
A powerful place for studying Japanese American incarceration, civil liberties, memory, and historical interpretation.
TEACHER’S LEARNING CONNECTION
Explore California History Your Way
Choose from eight California history courses designed for educators. Courses are completed through a flexible online independent-study format and provide three graduate-level professional development credits through Fresno Pacific University’s Center for Professional Development. You can complete your coursework online from home—or, when an appropriate course option is available, connect your learning to the historic places you are studying.
Flexible Independent Study
Courses may be completed in as little as three weeks or within one year. Fresno Pacific University requires a minimum of one week of study per unit for Center for Professional Development independent-study courses.
SAVE $15 ON MY COURSES • USE CODE: WINTER45
Go Where the History Happened
One of the great advantages of teaching California history is that so much of the history is still around us. Whether you experience it through online resources, primary sources, historic photographs, museums, or a trip to the actual site, connecting history to place can make professional learning—and classroom teaching—more meaningful.
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Jeromy Winter
Learn more about the History of California by signing up for one of my courses at Fresno Pacific University. 
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