As Valley Catholic High School students stepped off the bus into the parking lot at Fort Clatsop at the Lewis & Clark National Historical Park, they were treated to a day much like the Corps of Discovery experienced during the winter of 1805-06.
Gray and gloomy, a light but steady rain kept everything damp, including the students, some ill-prepared in hooded sweatshirts and shorts. But the rain did little to dampen the spirits of their teacher, Pacific University alumnus Andy Haugen ’11, MAT ’13. He grinned as he told his students they would experience the site the way the explorers did over 200 years ago.
“You’re walking the same ground that they did,” Haugen called out, recalling that Corps member Patrick Gass noted in his journal that it rained all but 12 of the 102 days they spent there.
The wet weather was just another tool Haugen has used to separate fact from myth in a senior-level social studies course that took a deeper look into the history and lore of the Western U.S.
“History of the American West” was made possible by a Teaching America250 Award by the Jack Miller Center. One educator in each state received the $5,000 grant to develop an educational project focused on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Haugen, a social studies teacher and librarian at Beaverton’s Valley Catholic, was the Oregon recipient.
A history major as an undergraduate at Pacific before earning his Master of Arts in Teaching, Haugen said the goal of the class was to take a deeper look into the individuals and moments that shaped the West, emphasizing that the region has, and continues to write, a complex history.
“Everybody thinks of John Wayne or of the Native American chief,” Haugen said of the romanticized version that many consider the West, “but the interconnected stories, the figures, and the policies of the West are all intertwined. They had a huge effect on the way that not only the West was shaped, but also on America. I think it’s an often-overlooked segment of American history.”
Unlike survey classes, where textbooks summarize dates and moments of history, Haugen’s students were challenged to critically think about what makes the West so complex. His primary text was The Essential West, a collection of essays by Elliott West that touches not only on Lewis & Clark, but also the California and Colorado gold rushes, race relations, children on the frontier, Mormon migration, and the buffalo as a cultural icon.
Readings and essays were supplemented by a look at how popular culture interprets the West. Haugen presented several Hollywood movies, including John Wayne’s “The Searchers” and Matt Damon’s 2010 adaptation of “True Grit,” documentaries on Kit Carson, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid; and Ken Burns’ documentary on Lewis & Clark. Students also played the classic “Oregon Trail” computer game and studied the interpretations of the West through art and music.
