On Friday, English teacher Ms. Tara Bayens held a project for her American Literature classes. Her students were asked to find what it was like to be a European explorer tasked with navigating “the New World” by becoming explorers themselves.

While the students were going around exploring the school building, they had to measure, map, and search for resources just as European settlers had to do.

The students also had to interact with the rest of the student body and staff as they were viewed as “the Natives.” A student in each group was assigned the role of being the “expedition representative” whose task was to communicate and “keep peace with the Natives.”

Junior Elijah Garcia stated, “It was pretty cool, we had to pretend we were in the 1800s.”

Garcia was assigned the role of being the “expedition captain” who was in charge of monitoring all party members and keeping a journal of the experience.

“It was also weird seeing what the other classes or in this case ‘cultures’ did, like the acting class.” Garcia added.

There were also the roles of being the “mapmaker” and “recorder.” These roles’ tasks included collecting, analyzing, and interpreting geographic information to help keep the expedition simulation as accurate as possible.