Teaching Texas History — Tournaments as Tools
In medieval times, jousting tournaments marked the high point in the festival season. Knights from all over the kingdom would come and display their fighting skills in one-on-one combat. The goal of the tournament was of course to crown a champion, to find that one knight who had bested the rest in rounds of single-elimination battles.
Fortunately, the concept of tournaments has evolved to include less violent pursuits such as sporting events and TV game shows. Perhaps one of the most famous tournaments is the annual NCAA March Madness college basketball championships. The GLO has its own annual March Madness for Texas History — the Top Texan Tournament — which was hosted for the fourth time this year as part of the Save Texas History Program. The friendly competition, which features 64 Texans representing a diverse range of roles over more than three centuries of Texas history, is a fun way to pit historical Texans against each other that also serves as a great tool for educators. In this year’s Finals, Lady Bird Johnson is up against Sam Houston, who is trying for his third Top Texan win in four years.
Voting for the Top Texan ends at midnight on Thursday, April 4 — click here to vote!
Kevin Hunter, a 4th-grade teacher from Vernon, Texas, found an interesting and fun way to integrate the Top Texan Tournament into a learning experience for his students. “I started by creating a HUGE bracket on my outer wall but did not discuss it with my classes,” said Mr. Hunter. Luckily, Mr. Hunter’s students had been researching and studying Texas notables from the Top Texan Tournament, so it was not hard for students to figure out the purpose of the mystery wall. After a week of researching Top Texans, the students began discussing and comparing the contestants in groups. From these class discussions, each student would decide whom they would choose as Top Texan.
Mr. Hunter explained the process:
“To vote, the kids stand up and move to a designated side of the room. Once they are there, I select a few random students and they have to defend their choice using a sentence stem that is posted on the board. ‘I chose [name] as the winner because [reason].’ I had originally planned on using this as a ‘warm-up’ or quick engagement activity to do at the beginning of class, but the conversations it created were so great that we spent an entire [class] period doing it.”
The idea of tournaments as educational tools isn’t limited to Top Texans. Mr. Hunter sees other uses for the tournament concept in the classroom, like previewing future learning content or reviewing content on topics previously taught in class. For Mr. Hunter and his students, the tournament concept has become a fun and effective learning activity they can use in a variety of applications. Mr. Hunter points out the developmental value of the exercise, noting that “being able to make a choice and defend it is a crucial skill and really creates long-term knowledge.”
Mr. Hunter attended the Totally Texas Immersion Teacher Workshop at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin in 2017, of which the Texas General Land Office is a co-collaborator. He called it a “gamechanger,” but the highlight of his experience was being able to collaborate with other Texas history teachers.
Hopefully, Mr. Hunter can find the time to teach his version of the Top Texan Tournament to teachers at this year’s Totally Texas Immersion workshop. It’s not just a game, but a classroom gamechanger too!
