By Craig Degel
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Tucson-area children will get another chance to experience the past by walking the "Paths of Life" exhibit at the University of Arizona's Arizona State Museum.
Bruce Hilpert's Anthropology 302 students will become docents this fall at the ASM for tour groups of kindergarten through eighth grade students.
The program started Sept. 27.
Hilpert is curator of public programs at ASM and teaches the three-unit lecture portion of the class. Graduate student Carole Adler teaches the one-unit lab portion.
Students from the Tucson Unified, Marana Unified and San Xavier School Districts have taken part in the tours in previous years. They will be taken through the museum's newest exhibit, "Paths of Life Ÿ American Indians of the Southwest," which was finished last spring. Adler said the exhibit has grown in popularity with visitors.
The exhibit traces the roots of tribes such as the Hopi and the Navajo from their deepest past up through contemporary issues. It also includes activities for the children to take part in.
"The kids respond very well," Hilpert said. "The tours are very hands-on oriented. There are lots of artifacts that they get to handle, they can grind corn and there is a Tohono O'Odham game they can play."
Hilpert said the docent program has existed in different forms since the 1950s. Originally, it was started for education students, then it was given to anthropology students. Hilpert said he restructured it two years ago to include the Education Department again.
For the first month of the class, the anthropology students learn about the tour, acting as docents, as well as learning ways to be culturally sensitive to the fact that many of the students in the program's target ages are of Native American descent, Adler said.
There are 26 students in the docent training program. The fall semester students will work as docents through the winter break.
Hilpert said during the fall semester there will be a low student-to-docent ratio. With a lower ratio, he said, there will be more docents to work with fewer children, enabling students to learn more easily.
Hilpert said the program depends on new students every semester.