By Cindy Kranz
The Cincinnati Enquirer

MOUNT HEALTHY - Students sit at their desks, glue sticks and scissors poised, watching teacher Joan Heidorn explain the task ahead. Supplies they'll need are neatly arranged in front of the room: stickers, string and beads.

Mount Healthy High School teacher Joan Heidorn works with Daniel Allen, 15, in her History 1815-1900 class. (Glenn Hartong photo)

The class has all the trappings of kindergarten, but it's really a high school history class that embraces an unconventional method for learning: scrapbooking.

Heidorn, a history and psychology teacher at Mount Healthy High School, has taught with this technique for three years. She also lectures, and students take notes, but then they transform their notes into a scrapbook page of each unit.

Scrapbooking is Heidorn's way of addressing different learning styles.

"It's looking at the printed word in pictorial form - anything I can do to get kids to retain information," Heidorn said.

She's acting on her knowledge of right brain vs. left brain - the theory that the two sides of the brain control two different kinds of thinking, and that each person prefers one kind over the other.

Left-brain thinkers are more analytical and are verbal learners, while right-brain thinkers are visual learners.

"Instead of always doing left-hemisphered things, we make kids use their right brain. Most classes are left-hemisphered or book learning," Heidorn said.

On this day, the students in Heidorn's "History 1815-1900," a required class for freshmen, made a Civil War page for their history scrapbooks. It includes a map and information about major battles.

Once finished, they add it to their other scrapbook pages that illustrate, among other notable events, the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, westward expansion and more. Each page must contain a certain amount of journaling.

The scrapbook pages visually cover the students' notes, so it helps students retain the information. It's also proven to be a good way to teach special-needs students, Heidorn said.

Sixteen-year-old Ashley Shelton was surprised by the scrapbook assignments, because most teachers don't do this type of work, she said.

"It's a rest from doing book work. I like it a lot, because when I'm tired of writing, you get to draw and stuff. It's a fun class. Pictures help out more because it's visual instead of just listening," she said.

As the year continues, the work gets more complicated. Students make "pop-ups" for their pages and know all of the scrapbooking lingo, such as "halo."

"Instead of saying, 'Glue something down and put something around, you say 'Halo it to a fourth inch,'" Heidorn explained.

"The great thing about scrapbooking is you don't have to be an artist. You can make great looking pages without knowing how to draw. I'm pretty picky about how they do it. I'm trying to teach them to be proud of what they're doing and not throw something together... ."

Keith Brown was initially skeptical of the idea. "I thought it belonged in elementary school," the 15-year-old student said. "It sounded like something I'd do in fifth grade."

Now, he's a believer.

"It's fun," Keith said. "I'm able to study from different things we had in the scrapbook. It just helps you remember a lot of things, really."

Fifty percent of the semester grade is the scrapbook. "It's an alternative assessment. For kids who don't do well on tests, they have a shot," Heidorn said.

Some students don't remember the details of the Civil War unit just by lectures and note-taking, she said.

"If I ask the kids now, they know details. If someone asked you to do something pictorially, you'd remember it. A lot of people are pictorial learners. You can talk until you're blue in the face, and they don't remember. When they have a picture, they learn it."

Heidorn teaches four sections of history and two sections of psychology. Her psychology students make a scrapbook, too. Pages range from Pavlov's experiment to Sigmund Freud.

She learned scrapbooking by going to stores, talking to people and watching the DIY Network's scrapbooking show. She thought it would be a good way to create something different for her students to do.

Today, teachers must compete with computers, video games and television for students' attention. Kids are used to hands-on, interactive activities, she said, so teachers must meet students where they are today.

"You can't just teach the same way," said Heidorn, who is retiring this year after 30 years of teaching, 25 of them at Mount Healthy. "We've got to change our teaching methods. Any kind of hands-on project, kids just get buried in it. The time just goes so fast."

Students like scrapbooking

• Why it works: "It's easier to figure out and remember stuff. It's like a tour. Rather than trying to memorize words and where places were, you can look at a graph and a map. You can remember what happens at a certain place and why it was important." - Alice Bester, 14, freshman

• Student quote: "At first, I was kind of like, it's more of a girl thing. It's pretty cool. It's better than paperwork and book work. It makes me pay more attention." - Eric Sterwerf, 15, freshman

• Classes taught by Joan Heidorn: history and psychology.

• Years taught by this teacher: 30

• Years she has used this technique: three

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This series spotlights a local classroom in which teachers are challenging students in bold, innovative ways. To nominate a class, e-mail dhofmeister@enquirer.com, fax (513) 768-8340 or write David Hofmeister, The Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202. Please include your name, daytime phone, e-mail and school.

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E-mail ckranz@enquirer.com