AP European History Hosts Annual Enlightenment Salon


Seniors Flint Frohman, Jacob Peterson, and Luke Evans dressed up as historical figures from the enlightenment era.

Each year, Ms. Vroman’s AP European History class has an end of the year salon talking about the Enlightenment Era. The Enlightenment Era, which spans from the 1600s-1800s was held Monday May 23 in period 1 and 3.

This annual project follows the AP exam for European History as a final project. The salon is where students can dress up as influential figures within the enlightenment era and people will come in from other classes to talk with these characters. Senior Luke Evans says that the time overall is very wide and can range from people from very different times and backgrounds. “The specific idea of the salon is to center around the Enlightenment era, which…spans from the late 1600s to the early 1800s. So you have people like Peter the Great, who was the Tsar of Russia in the late 1600s and you also have people like Karl Marx, who was alive in the 1870s,” Evans said.

The hope is that when people interact with them, it is as if they are talking to the real person. Senior Aidan Traverse is dressing up as Ludwig Van Beethoven and has been studying his character for the salon. “I was assigned Ludwig van Beethoven. We hope that people show up and actually start to talk to us so we can tell them about our character,” Traverse said.

Ms. Vroman, the AP Euro teacher, has been incorporating this as a project since she began teaching the class. The previous teacher in the class started the project and the students in Ms. Vroman’s 2015 class convinced her to continue the tradition. She loves how well the students get into character for their roles especially because of how reluctant some can be to do so initially. Even though it is an end of the year project, Vroman thought the quality of the work was still very thorough and well thought out. “Generally, the quality of work, even if you’re not super excited about it, comes through as being pretty high quality work,” Vroman said.

The project is pretty heavily weighted with it being scored equivalent to a multiple choice test of 60 points. She says that it almost always is a helper to people’s grades as it can give them a decent bump. Usually the project is in early February, but due to Covid stopping the project last year and the block system this year, she assigned it as a final project after the AP exam which she enjoyed doing much more because it was a great way to wrap up the year. “So it’s usually a little bit of a boost. It used to be we did this always in about February, so it’s a nice boost to start second semester, but given the block schedule…we didn’t have time until now,” Vroman said.